The Habit & the Routine
If you are like the few, some or most out there –there are deviations between the person you are and the person you want to be. There are small details you think you missed and even bigger things you want to achieve. From thinking, planning and executing these things to actually doing them can be complicated to the ones that do not have the self-belief in themselves to plan, do and accomplish. During this time one may think you need to have superpowers to achieve these goals. Powers of consistency, putting more effort than the bare minimum, having real discipline and willpower. For a brief moment in time these efforts can work. Then you find yourself slipping back to what you used to do and be like before you started this journey. In the end, you always seem to fail.
Ever Wonder Why That Is?
With each failure, more and more frustration begins to creep in. With that more and more self-doubt follows those frustrations. The progressives and the WOKE culture will either tell you –you just didn’t want it bad enough and that the failure is on you. Or perhaps that some injustice has fallen upon you and you cannot win even if you had the tools to get you there like a cheat code to give you unlimited tries at it. Like most of that “manifestation talk,” most of it is as useless as an empty water bottle in a desert. Only part of that logic is actually true. While the rest of it is just more progressive talk while actually going backward. Change is HARD… Progression is moving forward, to progress at a thing. Not going backward… While understanding why makes things easier.
Video Games with Save Points.
Imagine your brain is like those ole games. Your brain hates using energy. Every time you do something new it saves it in your brain, that takes energy. At first these are more like rough save points. Only part of your game is saved, only partial details of the game, but the more you do these things and ad to these save points, the more data gets saved in your brain. Over time the save points have more and more data. As you repeat the process, doing the thing or things, over and over for days, weeks, months, years, decades, a lifetime; retrieving the data from these save points becomes more effortless, familiar and comfortable to and for you. The more pronounced your save points, the more you get used to their comfort and ease of access. You continue to use them, which you have always done. This is why change is hard, especially as an adult when your save points are jumbled with corrupted data by lots of similar save points but with all losing attempts. Those are not the ones you want to use. They are just there and you only want to pull from the ones that contribute to accomplishing your goals. To understand how these save points are formed we need to distinguish between two things:
Routines and Habits:
A routine is a sequence of actions that you carry out the same way every time because they’ve worked well for you in the past. Humans are creatures of habit; creatures of routine. We like to have things fit neatly in the places they are supposed to go. However, not all humans are like this naturally. Some are downright the extreme opposite and very rarely play well with others of the opposite end of the spectrum. Routines can eventually turn into habits, which feel more comfortable because they are basically a sequence of actions carried out without thinking about them. You have done them so often that your brain considers them gold. A habit can feel like you’re on autopilot. You do not have to convince or motivate yourself to do something that’s a habit - you just do it. The important thing about habits is that they are set in motion by triggers, context cues that can be single things or entire situations. This can give your brain the signal to start the behavior or action. Like a drag race. You here the buzzer and poof, you’re off to the races.
Habits are executed by an impulse. It responds to your immediate desires, based on what is around you. Without considering any longer-term goals. From the habit’s point of view, the future doesn’t exist and it hates hard work. So when it notices a trigger, it always wants to push you to the path of least resistance to get there. This can lead to that familiar rewarding result you are used to. This rewarding feeling is also how most of your bad habits started as well. This is why you repeat these actions, even if they are bad for you. Rewarding feelings associated with an action demand to be repeated and so a bad habit is born. Outsourcing the boring and repetitive tasks to habits, managed by the routine, allows your brain to easily manage your daily life, while dealing with more complex mental dealings at the same time.
So if we want to change and introduce a new behavior into our lives, we can actually use these energy saving mechanisms to make it easier. Let’s focus on small things, not big ones. Improving your life a little is so much better than aiming high and changing nothing. Small changes can do a lot over time, repetition and analyzing the results. If you want to make change easier, the best way may not be to force it with willpower, or posting whatever new hip idea of the week on your favorite social media platform to post all about it but to convince the mind that it is not that huge a deal. Break up the vagueness of your goals into clear, separate actions, because the idea is to make the action itself as easy an accomplishment as possible.
Make it manageable and specific so that you do not have to think too much about it as you prepare for the work that will be done. Do not forget that a trigger is nothing more than a signal that you always associate with the action. They can be visual, audio, text, places, actions; whatever stimuli it might be that sets you on that path. All of these combined is a great way to have solid triggers. This day and age most people use music or podcasts. Having that specific context will give your triggers meaning to you and your goals. It is the start button on your game of Super Mario Brothers. Once you have your setup for triggers and actions, all you need to do is repeat them. Preferably every day or every other day or time you put work into your goal. If you keep doing this -this will change from a routine to a habit.
Back when I was a personal trainer I would tell clients to get into a good fitness routine I would say; “Eat, Sleep, Train…” There is a forth one that most do not say aloud but is very much associated with this concept. REPEAT. Eat, Sleep, Train, Repeat. Without the Repeat doing Eat, Sleep, Train is worthless.
While this is simple in concept, it is not easy in practicality. Much of what you desire to change into habits do not come with instant gratification as a form of reward. To make your new action easier to repeat and more likely to be picked up as part of your routine, try to make it a pleasurable experience. Not necessarily by a reward after you did said task, but by making the action or behavior itself more enjoyable.
Like only listening to your favorite playlist while doing the work. Ultimately, you need to figure out what works for you. Establishing a new habit varies… It depends on the behavior you are trying to adapt to, what kind of person you are, how much stress interferes with your internal thinking like self-esteem and other things can and will be at play. It takes something like 15 to 250 days until a new habit is set to automatic by the mind. You won’t know how long it will take for you. Planning and starting is the easy part, especially in the first week or two. Repeating, doing it daily and making tweaks to your plan so that your goal is doable is the hard part.
It will get easier as you keep pounding. The science of habits is a reminder that it is possible, no matter your age, gender, color, creed or disability. Your only mini goal for your goal is not to compete with others but just be a little better than you were the last time you did the work. Each time, just think in those terms, that’s still a success. Doing something is always better than doing nothing and if you do nothing, -nothing will ever change. At the end of the day, change is a direction, not a destination. Existence is not static, it is constantly changing and so are you. Be mindful…