How to overcome bad habits
Breaking Bad Habits | NIH News in Health
January 2012
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Why It’s So Hard to Change
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If you know something’s bad for you, why can’t you just stop? About 70% of smokers say they would like to quit. Drug and alcohol abusers struggle to give up addictions that hurt their bodies and tear apart families and friendships. And many of us have unhealthy excess weight that we could lose if only we would eat right and exercise more. So why don’t we do it?
NIH-funded scientists have been searching for answers. They’ve studied what happens in our brains as habits form. They’ve found clues to why bad habits, once established, are so difficult to kick. And they’re developing strategies to help us make the changes we’d like to make.
“Habits play an important role in our health,” says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Understanding the biology of how we develop routines that may be harmful to us, and how to break those routines and embrace new ones, could help us change our lifestyles and adopt healthier behaviors.”
Habits can arise through repetition. They are a normal part of life, and are often helpful. “We wake up every morning, shower, comb our hair or brush our teeth without being aware of it,” Volkow says. We can drive along familiar routes on mental auto-pilot without really thinking about the directions. “When behaviors become automatic, it gives us an advantage, because the brain does not have to use conscious thought to perform the activity,” Volkow says. This frees up our brains to focus on different things.
Habits can also develop when good or enjoyable events trigger the brain’s “reward” centers. This can set up potentially harmful routines, such as overeating, smoking, drug or alcohol abuse, gambling and even compulsive use of computers and social media.
“The general machinery by which we build both kinds of habits are the same, whether it’s a habit for overeating or a habit for getting to work without really thinking about the details,” says Dr.
Russell Poldrack, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Both types of habits are based on the same types of brain mechanisms.
“But there’s one important difference,” Poldrack says. And this difference makes the pleasure-based habits so much harder to break. Enjoyable behaviors can prompt your brain to release a chemical called dopamineA brain chemical that regulates movement, emotion, motivation and pleasure.. “If you do something over and over, and dopamine is there when you’re doing it, that strengthens the habit even more. When you’re not doing those things, dopamine creates the craving to do it again,” Poldrack says. “This explains why some people crave drugs, even if the drug no longer makes them feel particularly good once they take it.”
In a sense, then, parts of our brains are working against us when we try to overcome bad habits. “These routines can become hardwired in our brains,” Volkow says. And the brain’s reward centers keep us craving the things we’re trying so hard to resist.
The good news is, humans are not simply creatures of habit. We have many more brain regions to help us do what’s best for our health.
“Humans are much better than any other animal at changing and orienting our behavior toward long-term goals, or long-term benefits,” says Dr. Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University. His studies on decision-making and willpower have led him to conclude that “self-control is like a muscle. Once you’ve exerted some self-control, like a muscle it gets tired.”
After successfully resisting a temptation, Baumeister’s research shows, willpower can be temporarily drained, which can make it harder to stand firm the next time around. In recent years, though, he’s found evidence that regularly practicing different types of self-control—such as sitting up straight or keeping a food diary—can strengthen your resolve.
“We’ve found that you can improve your self-control by doing exercises over time,” Baumeister says. “Any regular act of self-control will gradually exercise your ‘muscle’ and make you stronger.
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Volkow notes that there’s no single effective way to break bad habits. “It’s not one size fits all,” she says.
One approach is to focus on becoming more aware of your unhealthy habits. Then develop strategies to counteract them. For example, habits can be linked in our minds to certain places and activities. You could develop a plan, say, to avoid walking down the hall where there’s a candy machine. Resolve to avoid going places where you’ve usually smoked. Stay away from friends and situations linked to problem drinking or drug use.
Another helpful technique is to visualize yourself in a tempting situation. “Mentally practice the good behavior over the bad,” Poldrack says. “If you’ll be at a party and want to eat vegetables instead of fattening foods, then mentally visualize yourself doing that. It’s not guaranteed to work, but it certainly can help.”
One way to kick bad habits is to actively replace unhealthy routines with new, healthy ones. Some people find they can replace a bad habit, even drug addiction, with another behavior, like exercising.
“It doesn’t work for everyone,” Volkow says. “But certain groups of patients who have a history of serious addictions can engage in certain behaviors that are ritualistic and in a way compulsive—such as marathon running—and it helps them stay away from drugs. These alternative behaviors can counteract the urges to repeat a behavior to take a drug.”
Another thing that makes habits especially hard to break is that replacing a first-learned habit with a new one doesn’t erase the original behavior. Rather, both remain in your brain. But you can take steps to strengthen the new one and suppress the original one. In ongoing research, Poldrack and his colleagues are using brain imaging to study the differences between first-learned and later-learned behaviors. “We’d like to find a way to train people to improve their ability to maintain these behavioral changes,” Poldrack says.
Some NIH-funded research is exploring whether certain medications can help to disrupt hard-wired automatic behaviors in the brain and make it easier to form new memories and behaviors.
Other scientific teams are searching for genes that might allow some people to easily form and others to readily suppress habits.
Bad habits may be hard to change, but it can be done. Enlist the help of friends, co-workers and family for some extra support.
How to break a bad habit
We all have habits we’d like to get rid of, and every night we give ourselves the same pep talk: I’ll go to bed earlier. I will resist that cookie. I will stop biting my nails. And then tomorrow comes, we cave, and feel worse than bad. We feel defeated and guilty because we know better and still can’t resist.
The cycle is understandable, because the brain doesn’t make changes easily. But breaking an unhealthy habit can be done. It takes intent, a little white-knuckling, and some effective behavior modification techniques. But even before that, it helps to understand what’s happening in our brains, with our motivations, and with our self-talk.
We feel rewarded for certain habits
Good or bad habits are routines, and routines, like showering or driving to work, are automatic and make our lives easier.
"The brain doesn’t have to think too much," say Dr. Stephanie Collier, director of education in the division of geriatric psychology at McLean Hospital, and instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Bad habits are slightly different, but when we try to break a bad one we create dissonance, and the brain doesn’t like that, says Dr. Luana Marques, associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. The limbic system in the brain activates the fight-flight-or-freeze responses, and our reaction is to avoid this "threat" and go back to the old behavior, even though we know it’s not good for us.
Often, habits that don’t benefit us still feel good, since the brain releases dopamine. It does this with anything that helps us as a species to survive, like eating or sex. Avoiding change qualifies as survival, and we get rewarded (albeit temporarily), so we keep reverting every time. "That’s why it’s so hard," Collier says.
Finding the reason why you want to change
But before you try to change a habit, it’s fundamental to identify why you want to change.
When the reason is more personal — you want to be around for your kids; you want to travel more — you have a stronger motivation and a reminder to refer back to during struggles.
After that, you want to figure out your internal and external triggers, and that takes some detective work. When the bad-habit urge hits, ask when, where, and with whom it happens, and how you are feeling, be it sad, lonely, depressed, nervous. It’s a mixing and matching process and different for every person, but if you notice a clue beforehand, you might be able to catch yourself, Collier says.
The next part — and sometimes the harder part — is modifying your behavior. If your weakness is a morning muffin on the way to work, the solution might be to change your route. But environments can’t always be altered, so you want to find a replacement, such as having almonds instead of candy or frozen yogurt in lieu of ice cream. "You don’t have to aim for perfect, but just a little bit healthier," Collier says.
You also want to avoid the all-or-nothing mindset, which leads to quick burnout, and instead take micro-steps toward your goal, Marques says. If you stay up until midnight but want to be in bed at 10, the reasonable progression is: start with 11:45; the next night 11:30; the next 11:15 … It builds success and minimizes avoiding the new habit.
It also helps to remember that urges follow a cycle. They’re initially intense, then wane, and usually go away in about 20 minutes. Collier suggests to set a timer and focus on "just getting through that."
In that waiting period, seeking new sensations can provide useful distraction. You can go outside and feel the wind and smell the air. You can do something physical. Collier also likes using hot and cold. In the extreme, it’s submerging your face into a bowl of water, which can slow down your heart rate. But it could also be holding an ice cube or taking a hot shower. "You’re focused on the sensation and not the urge," she says.
Accept that success isn’t a straight line
As you try to change, there will be bumps and setbacks, which are part of the process of lasting change. The problem is that we’re our own worst critics, and some people view anything except total success as complete failure.
Marques says to try to take a third-person perspective and think about how you’d react to a friend who said that having one bag of chips had ruined their whole diet. You’d be kind and reassuring, not critical, so give yourself the same treatment. A lot of the struggle with self-criticism is not seeing thoughts as facts, but merely thoughts. It takes practice, but it’s the same idea as with meditation. You treat what comes into your head as clouds, acknowledging them and letting them roll on through. "Everyone has distorted thoughts all the time," Marques says. "It’s what you do with them."
It also helps to reduce stress and minimize that sense of failure to know that the goal isn’t to make the old habit disappear, because it won’t.
You’re just trying to strengthen the new routine so eventually it takes over, and the old habit isn’t even a thought. But it’s a constant process, made easier with self-compassion, because there’s no way to prepare for every situation or be able to predict when and where a trigger might happen.
"You can’t prepare for life," Collier says. "Life is going to throw things at you."
Five ways to get rid of bad habits
Stories
Stories
Daria Sidorova
Editor of the History Department.
Darya Sidorova
Getting rid of a bad habit is very difficult: when we perform the same action for a long time, it becomes automatic.
However, there are ways to get rid of harmful behavior and start living a healthier lifestyle.
Daria Sidorova
Brain research shows that people often unconsciously follow bad habits. Therefore, a person may not notice how he reaches for junk food, lights another cigarette, or spends too much time on social networks.
However, the power of the brain can be used to your advantage to get rid of old bad habits and develop new ones. Here are some tips to keep in mind.
Recognize the habit and take control of it
The first step in getting rid of a bad habit is to recognize the problem. To do this, you need to analyze and visualize habit data. This will help increase awareness and take control of the habit.
For example, if you want to quit smoking, try to create a special table and mark each cigarette smoked daily.
This will make the extent of the bad habit more visible. This will help to gradually reduce the number of cigarettes smoked and eventually completely get rid of this habit.
Replace a bad habit with a good one
It will be easier to get rid of an unwanted habit if you replace it with a good alternative. One of the world's leading experts on habit formation, James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits, argues that habits determine personality. For example, after quitting smoking, you can start doing evening jogging. Running will send a message to your brain that you are leading a healthy lifestyle, which means you should not smoke.
Add new activities to your routine
Forming a new habit is difficult. To make the process easier, you can add a new activity to your routine.
To stop looking at negative news and social media in the morning, you can try meditation.
This new habit can be supplemented with a morning cup of coffee - sit in silence with a hot drink and meditate for a few minutes.
Change the environment around you
The environment also largely determines habits. To change behavior, you need to eliminate the temptations around you.
If you want to stop eating junk food, remove sweets, chips and cookies from the kitchen table and replace them with a bowl of fruit. It will also be useful to hang in a conspicuous place - a desktop, computer or mirror - notes with inspirational phrases or a list with desired goals. So the environment will charge you with positive energy and inspire you to achieve your goals.
Gain support and work towards responsibility
The support of others is a very important factor in starting a healthier life. Share your new goal with loved ones. Perhaps they will support you not only morally: for example, they will make a morning run with you. This will be an additional incentive for the formation of a useful habit: you will become responsible not only to yourself, but also to your partner.
Source.
Cover photo: Valeria Aksakova / Shutterstock
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7 steps to help you get rid of bad habits
July 27, 2020 Motivation
Shyness, stubbornness, self-sacrifice and foolish pride are the same bad habits as smoking and alcoholism.
Say goodbye to them.
1. Overthrow your inner critic
The very first step to get rid of bad habits is very simple: you need to forgive yourself for your imperfection. Our inner critic very often does not even let us budge, putting us on the needle of guilt.
So, make a list of everything that you are not perfect at: greed, jealousy, inability to speak well or be friendly. All your bad habits, from picking your nose and grumbling at your dog, to the ones that really hurt your loved ones.
Now try to hear the critic's inner voice that says you're not good enough at something. It can sound like this: “You will never lose weight and die a 50-year-old virgin”, “Why will you never finish your project”, “You will never learn anything and will not succeed.”
Do not regret spending ten minutes, even if it is not very pleasant. You need to get it all out. And when you're done, tear up the list. It will get easier.
2. Prepare yourself for a long journey
Remember that breaking bad habits is not a 100m race, it's a marathon.
There are many theories about how long it takes to develop a new habit. The optimal period is three months, so be prepared for the next three months to be difficult.
You will have a couple of hard days, but they will pass. And very soon you will begin to experience pleasant feelings of pride and self-respect from following your regimen.
There is a very good technique called "Living one day". Its essence is simple: if you want to break out of your regime, then tell yourself: "Okay, I'll do it, but tomorrow." And the next day, repeat the same phrase to your brain. This constant procrastination can easily drag on for several months, and it will be enough for you to develop a new good habit.
3. Reward yourself
Prepare yourself for mid-way treats. For example, give yourself a present every two weeks. It might sound like, "If I fit into these jeans, then I'll give myself a new pair of cool sneakers." The brain is highly motivated by these kinds of rewards.
4. Avoid triggers
There are special triggers that activate the mechanisms of destructive behavior and bad habits. For example, if you have a problem with alcohol, then it is better not to go to bars at all and not even go to the shelves with alcohol in the supermarket. If you are depressed or make impulse purchases, don't shop.
To reduce the impact of these triggers, you can create an "if-then" safety phrase for yourself. An example of a defensive phrase would be "If I see a bar, I'll cross the street" or "If I feel like eating a donut, I'll eat some carrots."
The brain needs to know how to act if you are suddenly drawn to something "criminal".
5. Clean up the list of "accomplices"
In the fight against bad habits, you should seriously consider reducing the list of your "accomplices".
"Accomplices" are those people who call for a smoke during breaks or try to prove to us that "nobody has died from one glass yet." In some cases, "accomplices" are those who provoke us into aggressive behavior.
For example, you have decided to get rid of such a bad habit as touchiness. And first of all, they decided to stop being offended by their husband. But you have a girlfriend who says: “He didn’t give you a bouquet of flowers on your birthday? He's just a bastard!" In this case, she is a prime example of an "accomplice".
In such cases, you need to take a sheet of paper and objectively write what are the advantages of stopping communication with "accomplices". On one side of the scale will be your future without bad habits, and on the other - just one (not always pleasant) person. Get rid of it.
6. Ask for help
To be honest, few relatives have a sufficient degree of wisdom to take a proper part in our getting rid of bad habits. This is very easy to check.
If you told your relative that you were going to, for example, stop drinking alcohol, then he may react in different ways.
The best version of his reaction is: “Great, how can I help you with this?”. Worst case: “Quit drinking? Have you fallen from an oak tree? Then everything is bad, but we hope this is not about your relatives.
Most likely, your relatives will react like this: "Mmm, I see." But they need to turn into their allies and ask for help. For example, like this: “I decided to lose weight here, therefore, mom, don’t cook pies and pancakes anymore. Or if you will cook, it is better in the morning. Give all relatives clear instructions on what to do if you suddenly decide to break loose.
7. Don't lose your resolve
We all make mistakes, we all fall down from time to time. If this happens to you, then do not reproach yourself excessively. Moreover, get ready for falls, because this is inevitable.
Working on yourself every day, you become better. If you stumble and stop dieting, abandoning gymnastics or mindfulness, everything that you have achieved so far will not be lost.
