"Already, I'm off my diet,
skipped exercise class, snacked on chips, and picked up dinner at a fast food
restaurant," she groaned.
How can the best intentions, the
stoutest resolutions, and the firmest convictions fall so quickly by the
wayside? Are we simply weak and self-sabotaging?
Why is it so hard to form healthy
habits especially when we know as busy professional women that a successful
health plan depends on adopting healthy habits and good intentions.
Is there anything we can do to make
the healthy changes and develop the healthy habits we so desire?
Yes!
By understanding what a habit is and
how it forms.
What is a habit?
A habit is something that you do
often or regularly.
What you may not know is how these
habits form in the brain.
How are habits formed?
In 2012, Charles Duhigg published The
Power of Habit. In it, he explores the neuroscience behind why we do what we
do.
What Neuroscientists have discovered
is:
· Our habit-making behaviors trace to
a part of the brain called the basal ganglia.
· Our decision-making process traces
to the prefrontal cortex.
Two separate parts of the brain.
The basal ganglia, near the center of
your skull, are where emotions, memories, and pattern recognition develop. From
an evolutionary perspective, it is one of the oldest parts of our brain.
The prefrontal cortex, the area right
behind your forehead, is where thought originates. From an evolutionary
perspective, it is one of the newest parts of our brain.
Neurologically what happens is that
most behavior originates in the prefrontal cortex as thought. Then, as a
behavior becomes a habit, it moves into the basal ganglia where it is
automated.
Now that you know what's happening in
the brain, it's time to introduce you to the 'habit loop.'
Introducing the habit loop.
The habit loop is a neurological loop
that governs any habit. It consists of three components:
· Cue
· Routine
· Reward
Understanding these components is
what helps busy professional women change unhealthy habits into healthy ones.
Let's examine each part of the habit
loop:
1. Cue.
There's a cue or trigger that tells
your brain to go into automatic mode and let a behavior unfold. It is the
stimulus or experience that starts the habit loop.
Example from The Power of Habit:
There's a woman who can't stop biting her nails even though it causes her much
pain and embarrassment. When asked by a therapist when or why she starts biting
she describes a tingling sensation in her fingertips. This sensation is the
cue.
The first step in changing a habit is
to become aware of the cue.
2. Routine.
This is the behavior itself that we
think of as the habit.
Example from The Power of Habit: When
the woman who bites her nails gets bored and feels a tingling in her fingertips
her old behavior was to start rubbing her fingertips feeling for bumps or
edges. When she found one, she would chew on it and then, on autopilot, proceed
to chew every nail on her hand until her nails were completely smooth or
completely removed.
The second step in changing a habit
is to reprogram the unhealthy habit to do something that is healthier.
When the woman felt the tingling
sensation come on (cue), she replaced nail-biting with rubbing her fingers on
her arm or table.
This simple change from biting her
nails to rubbing her fingertips on another surface was all it took to create a
new neural pathway in her brain.
3. Reward
This is something that your brain
likes that helps it remember and encode the new habit loop in the future.
Example from The Power of Habit:
After a week of not biting her nails, she rewarded herself with a manicure.
The third step in changing a habit is
to reward your new healthy habit.
"It seems ridiculously simple,
but once you're aware of how your habit works, once you recognize the cues and
rewards, you're halfway to changing it. It seems like it should be more
complex. The truth is the brain can be reprogrammed. You just have to be
deliberate about it." According to behavioral modification researcher Dr.
Nathan Azrin.
Still, a nagging question remains,
why do people return to their unhealthy habits?
It's because of the basal ganglia. It
stores memories. Therefore, the neural pathways don't get erased. They remain.
That's why you hear people say,
"Whoops, I forgot and slipped back into my old habits."
5 Tips for Success
The best way for busy professional
women to change an unhealthy habit is to replace it with a new one. That way
your brain creates new neural pathways allowing you to use those habits.
Here are five success factors that
will help your new habits stick.
1. If you want to make healthy habits
stick, you have to love your habits. And you do that by first loving yourself.
2. When you decide to change a habit,
make sure you choose your daily thoughts and activities from a place of love,
not self-criticism.
It's so easy to get down on yourself
for slipping back into neurological pathways that are unhealthy. Remember,
change is a process. Take it one step at a time. Nurture yourself along the
way, and healthy habits will soon be automatic.
3. Keep focused on the positive
results you want.
Changing a habit requires replacing
the old routine with a new one. Sometimes this feels awkward because there are
uncomfortable steps to take when choosing new actions that develop into habits
that serve you better. Stay focused.
4. You will experience a delightful
sensation when you reward yourself each time you make a healthy choice. This is
how your neurology learns to encode a new pattern for the future.
This rush of joy will entice you to
choose the health habits again and again. And you'll start to see healthy
results.
5. When you love your habits, your
new habits will bring your desired results. Your desired results will,
therefore, come from your place of love.
Audrey Hepburn said it best:
"The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes because that is the
doorway to her heart, the place where love resides."
When it comes to making healthy
habits stick, it takes more than stout resolutions and firm convictions. To
create a new habit that leads to a successful health plan, you'll need to know
how habits form in the brain. You need to know about the habit loop. Read about
how it works, what causes us to slip back into unhealthy habits, and discover
five tips for success.
Nicole Dennison is a Certified
Holistic Health Consultant providing education, guidance, and mentoring
primarily to women ready to holistically heal their body and emotions. If
making healthy habits stick so you can live a successful, vibrant life is
important to you, visit: http://www.nicoledennison.com.
Sign up for my FREE video course, "Three Days to Your Vibrant
Health."
What I would add to this to make even more effective is introduce good habits / changes / behaviors in small doses.
What do I mean by that?
Quite simply as a coach if I were to completely overhaul your diet, fitness routine and your other habits in one go and told you that is how you have to live, you may well find that you can do this for a week or so.
Then what will happen is that you will go to the bad habits simply because they gave you comfort and you would get instant gratification.
The approach that has had the best benefit to those that I coach is each week they start to introduce a good habit or take away a bad habit. Once they found that this was achievable, and more importantly, was of benefit to them, they continued to do.
After 3 months of doing this, they have had a complete overhaul of their habits and now live high performance lives!
No comments:
Post a Comment