Our ability
to change habits is an important part of cultivating a healthy and happy life,
but there are many different factors to consider when trying to change a habit.
One of the
best things to do is identify your habit loops. This means finding the
“cue-routine-reward” that fuels your habits, and then trying to change your
habit by changing the way you respond to cues in your environment, or using
different rewards to reinforce a new course of action.
However,
understanding the structure of your habits won’t always be enough to modify
your behaviors. There is an element of willpower that plays a key role in all
habit change.
Willpower
is the self-discipline to do something even if you don’t have a lot of
motivation to do it.
For
example, those who have strong willpower will be able to resist a slice of cake
or push themselves to go to the gym, while a person with less willpower will
find it more difficult to do these things if they aren’t already used to them.
Recently
there has been a good amount of research on how we can maximize our willpower
when changing habits. Here are the important findings:
• Willpower is a limited resource that needs
to be used wisely. When researchers have participants resist eating a cookie,
they perform worse on a difficult puzzle afterwards. That’s because when we
exercise our willpower at one task, we have less willpower to dedicate to
another task. Therefore, it’s best to only focus on changing one major habit at
a time. If you spread yourself too thin, by trying to change too much about
your life at once, it’s very likely that you will get tired faster and give up
quicker on your goals.
• Willpower
can be strengthened like a muscle. While it’s true that it’s limited, we can
build upon our long-term capacity by actively exercising our willpower more
often. Practice by changing small habits first – like switching soda with
water, or just going out for a walk every morning – and then you can move onto
bigger habits once you strengthen your willpower and motivation. It’s just like
exercising any other muscle. You can’t expect to go into the gym and bench
press 200 lbs, but if you work at it overtime then maybe one day you will. Our
willpower works the same way.
• Believing
you have more willpower makes you push yourself harder. A study published in
Psychological Science found that students could fight off taking a break from
studying simply by having the mindset that they can go longer. When motivating
ourselves to change habits, it’s important to remember that our attitude and
beliefs play a crucial role. If you believe that you can achieve something,
you’re more likely to push yourself and go that extra mile. But when you
believe your willpower is weak, you’re more likely to settle for less.
• Practice
taking a step back. One of the best ways to disconnect from our routines and
change our behavior is to practice a short STOP meditation. This is when we
step back from what we are doing in the moment and reflect on our current
mindset. Willpower requires focus and awareness. If you go about your day
unconsciously, without ever second-guessing yourself, then you aren’t
exercising very much of your willpower and potential.
• Once you
build a new habit, you can concentrate your willpower on other new habits.
Habits are often characterized by the fact that they are routine and automatic.
When you first learned how to tie your shoes, it may have taken a lot of effort
and concentration. Now that you’ve practiced it so many times, it’s
second-nature to you – and therefore it takes practically no willpower or
energy at all. In the same way, once we build a new habit we no longer need as
much willpower to do it, so we can begin focusing that willpower on adopting
new behaviors.
Psychologists
admit that some people are probably born with more willpower than others.
However, it’s good to know that we can improve our willpower in various ways by
exercising it more.
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