Building and Breaking Habits — An Essential Guide
By: Jazz Parks
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Productivity, Life, Inspiration

Building and Breaking Habits — An Essential Guide

“Depending on what they are, our habits will either make or break us. We become what we repeatedly do” — Sean Covey

Theirs a wide assortment of books and resources available on habits, yet, even then, the best information tends to be convoluted and full of fluff. How can we break old habits? What are some of the most rewarding habits of highly successful people? What one habit (if adopted and applied) has the power to change your life forever? These are the questions I’ll be answering as you read on.

What’s A Habit?

Habits are unconscious behaviors, which can be looked at as neural bridges in the brain. When habits are repeated, the neural bridge extends and solidifies, reinforcing that habit. However, when you consciously decide to stop a certain habit or behavior, eventually, the related neural bridge decays, making room for new bridges to be built.

Understanding how habits work is essential when it comes to building and breaking them. Remembering to brush your teeth, drink plenty of water, flush the toilet after using it, and eat a hearty breakfast are all common habits that we all — hopefully — remember to do on a day to day basis. Yet, these are common habits, and I’m not here to teach you how to adopt common habits. I want you to build huge, life-changing habits. Ironically enough, the big habits, like exercising three times a week or writing two hours a day, are the ones that require small steps.

Start Small

When working on a new habit, it’s important to approach it in small steps. If someone wants to lose twenty pounds, they might make it a goal to run a mile per day for the next six months. The first day might go by alright. Fueled by a passion for achieving your goal, you get dressed, strap on your running shoes, and run the mile. You’ll be fine for a while, but as days turn into weeks, with little results to show, your effort and overall motivation diminishes. You see, good habits, generally speaking, don’t bring immediate rewards. Reading thirty minutes a day will make you more educated in the long run, but you’ll rarely notice any immediate benefits. Smoking a cigarette brings immediate satisfaction but destroys your health in the long run.

Good habits don’t always feel great at the moment. In contrast, bad habits usually bring immediate satisfaction but have consequences in the future, which is why so many of us struggle with breaking old habits and applying new ones. So start small. Instead of setting a goal to run a mile a day, start by choosing to walk a few blocks instead. Instead of reading for thirty minutes every day, start with a few pages. Writing two hours every day might seem impossible to the amateur writer, so instead, set a timer for five minutes each morning. First, you solidify the habit, starting small, before adding gradual improvements.

Make Gradual Improvements

When I first started writing on Medium, it took me a while to build a consistent writing habit. I tried to write at least an hour a day but found myself cutting it short or skipping days altogether. My motivation dwindled within weeks, ideas ran dry, and my stats came to a grinding halt. The problem was the process. Every morning, I’d pour a cup of coffee, sit at any location of my choosing, and I’d attempt to write for at least an hour. I had it set in my mind that writing was the habit, but in fact, the process that led up to my writing was what I should have been focusing on.

We often misunderstand the actual habit itself, believing that the mile ran or the hour writing is the habit, but in reality, the process leading up to the hour spent writing or mile ran is the habit. Now, I have a specific location for my writing — my desk — and I set a timer, determining exactly how long I’ll write. To start, I would only set a timer for five minutes and force myself to stop when the timer ended. After a few days, I bumped the timer up to fifteen minutes, and now, within a matter of weeks, I can proudly claim that I write at least an hour every day. Start small, solidify the habit, and then you can work on making gradual improvements.

Habit Stacking

In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear suggests a technique he calls habit stacking. Whenever you want to work on building a new habit, try stacking it with another. Brushing your teeth and flossing is a great example. If you want to start taking multivitamins but are likely to forget, leave the bottle next to your toothbrush, making you more likely to remember. If you want to read before bed but often forget, try leaving a book on your pillow after making your bed. To clarify, habit stacking usually ends with the term after:

after making my bed, I’ll put a book on my pillow

after brushing my teeth, I’ll floss

after I floss, I’ll take my multivitamins

after I read, I’ll write in my journal

Start small, make gradual improvements, and try stacking habits with one another.

Breaking Habits

We’ve discussed how to build and gradually improve good habits, so now it’s time we discuss how to break bad habits. Smoking, procrastination, excessive masturbation, etc., are all common habits that, if left unchecked, can destroy your chances at future success in life. So what can you do?

Practice Delayed Gratification

In the beginning, we discussed how habits could be seen as neural bridges in the brain and, if left alone, eventually disintegrate, leaving room for new neural bridges (habits) to be built and improved. When a cue occurs — a trigger or a craving— try putting as much time as possible between said cue and said habit. By doing so, eventually, the cravings will reduce in intensity and, in some cases, stop altogether.

Swap Habits

Besides practicing delayed gratification, you could also try replacing an old habit with a new one. Some people choose to switch cigarettes for vapes, though this isn’t a great example, as they’re both bad habits, yet it’s surprising how effective the switch can be. Cigarette smokers can go years addicted to cigarettes but find the switch to vaping easy because the process (habit) is the same. To replace a habit, identify the cue, keep the process, but change the last step.

“Replacing just a few key negative habits with a few positive habits can easily be the difference between being mostly unhappy and being happy almost all of the time” — Tynan

Control Your Environment

Your environment has more control over your habits than you could imagine. If you want to read more, but find yourself playing video-games whenever bored, try putting your controller somewhere out of reach and place a book on the coffee table in front of you, making you more likely to pick up the book the next time around. If you want to eat healthier, try stashing all the junk food and snacks high in fats and sugars, and place a fruit bowl somewhere visible in the kitchen.