The Power of Habit

So, whenever I am in class and someone’s smartphone vibrates with a new message, that person must take out his phone and view the message, and if he does not, that’s kind of the end of the world for him. And the reason is that, when the phone vibrates, the brain starts anticipating the momentary distraction that opening that message provides, especially when the class is boring. So, to satisfy that expectation, you find them checking their phones under the table, even though they might know that it’s nothing important there.

In one word it’s called “ Habit”, most of the things that we do every day are habits and we do them unconsciously the way we check our phone whenever it vibrates, Every morning You automatically put toothpaste on your toothbrush before sticking it in your mouth. or Did you pause this morning to decide whether to tie your left or right shoe first? It all often occurs without our permission but can be reshaped. And yes, smoking, drinking or checking your Facebook every 5 minutes are also habits and you can get rid of them or change them once you understand how habits work. Look, a habit consists of three things A cue, which is the trigger for behavior to start, something that kind of gives a sign for the habit to start And then there is routine or the action itself And then there is a reward, its what you get out of habit. Take for example smoking, a cue can be when a smoker sees a pack of cigarettes, now the brain starts anticipating a hit of nicotine, it starts craving for it, If it doesn’t arrive, the craving grows until the smoker reaches, unthinkingly, for it.

And the reward is the satisfaction he gets out of it. Or take an example of Alcoholics, they usually drink whenever they feel stressful or anxious, overwhelmed by problems and the reward they get is the emotional release or the feeling of freedom out of all problems. If you want to get rid of the habit, you must get rid of the cue, which is hard in most of the cases, so instead keep the old cue and the reward but change the action or the routine, So whenever you feel anxious which is the cue, change the routine for example, instead of drinking, talk to someone who is there willing to listen to you and help you emotional to calm down and forget your problems, change the action to something that provides the same reward.

But some people may say that I don’t drink or smoke when I am anxious, I just do it, and that’s the problem, that you have been doing that habit for such a long time that you don’t pay any more attention to what causes it anymore. So if you want to change any habit, you have clearly know what is the cue, what is that trigger is causing the behavior to start. For example, I had this bad habit, whenever I enter my house, I would sit in front of my laptop and the first thing I would do is checking my Facebook, and the problem with that was I would spend 10-15 minutes every time if not 20, And in a while, it became extremely annoying to me since i t wastes a lot of my time, so luckily I came across this book.

I realized that I wasn’t craving to know what people are posting there in Facebook but rather I just was looking for some distraction and I decided that when I sit in front of my laptop, I would check my Facebook through my smartphone which is not really comfortable so I wouldn’t spend more than 2-3 minutes and slowly I just got rid of it. The point here is, I left the old cue and the reward but changed the routine. And that’s how I could get rid of my bad habit. So the rule is: If you use the same cue, and provide the same reward, you can shift the routine and change the habit.