One of your earliest habits formed might be brushing your teeth. It became so ingrained into your brain that it just became autopilot for you. Now I can’t get into bed at night without brushing my teeth. If I do my brain sends nagging signals of you are forgetting something, you have to do this, etc. Our brain likes it when something becomes so regular and consistent it can count on it. It becomes wired in as a pattern.

Merriam Webster defines a habit as a usual manner of behavior. It also defines it as an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary; or an addiction.

So when you think about it in those ways our habits can be broken into good or bad habits and/or addictions. I never have really looked at brushing teeth as a good addiction but I guess it is. Habits are either our usual behavior or behavior that has been acquired to become a habit.

So that get’s me thinking about the things in my life that have become habits. I have a habit of biting my nails. I have a habit of writing this blog. I have a habit of after dropping my kids off at school listening to a podcast for my drive back home. I have the habit of drinking water all day. I have this habit of looking at all forms of social media and my email, just to check and see if anyone needs me.

There are some habits that I don’t like and are trying to change.

There are some habits that I am wanting and are trying to form.

So understanding how habits form both good and bad may be helpful to you.

Let’s break it down.

There is typically a cue-then an urge- where you take action- and then you get a reward

So think about it from a habit I like. Monday morning 9am my schedule says write blog which is my cue. I then have an urge to get writing. From there I turn off all notifications and get totally focused on writing and take the action of writing for almost an hour. Then when the blog is done I am not only rewarded with some dopamine but my brain is cued into “Do that again, we like this feeling.” A pattern is started. Once I do that week after week after week, it becomes involuntary and if I am not sitting down to write the blog on Monday mornings, my brain thinks something is wrong.

Now when we are first starting out trying to create habits there are quite a few obstacles in the way. I knew I wanted this to be a habit but for a few weeks I would jump around which day and time I was writing and I had a lot of push back from distractions and other things coming up that it was hard to create this pattern in my brain. I wasn’t allowing for the cue, urge, action, and reward. I knew I wanted the reward of my brain wanting to do this, but at first I didn’t know how to create that. But this process can create what you are wanting. Focus on a cue-urge-action-reward. Believe that you can create this habit and then run this pattern over and over.

You can do this with any habit you are wanting to form.

• Cue: Alarm clock goes off

• Urge: the thought, “I want to get up and spend time with the Lord”

• Action: Get out of bed and find a spot that you go to repetitively and spend time with God

• Reward: Dopamine hit and the thought, “I want that again.”

Make this a pattern by doing it over and over… and make sure to really enjoy the dopamine hit!

But looking at bad habits from this angle can be very insightful as well.

A bad habit I created was eating a sweet treat every night.

• Cue: Kids in bed

• Urge: thoughts, “I need a treat, I deserve a treat, I have to have a treat”

• Action: Ice cream, or cookie, or some sweet treat

• Reward: Dopamine hit and the thought, “I want that again.”

And then I did it again and again reinforcing it until it became an involuntary habit.

Little did I know that the same thought patterns were going on and the more I reinforced the urge by giving into the action I was reinforcing the pattern. So each and every time the kids would go to bed, the urge would come up which was every night! My habit was going strong. So to try and break the habit I had to break this pattern. I had to have the cue happen, the urge come up and then not give into the action. Just feel the feelings of the urge. This my friend is how to stop the pattern.

So what do you do with this knowledge.

Look at your life. Ask yourself what habits have you formed, good and bad? Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t think you can’t change. Decide if you want to do what you are doing. Do you like the habits and want them in your life? Do you want to add some habits into your life? And from there decide that the habits you don’t want you can quit. The habits you do want you can form. You now take this cue-urge-action-and reward and walk it out. Either implementing it, or breaking it down.

I was just talking to a client the other night about how I never eat treats or anything after dinner now. I eat dinner and then that is it. I don’t even think about it. I have no cues that trigger any urges. And if I can do that, believe me, you can!

Here’s to making and breaking habits!

Angie