Structure of Habits

Structure of Habits

Individuals are different, so are their habits, while we need to change any behavior or habit, one rule is not applicable to all. Identifying and changing the patterns in one’s life vary from person to person. When we talk about certain habits, then we need to understand that giving up one habit does not demand the same amount of energy as another. For example, giving up cigarettes is not exactly the same as overcoming the habit of overeating.

Similarly, changing your communication with your partner and working on it is different from prioritizing your tasks at work. What’s more, each person’s habits are driven by different cravings. When we do something that results in some pleasure or reward, we find our hearts inclined to do that again. Repeating this over and over again creates a new habit.

Structure of Habits

Many habits are created not by us but by our circumstances and others’ contributions. However, we can consciously design habits and nurture them. That’s what character building and nurturing personality are about. Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision-making, but they’re not.

They’re habits. The habit cycle is present at the core of every habit, and it also explains that why habits exist and how they work. The habit cycle is composed of three basic steps. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode. Cues are of two types: internal or external cues.

Emotional Habits

Emotional Habits

The internal cue could be any feeling such as sadness, happiness, or thought. While external cues include any factor outside your body, such as time, place, person, or any event, such as any celebration, birthday party, or New Year, etc. The second part of the habit cycle is the routine, the behavior that leads to the reward.

The routine can be physical (eating a burger), cognitive (“remember for the test”), or emotional (“I always feel anxious in math class”). The third part is the reward, it could be in any form, such as having some tangible things or physical such as chocolate or favorite food, at a cognitive level such as having positive thoughts or developing an interest or at an emotional level, such as feeling happy or relax.

The reward is an actual determinant of the habit loop and if the reward is not strong enough then the habit cycle would not repeat itself and thus habit would not develop. Rewards are powerful because they satisfying cravings. But we’re often not conscious of the cravings that drive our behaviors. Different rewards could help us to understand that which particular habit is being by which particular craving. It might take some time, but it’s worth trying for longer and better results.

Be a scientist and do experiment with yourself and when you try different rewards, consider it as the data collection stage which ultimately would lead to real change. Those people who drink alcohol, keep on repeating that action not to get intoxicated instead they like the reward instead such as relief from work stress, reduction in anxiety, enhances confidence and decrease their social anxiety, etc. these are stronger rewards and thus their habit loop had greater chances to repeat itself.

Habits

The habits are stored at the small region of the brain, known as basal ganglia and it is situated at the base of the forebrain. Scientists revealed that as the behavior becomes habitual, the mental activity in this part of the brain started reducing. When a habit emerges, the brain takes less energy and thus becomes more efficient in doing that task, as neuropathways become more clear and automatic. This stresses that understanding how habits work-or, understanding the habit cycle makes them easier to control. By changing the cue or the reward in a habit cycle, you can change the pattern of behavior.

Habit could not last long, only on basis of cue and reward. Instead, there is a need to trigger a routine and that routine should develop the desire to have that reward. When the brain started anticipating the reward or starting craving for reward, only then patterns started becoming automatic, and thus habit last longer. That’s why, even if you’re not hungry, once you see a plate of sandwiches it’s so easy to automatically pick one up. When we need to change any habit, an important thing to understand is the structure through which the habit was developed. If we keep the cue and reward as it is and change the routine in the habit cycle, we can develop a new habit.

It is not an easy task to do and changing the behaviors is a difficult task to do, depending on the strength of habit. After identifying the habit loop, we have everything to develop a new habit, the reward, and the triggers, and also the routine you follow, so by changing the routine you can bring a shift in your habit. To develop a good habit, you can select a trigger, initially by planning it, then adopt a behavior you want to do and then link it to some reward, that you are craving for and by repeating it, you will ultimately develop a habit, which initially would take time and energy but once it developed you will keep on doing without putting much effort. We can say that habit is put another way, a habit is a certain recipe which our brain follows, such as one having a trigger, and it follows a certain routine and thus ultimately achieve the reward. To re-engineer that procedure, we need to begin making choices again and that can be done by having a better plan, these plans are known to be “implementation plans” in psychology. Changing some habits is comparatively difficult than others but this is a structure that we can use and get started over again. Sometimes change takes a long time. Sometimes it requires repeated experiments and failures. Thus it is concluded that after identifying the cues, your routine, and the reward you can understand how your habit operates and how you can change it.