The Power of Habits - How to Make or Break a Habit

If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard me talk about our brains. Although, as a biologist and a physician, I think the entire human body is amazing, the brain probably takes the cake when it comes to my favorite element (followed closely by the gastrointestinal system). What? You don’t rank your favorite body systems also? The brain does a gazillion amazing things that I could talk about forever, but don’t worry this isn’t a science lesson. What I want to focus on this month is how the brain coordinates our actions.

Beautiful Human Brain

As you’ve likely heard me say before, in simple terms, the brain is made up of a higher brain and a lower brain. The lower brain, called our primitive brain, is responsible for driving the actions that lead to our basic survival. These actions are motivated by three main goals: seek pleasure, avoid pain, and expend as little energy as possible. These fundamental drives and the actions that result from them helped to keep us alive as we were evolving. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately, we evolved so well that we have created an environment where these three fundamental drives are very easily met. We have done this to such an extent that it is actually causing us harm.

Let me explain this with the example of food. Food that we ingest creates chemical reactions in our brain that cause a surge of pleasure. Certain foods cause more pleasure than others. For example, foods such as sugar and fat, create a higher amount of pleasure in our brain while also delivering a higher amount of energy producing calories. This allowed evolving humans to survive - eat yummy food (seek pleasure) and stop hunting and gathering as soon as you have consumed enough (conserve energy). Now, however, we can go to the grocery store (which expends much less energy than chasing after an animal to catch for dinner) and obtain very large amounts of very concentrated foods (giving us so much pleasure).

In addition to these three fundamental drives, the brain also wants to be efficient. This means that as you do something over and over again, it creates a “ neural pathway”. It can be helpful to think of this neural pathway like a highway. Instead of going through all of the steps of completing an action (experience an uncomfortable emotion → desire to create pleasure to buffer against uncomfortable emotion → get up from a sitting position → walk to the kitchen → open the cabinet → grab a box of cookies → open the box of cookies → move one cookie from the box to your mouth → chew → sugar absorbed → chemical pleasure created) which is like taking the side streets, the brain created a quicker path to get the result (experience an uncomfortable emotion → eat cookies → pleasure). The end result was achieved much faster, like taking the highway.

I’m not saying that you have to be a neurologist to figure this out! All I’m pointing out here is how the brain can work against you in your health goals, and how it can become unconscious for you, as if you’re acting against your own will.

There is a silver lining! And that is that we do have power over this process. It just takes a few steps.

Step #1: Awareness 

The first step is to bring awareness to your actions. For those of you who have signed up to my email list, you received a copy of what I call an Action Audit that we will be conducting for one week. Doing an action audit allows you to track and observe all of the behaviors that you do on a daily basis. Unless you truly know what’s going on, you can’t change anything. That’s why this process is so powerful. 

Step #2: Review, Restrict & Research

The next step is to complete a review of your action audit. After doing your action audit for a full week, spend some time reviewing your audit and see what patterns arise. Once you have this awareness, you can put your actions into three categories:

• Actions to continue doing. What behaviors are you doing consistently that are bringing you closer to the realization of your goals?

• Actions to stop doing. What habits or behaviors are you doing consistently that are taking you further from your goals?

• Actions to start doing. What habits or behaviors are you not doing or not doing consistently to get you to your goals?

Once you get to this step in the process, you might be a little overwhelmed. You’ll look at the second and third categories and think that there is just too much to do to actually get you where you want in life.

But this is not the case! The journey of 1000 miles begins with one step. 

It’s important to know that it’s your primitive brain trying to convince you to go back in the cave here. It knows that you’re surviving with what you’re currently doing, so as its way of avoiding pain and possible death, it resists change. And that’s OK.

You will want to do two things here. 

The first is to start to access your higher, or evolved, brain. This part of your brain allows you to override those fundamental drives of your primitive brain. It allows you to reason with yourself and say, ”Even though this change will cause me discomfort in the immediate future, it will allow me greater success in the long-term.” 

The second thing that you want to do is to restrict your focus. This means choosing one thing that you want to change. This could either be creating a new habit, or breaking a current habit. By doing this, you allow your brain to focus on actionable steps instead of being overwhelmed by a mountain of to-dos that will be required to get you to your ultimate goal.

I encourage you to take some time with this process. A good way to look at it is what is the one habit that you could make or break that would make changing all of the other habits easier. Is there one habit that you could focus on that would give you more time? More energy? More mental focus? If one speaks to you, that is the one that you should focus on first. 

This is the time that you will want to spend researching how you would accomplish specific goals. If you want to start running, what are the various methods you could go about doing it? If you want to get more restful sleep, what are some of the recommendations for that? Is there an app that you want to start using to meditate daily?

Step #3: Clarification, Challenges, Commitment  

Once you’ve chosen the habit that you want to work on, next you want to go through the process of creating a SMART Goal to clarify exactly what it is you want to accomplish. A SMART goal is: 

• Specific: What is the specific result you want and how will you do it? 

  • Not specific: I will sleep better.

  • Specific: I will sleep a minimum of 7 hours each night.

• Measurable: How will you measure your success?

  • Not measurable: I want to lose weight.

  • Measurable: I will lose 10 pounds in 6 weeks.

• Achievable: Is your goal realistic and achievable?  

  • Not achievable: Never eat another cookie again. 

  • Achievable: Eat one cookie per week planned 24 hours in advance.

• Relevant: Is your goal connected to your overall objective?

  • Not relevant: Marie Kondo my entire house so that I can start eating healthy and working out.

  • Relevant: Start eating healthy OR working out right now.

• Time-Bound: Is there a deadline that you will complete this goal by?

  • Not time-bound: I will run a half marathon. 

  • Time-bound: I am going to run the half marathon in the Colfax Marathon this spring. 

Once you have your SMART goal created, the next step is to address any challenges or obstacles that may come up AHEAD of time. Get a piece of paper out, and list every possible obstacle that you think could prevent you from achieving your goal. Does your goal require a certain amount of money to achieve? Do you have kids that could disrupt your schedule? Do your work hours vary and change on a dime, throwing off your schedule? Was traffic bad and you got home late and didn't have time to cook the dinner that you prepared? What if you get injured? What if you get sick? Try to think of every possible thing that could go wrong, and then start to think of solutions to get around that challenge. This is a very important part of this process, because if you have anticipated all of the obstacles and have created the solutions before you even get started, you have a path to success.

The next step is to get really clear on your commitment, or your “why” for achieving this goal. This commitment needs to be powerful and compelling. Every time your lower brain tells you to take action (or inaction) that is not in alignment with your goals, you want to be able to call upon your “why”. It doesn’t need to be profound, altruistic or noble. It needs to be personal and compelling for you. You want to experience a sense of determination when you recall it. 

Step #4: Prepare 

The final step before you actually start taking action towards your goal is to prepare. Now that you have your SMART goal, you now need to create a plan of how you will accomplish it and schedule it in your calendar. When you’re putting it into your calendar, make sure you schedule it as results you are going to achieve (not just actions you are going to take). For example, instead of scheduling “Running” for one hour, schedule it as “Run 3 miles”. During this scheduling phase, ensure that you have all of the equipment and resources you will need. Your brain is going to try to act confused here, and try to convince you that you don’t know how to go about accomplishing your goal, how much time things will take, or what resources you are missing. Just don’t listen to it.

Finally, you’ll need to prepare for any of the drama that your brain is going to drum up. You can anticipate some of this ahead of time, but some of it will occur as you’re going through this process, and just know that that’s normal. Here are some of the common issues that I see come up:

• Perfection: The goal with this process isn’t perfection, it’s continually improving and being consistent over time.

• Motivation: There will be times that occur frequently that something’s on your calendar and your brain is not going to want to do it. Just remember, that’s how your primitive brain works. Nothing is going wrong. And still get up and do it anyway at the time you said you were going to.

• Support: You do not need the permission or the support of any other person to accomplish your goals. The only person you need is you. 

• Confusion: This is an indulgent emotion that your brain is offering as a way to get out of doing something. Don’t let it win, trust your intuition and just try something.

All right, here you have my steps for making habit changes. And remember: 

Your health boils down to the small actions you take every day, so make them count…