- Learning about habits is an integral part of the empowerment process. It’s important to know ways to integrate good habits or extinguish bad habits.
- Do something simple and achievable every day until it becomes automatic. Repetition of action causes habits to form. Even after conscious motivation decreases, once a habit is formed, less focus, conscious motivation, and effort are needed, which makes the habit far more likely to continue. This is why habits are useful—we’re able to use less mental energy because they become automatic.
- Start out small, so you won’t be discouraged. Gradually build up to bigger tasks and goals.
- When looking to create a habit, choose an easy context cue (e.g., after breakfast, when you finish reading a book, etc.).
- You must determine your own goals so you have more agency and investment in them.
- A behavior can reach a peak and plateau if you don’t set a new goal to strive for. To re-engage your motivation, you need to continually step it up.
- When considering habits, you need to assess and consider intrinsic and external motivators. Intrinsic motivation comes purely from within; it’s not due to any anticipated reward, deadline, or outside pressure.[ii] Extrinsic motivation can increase motivation in the short term, but over time, it can wear you down or even backfire. It’s also generally non-sustaining (e.g., deciding to lose weight because your daughter’s wedding is slowly approaching).
- Especially until your behavior reaches automaticity, forming habits requires you to have awareness, a willingness to be uncomfortable, and self-control.
- Understand that more complex behaviors take longer to form automaticity than easier behaviors.
- For all tasks, especially harder ones, it’s possible to achieve a great degree of automaticity. However, circumstances will require more of your willingness for discomfort, self-control, self-regulation, and effort, especially when you’re feeling particularly emotionally vulnerable, you don’t feel grounded or physically well, and/or you’re directly triggered in some way.
- The purpose of rewards is to satisfy our cravings and to teach us which actions are worth remembering. As we go through life, our sensory nervous system is continuously monitoring which actions satisfy our desires and deliver pleasure. For good habits, this substantiates the need to consistently return and reinforce the rewards, which help you to create and sustain the habit. For bad habits, understanding your habit loop and the pleasurable sensations it evokes can help you extinguish habits that don’t serve you well.
Cadet Talha
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