Welcome to reThink Your Perspective’s blog. Helping you to unlock your potential, empower your mindset, create productive habits, and boost your motivation.
You can listen to this blog as a Podcast HERE. Which also includes the audio version of the video below.
What are Habits?
Have you ever tried to stop doing something that you have been doing for a while? Be it months, years or forever? A bad habit that you noticed and decided to stop.
It could have been to stop smoking, to stop verbally beating yourself up, stop drinking so much. To stop eating so much junk food, or putting off doing exercise.
But, and I don’t mean this to offend, did you succeed? I am super happy if you did! But the truth is that you were the minority. Most people will fall back into doing that habit at some point down the road.
Why is that?
It is simply because they didn’t replace the bad habit with something else, so their paradigm either created a new bad habit, or pushed them back into the old one.
Don’t fancy reading anymore? Listen to this topic in this video instead!
Paradigms Dictate Your Habits
As discussed in a previous post, paradigms reside in your subconscious mind. They are formed from the beliefs and ideas you are surrounded by as a child and evolve as you grow and test out new ideas. Your paradigms change when you reassess your beliefs and let go of any that no longer serve you.
The subconscious mind can only accept information that you give it from your conscious mind. The conscious mind is where all your sensory information comes in (what you see, hear, smell, taste and touch). As a child this leaves your subconscious wide open to everything and anything going on around you. As you grow, you develop your higher faculties (reason, will, memory, imagination, intuition and perception) which gives you the ability to think.
The more you think, the more you play with ideas in your mind, the more you reassess your beliefs and make changes accordingly. These changes update your paradigms, and it is the same process for changing your habits.
Why Can’t I Just Stop Doing A Bad Habit?
Bad habits, or non-productive actions, are automatically done by your body with input from your subconscious.
When you make a decision to stop doing the bad habit, the paradigms in your subconscious will fight back. This is because your habits and routines are set. They are known and considered safe.
When you try to consciously make a change, the paradigms feel unsafe. They are in unknown territory and they fight to get back to the safe known routines. They have their goal and plan, and they are following, with no care as to whether you are consciously happy or not.
Let me give you an example.
You really enjoy sweet treats, biscuits, cakes and drinking sugary drinks. But you wake up one day and your favourite pair of jeans no longer fit comfortably. You have put on a bit more weight than you thought. So you make the decision to lose weight, and to do this you set up a simple exercise and meal plan based on some research.
You feel really good about this, you have the image in your mind of you exercising, eating healthy, losing weight and fitting back into those jeans. And for the first few days it is going really well! You feel great, you have avoided all temptation and are feeling really proud.
Unbeknownst to you, your paradigm has noticed that you have changed your routine. That evening chocolate bar or cake treat hasn’t been consumed and it notices that you have started to lose weight…
Your Paradigm Is Like The Autopilot On A Plane
We are cybernetic organisms, and as such we have a self-image and a destination that is programmed. In this example, the self-image is of someone at a certain weight who eats a certain way. By changing the way you are eating and starting to lose weight, you have caused the program to move off course. So, like an autopilot, the paradigm’s job is to put you back on course.
So it starts to produce strong cravings. It heightens your senses to every sweet treat, biscuit, cake and treat in your immediate surroundings and makes you crave them. The more you say no, the more your body craves, and the more chemicals are released in the brain that make you feel horrible. In the same way that an addict suffers when they have not had their fix for a few days.
Your body responds with shaking, sweats, yearning, and just generally making you feel awful until you give in. And you will eventually give in. You are fighting your paradigm with will power alone and even though the images of the thinner you fitting in your jeans are strong, they will eventually pale in the face of your paradigm…
So How Do I Win This Fight And Stop The Habit?
You must create a new habit to replace the old one. This approach means that your paradigm won’t notice because it is still receiving the reward it seeks.
James Clear in his book Atomic Habits, states that all habits have the same four stages:
- Cue
- Craving
- Response
- Reward
In this case of trying to shift eating habits, the cue is seeing a certain type of food (sweets, biscuits, cakes…). Your body then craves these foods because it remembers how great they make you feel and it wants that. Your body responds by eating the foods, and you are given two rewards. The first is the taste of the food, the second is the happy chemicals released by your brain for responding and following through with your craving.
In order to change this habit, you need to replace the craving and response sections, but still receive the same level of reward.
You have to find something that gives you the same happy chemical release without the calories and sugar.
This could be a number of different things, and they are all dependent on the individual. It is worth pointing out that adults are just big children. We can be bribed and manipulated with our want of a certain thing, but we also have a greater control over what that certain thing is.
The best place to start is with your self-image.
What Has Self-Image Got To Do With Habits?
Your paradigm defines your self-image. It is how you see yourself. In this example of weight loss, you have made the decision to lose weight because you see yourself as overweight. If you continue to see yourself as overweight then it doesn’t matter how much weight you lose, you will put it back on.
To keep the weight off, you have to change your self-image. Build the image of the body you want in your mind and focus on it. Surround yourself with pictures of the body you want and look at them often, imagining that you are in that body. This repetition will slowly trickle into your subconscious and update your paradigm’s image of your body.
Remember, your body is just an instrument of the mind. If you continuously see yourself as fat, you will be fat. If you see yourself in the body you want, you will achieve it.
This is the reason I have no mirrors in my house! What I see in my mind and the mirror don’t match currently. So I remove the reflection and focus on my mind’s image of me. And so far I have lost 5kg over 6months without changing the way I eat very drastically.
What Else Can I do To Stop My Habit?
Once your image is clear on what you want, in this case your ideal body, you support it by treating yourself as a child.
Set up rewards, that you decide on, that you only receive if you hit your calorie goal for a whole week, or when you have lost a certain amount, or when you don’t eat the things your body is craving. This approach is why the “Cheat day” mentality works. Because you know you will be getting everything you could possibly want on your cheat day, it is easier to not divulge on the other days.
You can also support your new habit building by making changes in your environment. If you want to stop eating biscuits, make sure there are no biscuits in your house. Replace them with fruit or a healthier alternative. If it is a new fitness regime you want to start, set out your fitness clothes, shoes, yoga mat, equipment the night before so everything is ready to go when you get up. Less effort means more chance of you doing it!
The last thing I want to mention is to get good at making decisions in advance. Spend time each evening or morning making decisions for your day. These can include “I will not eat the cakes that will be in the staffroom at work today because I am having a hot chocolate this evening while watching that program I want to watch”. Or “I will make my coffee at home this morning and take it with me instead of stopping at the coffee shop on the way to work”.
By making these decisions in advance, you will find it easier to make them when they come up later in the day.
More Tips For Building New Habits
Stay tuned for some further tips and tricks on how to succeed with your new habits. But remember, you have to first notice your bad habits / non-productive actions before you can change them!
If this resonates with you then please share your thoughts below or get in touch today. Either here or through any of my social medias or schedule a call to discuss it with me directly.
I look forward to hearing from you!
To your success.
Jaiye
