Changing Habits to make our life Better?
Did you know that our brain goes in auto mode more than 80% of the time? In fact, there is a very simple reason for this, to use “energy” efficiently.
When our brain goes in auto mode, we don’t have to think about every step while we do something like tying our shoes.
The auto mode is run by our Habits, habits change everything in life. To begin we need to learn the Thinking Process of our Brain.
The 2 modes of Thinking!
These two thinking modes are used for different kinds of activities.
The “Focus Thinking Mode” is used to learn new subjects, by first understanding the subject and storing it in our memory. Techniques such as “Pomodoro” and “Recall” are available to use the Focused mode effectively.
The “Diffuse Thinking Mode” is activated when we do an effortless activity such as walking, showering, resting or tying our shoes. This thinking mode helps us to be more Creative and to think about a problem with a Broader Perpective.
Salvador Dalí, the famous painter often used the “Diffuse Thinking Mode” to be more creative! To force this mode of thinking, he started to take a nap on a chair, with his arms hanging across the chair and a key ring in one hand, then when Salvador fell asleep, his hands relaxed, as soon as the key ring fell off the sound of it woke him up! Immediately afterwards, Salvador ran to his Canvas and expressed his art.
So you’ve guessed it, to learn habits we need to use the “Focus Mode” again and again to strengthen the connections in our brain. And once that’s done, while we are doing the habit the brain goes “Diffuse Mode”.
This is an introduction about the two thinking mode with the brain. If you are in a hurry you can go see this coursera lesson “Learning How to Learn”.
How to recognize an Habit?
To learn how to create or change habits, we need to recognize them and see the pattern. There is 4 elements to this pattern: the Cue, the Craving, the Response and finally the Reward. Let’s take a simple example!
You go to the kitchen to drink some water, you open the fridge and you see what’s left of a chocolate cake (That’s the Cue), you take your bottle of water and close the fridge.
But! (Because there is a but) Now you know there’s a chocolate cake in the fridge that turns on your “Craving”. A few minutes later, you feel like eating something (Oh that’s surprising…) and you go to the fridge (That’s the Response) to make the chocolate cake disappear. It feels good for a moment (That’s the Reward), the problem is that in the long run it won’t and Habits Play the Long Run game.
So How to win Against our Habits?
To counter habits or create new ones, Motivation is not Enough because it fades awaye after a short time and we are playing the long run game remember! That’s why we need to change our environment to add “Friction” when we want to counter bad habits and remove “Friction” when we want to create good habits.
The word “Friction” is carefully chosen because there is a very good comparison. When a movement is performed and there is “Friction”, the movement Loses Energy, the more “Friction” there is the less energy is left. The less “Friction” the more energy is retained. I know you are getting it!
Let’s rewind what happened with the chocolate cake and consider it’s a bad habit that we need to removed, remember to remove progressively an Habit we need to add “Friction”. In our case, “The Cue” is the chocolate cake and when we see it, we begin “craving”. So we need to add “Friction” by making it harder to see the chocolate cake and make it more difficult to get, by adding steps in the process of getting it.
If the chocolate cake was wrapped in aluminum, in a box, which is in a drawer of the fridge, when we want to take the bottle of water, we don’t see the chocolate cake!
Moreover, if we haven’t seen the chocolate cake but we are for example in the living room thinking about eating some chocolate cake, we won’t cause of our Lazy Asses.
To eat the chocolate cake, we need to get up, go to the kitchen, open the fridge, open the drawer, remove the aluminum, take the cake, cut a portion and here we go again to store it ! You see the “Friction” all this thinking happens while you are on the living room sofa, conclusion: too much work for a little cake.
Most of the time, our habits exist because we do a lot of Impulsive Choices.
Now that we know how to use “Friction” to win against our habits, we need to Find meaning to create or change an habit like smoking for example.
How to find a purpose?
This one is a bit tricky because where you find meaning in life is very unique and depends on you. To explain why finding a purpose is important we will take a famous example, loosing weight!
The problem here occurs once you reach the “Tipping Point” because you no longer have more Goals to reach. However, by choosing correctly your “Why” you won’t have that “tipping point” problem.
If you want to learn more about how habits work you can read “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” by Charles Duhigg.
What’s really interesting here!
Once you know how habits work and how to make processes to create or change them, you can now learn new things more easily!
But there’s a catch, habits are only a part of being a continuous learner. In the next article, we’ll see what the learning process of our brain is.
Let’s end with a fun fact.
The brain is the only thing that named itself.
