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What Are Habits?

No one was born with low self-esteem, no one was born with an eating disorder and no one was born biting their nails, stressed or with a tendency to procrastinate. All habits are behaviours we have learned and practised so often that they have become second nature. And because they are part of our second nature, and not our first, we are closer to our true selves without them. We only feel that they are a part of us because we have practised them for so long and are conditioned to have them. We often end up feeling that they are who we are. They are not.

One of the most important results you can bring into the world is the you that you really want to be.
Robert Fritz

Like many of the other essential skills we learn as we grow, such as talking, eating and walking, habits are behaviours learned by watching others and copying them because these habits appear to make others look good and/or feel good. The motivation to learn is no different: we believe we are smoking/eating more/compulsively cleaning/procrastinating in our own best interests – to make ourselves happy. So we practise these behaviours, believing that they will not only make us feel better about, but also think better of, ourselves, and help to make a reality of the person we think we would like to be.

We first make our habits and then our habits make us.
John Dryden

A Positive Intention

Through our work with people who wish to break habits, we have come to believe that behind all behaviour is a positive intention. The brain only ever suggests a behaviour it thinks is the best and most effective way of making us feel better, and it has learned what makes us feel better or more comfortable from our behaviour in the past.

Because we are fast learners, habits develop and become fixed very quickly. Take smoking, for example. We watch people smoking and because it looks cool we think it is an appropriate and useful way to behave. We are driven to do it, even though it is hard and it hurts. How many people enjoy their first cigarette? Yet they go through the pain of smoking in order to be like other people. The association of smoking with cool is learned and becomes hard-wired in our brains so that smoking equals cool.

People do not have habits for the sake of it. Their brain suggests to them what it thinks is best or what in the past might have alleviated some discomfort or seemed attractive. So whenever we feel discomfort, the brain kicks in to relieve us by suggesting what by past repetition it has been taught makes us feel better, even when we know it no longer works.

In the 1940s, behavioural psychologist B F Skinner built two mazes, one for rats and another for a group of graduates. As an incentive to find the centre he placed in the middle of the first some chocolate and in the second some $10 bills. The rats and graduates ran around the mazes until they found the reward. When the chocolate was removed from the first maze, the rats no longer showed any interest in finding the centre of the maze. The graduates, however, would still run through the maze in search of the middle, even when they knew there was no longer any money there. The habit, once established, continued even when the reason for doing it had been removed.

Pete writes: When I was young we had a pet dog, and of course I got used to having it around. I would see it all the time and it would come whenever I called out its name. Even though the dog died almost a decade ago, whenever I visit my parents I still expect him to be there, running to greet me. This demonstrates conditioned behaviour; the pattern is similar to the way in which many habits develop and are sustained. Even though we try to break them, the brain keeps on suggesting them. Because we have spent so much time doing them, the brain persists in urging us that familiar behaviours are still best.

What about other behaviours? Well, when some people are in a room full of strangers feeling uncomfortable, for example, their brain may suggest smoking because that is what has habitually made them feel more at ease. Although some of those who are fat want to lose weight, their brain still suggests food when they feel uncomfortable, because eating has for many years always made them feel better. Others may find biting their nails brings comfort when they feel uncomfortable or find themselves in an awkward situation. Because the behaviour has worked before to alleviate discomfort in each of these hypothetical situations, the brain has learned to see it as a solution and suggests it whenever any feelings of discomfort arise. The behaviour becomes a habit.

At the time we begin to cultivate a habit, we are merely obeying the brain's tendency to make us behave in a way that it believes is best for us. Think about this: if eating a sweet takes your attention away from the pain of falling over often enough when you are young, the brain can become conditioned to suggest eating something sweet whenever we experience discomfort.

We go on practising whichever habit it is we have learned to the point where we are so good at it that we don't really have to think about it any more. So skilled do we become at putting things off, biting our nails or feeling stressed or guilty that we fail to realize these behaviours no longer serve even a perceived useful purpose. We get to the stage where we are merely going through the motions of a behaviour out of no more than habit. Some of us still enjoy our habits, although not always the feeling we're left with afterwards.

During the Second World War, a number of Japanese garrisons were sent to occupy and guard little islands in the Pacific. They were instructed to shoot at invaders or enemies of Japan. With no radio contact, they refused to accept, even long after the fact, that the war was over. Every day they continued to don their uniforms, clean their weapons and wait for 'enemy' ships to pass, and they would shoot at them. A number of these garrisons were still being found well into the 1970s – discovered because they were shooting at fishing boats. Instead of rushing in to instruct the soldiers to stop fighting, a former sergeant in the Japanese army, wearing his old uniform, was sent to the island. He thanked the men and, after speaking to them at length, informed them that the war was over. Their conditioned behaviour could now be replaced by actions and experiences more in keeping with the outside world.

This story illustrates well how humans behave. We act in ways that are no longer useful, continuing because we have no way of knowing that we have a choice about how to behave. But we have.

People's minds are like parachutes – they only function when they are open.
Leanne Hastie

Ask yourself this: do you think you have a choice when deciding whether or not to accept your brain's instructions?

You have, and you are not limited to doing what you have always done in the past.

With the will to change and an openness to change comes the realization that your choices are limitless.

The most powerful thing you can do to change the world, is to change your own beliefs about the nature of life, people, reality, to something more
positive . . . and begin to act accordingly.
Shakti Gawain, Creative Visualization

Like the approach used by the sergeant in the story, this book is here to coach, support and hold your hand as you make positive changes. It is not going to get cross or impatient with you, nor laugh at or bully you into making changes. We understand what you need to do and the process you need to go through. We are not going to tell you that you have to change or should change. All we are saying is that you can change. The choice is entirely up to you.

Time for Something New

What happens when you become so good at something, whether it is a hobby or a way of carrying out your work, that it ceases to hold your interest or drive your motivation?

Most people look for a new challenge.

Well, seeing as you are now so good at your habit, the challenge could be to find something else which you can become just as skilled at.

So many people do not even realize that this choice is available to them.

Whose Fault?

It has been suggested that, unlike many of the other creatures who inhabit the Earth, the human race is still evolving. A cockroach has always been a cockroach, but over many thousands of years humans have evolved into what we are today. We are the newest species on the planet. Do you think we are also the most intelligent? Think about what we are particularly good at: evolving, surviving, inventing, destroying, criticizing, inflicting pain, hating, killing. Perhaps we are not as intelligent as we like to think.

The ways in which we learn contribute to this apparent lack of greater human intelligence. As babies and children we absorb almost everything that happens around us, soaking up everything like a sponge. We have no specific mechanism with which to filter the incoming information; we just watch and learn particular behaviours without knowing at the time which are useful and which not.

Copyright © Pete Cohen and Sten Cummins 2002