Creating habits isn’t hard, but the right steps are essential!
Have you ever tried to break or creating habits only to get halfway through day one and realize that you completely forgot that you were doing “a new thing”?
That’s because the habit that you are trying to break has become second nature in your subconscious. It is your “default” mode. You have done it so many times that the brain easily goes back to this pattern of behavior
When it comes to creating new habits, the new behavior is new enough that is isn’t imbedded into your brain as a “default” behavior.
The main goal of creating a new habit is to set up a system that enables the new pattern to become so familiar that it is a second nature behavior. It just becomes part of who you are and what you do.
It’s just like driving to work. You’ve done it so many times that your mind most likely drifts off the whole way there. You never gave a second thought to the turns and stops you made along the way…They just happen naturally
Once you understand a little bit of the science behind creating habits they will become so much easier to create.
The key player in your behaviors is a brain chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for motivating you to seek out the things you like so you can get the opioid release. Opioids are chemicals that act on the brain and nervous systems to relieve pain. Dopamine energizes you to work for that enjoyable or painless experience. It causes you to concentrate on it and drives you to seek it out.
The brain wants to repeat things that is finds pleasurable
Once this habit (like ice cream) happens just a few times it becomes enjoyed, ingrained and is the go to pattern for the brain to get it’s pleasure response. The dopamine response is for REAL…it can kick in when you’re thinking about ice cream. It can even fire up when you hear music that reminds you of the ice cream truck when you were a kid or see an advertisement for ice cream on a warm day. This is the stuff cravings are made of. That’s some crazy strong stuff!
This is exactly why it is so important to have a plan when overcoming a bad habit or creating a new one. Now that you know that inside scoop you’ve got this!
The secret to creating new habits is to rewire your brain. It sounds super ninja under-ground-labish but it’s really not.
Here’s how you do it!
Secret #1: Find a strong reason why. Write it down
We really need to find a strong or even an emotional reason why it is so important to us to break this particular habit. We need to have a “why” that is stronger than the pull of the bowl of ice cream. This way, when we see the ice cream advertisement or hear that twinkley ice cream truck music or drive by our favorite soft serve place, we can reflect on the reason we are creating a life without ice cream…or at least less of it. Writing it down seals the deal!
Secret #2: Know this 3 step system for creating new habits
1 – Create a cue or trigger for the new habit OR create a replacement of the habit you are trying to eliminate
2 – Perform the new habit
3 – Celebrate your win….This part is VERY important because this is where we are going to get that dopamine! We are REWIRING the brain to get joy, happiness and satisfaction out of this new behavior. Isn’t that amazing?
Secret Tip #3 – Change only one habit at a time
Studies have shown that trying to change to many habits at once drastically reduces your rate of success in achieving any of the habit changes. Work on one habit at a time, let it become embedded in your subconscious to the point where it becomes second nature and then move on to the next habit. Now, while this seems like it may take along time you actually achieve faster success by tackling only one habit at a time. Check out these stats:
Secret Tip #4 – Have a back up plan
When you are at that back yard BBQ and the ice cream sandwiches come out what will you do? Know your plan ahead of time! DECIDE that you will have some fruit salad instead of the power killing treat. Think about the fact that you have power over food rather than it having power of you! Use that at as your celebration
We often think of habits as things we DO… but really, we create habits in what we think as well and those are VERY powerful. If we constantly tell ourselves that we stink at getting in our workouts every day or we can never stick to clean eating plan well, quite frankly, we will be. We need to learn to rewire our brains. It is essential to rewire our thoughts in order for us to move on because it is a truth that we become what we believe we are.
Rewiring our brains sounds like some kind of weird science but you would be amazed how very simple it is.