How Habits Form
Consider how negative self-talk, a common and damaging bad habit, forms. Negative self-talk is the inner voice in your mind that repeats a subtle yet demeaning running commentary. Examples include:
• “I’m useless; I’ll never succeed.”
• “I never look good in any outfit.”
• “I’m a bad parent; my children will
grow up and hate me. They deserve
so much better.”
As you repeat a negative statement over and over to yourself, neurons in the prefrontal-striatal-midbrain circuit fire together over and over. The connections between neurons become strengthened, and eventually the circuit wires together, storing the thought as a habit. This is where the mantra “Neurons that fire together wire together” comes into play. Turning a thought into an enduring habit is brain plasticity in action.
Use Neuroscience to Break Bad Habits
So how do you break a bad habit? Neuroscience research provides two clues:
• Habits are triggered by a particular
cue, situation, or event.
• Habits are persistent—once formed,
they are very hard to break.
Therefore, to break the habit:
• Learn to recognize the trigger for
your bad habit.
• Wire a new healthy or positive
habit to override the bad-habit
trigger.
Breaking your bad habit could be achieved by carefully paying attention to what, where, when, and why your habit is triggered. Once you recognize the trigger,
the trick is to consciously and mindfully repeat your new desired behavior, action, or thought instead. Similar to forming the old habit, you must repeat this process over and over until the new habit is wired to the old trigger—eventually masking the old habit.
Old habits never die
(it’s not lack of willpower)
Of course, the process of breaking bad habits is not always easy. But choosing a new habit that is enjoyable and rewarding will engage the dopaminergic neurons in your prefrontal cortex-striatal-midbrain circuit, and make the process of wiring in the new habits quicker and easier.
Also, understand that old habits never die; instead, they become masked by new habits, and you may sometimes experience a momentary relapse. If you do fall back into your old ways, don’t be too hard on yourself. It isn’t lack of willpower or some moral failing on your part. It’s your neurobiology in action.
Instead, mindfully pick yourself up. Treat yourself with compassion. And put into practice your new positive habit once again.
As Artistole once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
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