What Habits Would You Like to Break Before Things Go Back to “Normal”?

 We’re in our fifth month of coronavirus now, and nothing is the same. In fact, if you Google “the new normal” you will get over two billion results—that’s right, with a “b”! People are preparing for lasting changes.

Now is a good time to check in before things get too far out of control. All indications are that many societal changes will be sticking with us for the foreseeable future, so it’s important to assess where we are personally and where we want to be. What are the “good” habits that have fallen by the wayside? What are the “bad” habits that have appeared during the quarantine?

Back in March, when you still had some hope that the quarantine would only last a couple of weeks, you may have figured that you would work out again when the gym re-opened. Now it hardly matters how fit you are when everything you wear has an elastic waistband and no one sees your bottom half anyway!

Remember when you had to drive home from work, change clothes, and go to the gym before it was time to kick back? Now you can go for a run in the middle of the day and at 5:01 be cracking open that bottle of chardonnay. And now you find yourself a frequent visitor to the BevMo pick-up line…

Here's a 5-Step Plan to make your habits work for you instead of against you!

1.Mindfulness

Habit controls much of what we do, think, and feel all day long. Now, when the days blend so easily into one another, it is easy to spend much of our time on autopilot. It takes an extra effort to bring our awareness to the current moment when our moments tend to be so similar.

Mindfulness meditation has been shown to reduce stress and improve mood; it’s hard to find a reason not to develop a mindfulness practice! If you have trouble sitting still long enough to meditate, you can still develop a practice of mindfulness by picking one regularly recurring activity (e.g. brushing your teeth, making coffee in the morning, washing the dishes) and practicing keeping your mind focused directly on the sensations of that activity. If your mind wanders- just bring it back to the activity again. The more your mind wanders, the more you get to practice returning to mindfulness!

Many people get frustrated when, in a 15 or 20 minute mindfulness meditation, they catch their mind wandering over 100 times! That’s actually good news, though! You want to practice the habit of bringing your mind back to the present. You want to build those neural pathways so they become second nature. Eventually you will catch your mind wandering all throughout the day and bring it back to the present moment. Mindfulness isn’t about what happens in the meditation, it’s about what happens all throughout the day!

Building a mindfulness practice will make all of the subsequent steps much easier, so keep up with your meditation or your mindful activity throughout your period of habit change. If you struggle to stick to your mindfulness practice, then maybe this is the first habit you want to try to build!

2.Build Awareness

Keep a journal or a note on your phone where you track whatever habit you are trying to change. Studies have shown that just tracking your habits will make a significant difference in your ability to change them. Your mindfulness practice will also help you build awareness, of course!

3.The Habit Loop

Cue—Routine—Reward. This is the pattern for all of our habits, both negative and positive. Ultimately you want to experience the stimulus, have a different action, and experience the same reward. It’s simple, but not easy! The trick is to be extremely clear on exactly what the stimulus is, and what the reward is. If you don’t pinpoint these correctly, you won’t be able to change the habit.

Cue

First pinpoint if your cue is based on time, location, a feeling, a preceding event, or another person.

In your habit journal, each time you start the habit, record the time, the location, the feeling, what happened just before, and what people were involved.

After a week or so, look at your journal to see which stimulus is constant. If you feel the craving to eat a doughnut every morning at around 10, no matter what else in the scenario is different, then the time is the trigger. If you start thinking about happy hour whenever the kids start yelling at each other, then that’s the preceding event that triggers the craving.

Reward

Now determine what the reward is for this habit. You can do this by experimenting with different routines that deliver different rewards.

Is your reward for the doughnut the energy that comes from the sugar rush? Is it the break you get from work when you stop to go to the kitchen? Is it the connection you get with your partner who is working on the kitchen table? Is it the game you play on your phone while you are eating the doughnut?

Try eating something different that will also deliver the sugar rush, like a glass of orange juice or a banana. Try taking a break to read the news. Try talking to a friend, or taking a short break with your partner in the living room. Try playing the game on your phone from your desk or a room other than the kitchen. Notice which one of these alternative behaviors is satisfying; that will tell you which reward is important to you.

How do you know if it’s satisfying?

Each time after you test a new behavior, immediately jot down the first three things that come into your head. Then set an alarm for 15 minutes later. When the alarm rings, note down whether or not you still have the original craving. Later you can assess patterns- the 3 words will help you remember your state of mind, and the existence or absence of the craving will tell you if you got the reward already.

4.Your New Habit

We know that it is extremely difficult to eliminate a habit; that it is much easier to replace it with another, more desired habit instead. Once you have all your information, you can create a new habit that will give you the desired reward.

5.One Last Thing–Plan for Trouble!

Studies show that if you brainstorm possible obstacles, and then create a plan to overcome them should they arise, you are significantly more likely to be successful.

Note: The habit loop is a well-known concept in psychology, but for a much more detailed explanation, see the very excellent book, The Power of Habit.

Emotional Habits

Did you know you can have emotional and cognitive habits as well as behavioral habits? In fact, you most certainly do have these as well!

Do you slam on the brakes every time you see a traffic cop? That’s a behavioral habit. Do you feel fear or panic at the same time? That’s an emotional habit. Sometimes you will be able to keep yourself from slamming on the brakes, but your heart still races and your hands still sweat and you feel a momentary panic. Behavioral habits are often much easier to resolve than emotional habits.

Do you get upset every time that new guy doesn’t text you back right away? That’s an emotional habit. It could be based on the cognitive habit of believing that someone else won’t be interested in you.

Do you get anxious whenever you can’t think of something interesting to say in your Zoom meeting? That could be a cognitive habit of thinking that people will assume you are not smart. Which leads to an emotional habit of feeling bad about yourself.

Cognitive and emotional habits are hard to break. Sometimes they are even hard to recognize! If you have the same argument with your partner over and over again, you are probably locked in a behavioral habit (arguing) that is based on a cognitive habit (they will never change! They don’t hear what I am saying! I’m not important to them!) which leads to an emotional habit (frustration!! Anger! Sadness).

Therapy can be very helpful in identifying and changing your emotional habits, as well as your cognitive and behavioral habits. If your habits are based on very early experiences, Attachment-focused EMDR can help you process those memories and free yourself from old ingrained patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Click here to learn more about other ways of getting unstuck from unhealthy patterns or click here to learn about how to change that unhealthy relationship dynamic.

 How Can I Help You?

If you’d like to learn how therapy can help you break free from bad habits and create healthy ones that support you in building a life you love, then call or email me for your free consultation. If I can’t help you, I am happy to find someone who is in your area or will be a better fit. I want you to get the support you need to start building healthy habits right away!