Forming New Habits: Step-by-Step Guide

Overworked and exhausted, around the early afternoon, we begin to lose our magic powers. We stop being so responsive. Our decision-making skills diminish. Critical thinking becomes not so critical. We gravitate towards easy and fun – tend to avoid everything that requires effort and discipline.

As creatures with limited capacity, many of us can relate to the feeling of losing our ability to function properly. This can vary from expansive burnout to simply entering a state of uncontrolled consumption – scrolling through all major social media accounts while marathoning Netflix and impulsively ordering items from the never-ending online catalog.

Is there a way out of this periodic lack of discipline?

There is. The answer is acquiring new habits. Good habits. Healthy routines.

These have the power to stop us from loss of emotional regulation. Plus, subscribe us to a gym membership we are eager to exploit.

There’s a lot of chatter in the world in relation to habits.

What are habits? Why habits are good? What are the best habits? What are the worst habits? How many days does it take to form a habit? How many days does it take to break a habit?

There is little information about how one should go about embedding one new habit into his already busy life.

In this installment, we talk about new habits. And more specifically, I propose a framework. Guide on how a person should approach adding one new positive behavior into his life.

But first, the basics…

How Are Habits Formed?

The American Psychological Association defines habit formation as “the process by which, through repetition or conditioning, animals or humans acquire a behavior that becomes regular and increasingly easy to perform.” Though correct, I’m not sure this definition captures the nuances associated with the process of acquiring habits.

Yes, repetition leads to a behavior that is automatically triggered and executed. But “increasingly easy to perform”? That’s not entirely true.

Though I am an early riser and I train right after my head divorces the soft pillow for the night. I can’t say that I easily perform the exercises for the day. Sometimes, I just don’t want to obey the habits that by now should have become automatic – and I’ve been doing this routine for more than 3 years.

Why is that?

The answer is that there are different kinds of habits.

In 1911, Henri Bergson – who was a famous French philosopher. Categorized habits as active and passive.

Active habits refer to the routines we consciously add to our lives. Those behavior patterns we work intentionally to develop. For example, you set a goal to participate in a marathon which results in adding a portfolio of habits to help you endure the challenge.

Passive habits are different. They arise from our exposure to life. They can be good or bad. Quite often, sadly, they are bad. Like an unfortunate side effect of living in a particular city or being friends with a particular group of people. Meaning that we tend to adopt the behavior of others. To make things even worse, we have a natural tendency to adopt behaviors that are easy and fun – things like smoking, drinking, gambling, playing video games for hours, obsessing about how many likes you got because everyone else seems so interested in the topic.

As you can sense, passive habits are things that work under the hood – sort to speak. We don’t see them. Well, we do. But we don’t perceive them as something that needs changing.

We’ve always smoked, for example. Or, we’ve always gone to the bar on Friday night and made a dent in the floor after collapsing from drinking a whole bottle of cognac.

At some point, the passive habits become so natural to us that we can’t imagine ourselves not doing them.

Conversely, active habits are behavior patterns we work to keep. You make active efforts to keep exercising or to keep not eating sugary things, for example.

The more we do what we do, the harder it becomes to dissociate ourselves from a certain nasty routine. But on the bright side, it becomes easier to practice the hard-to-practice habits.

Why?

That’s something neuroscience can explain.

Neuroscience of New Habits

Have you ever asked yourself, how a particular set of actions becomes so effortless for the body?

For instance, transitioning from someone who can barely produce a tune on the piano to someone who can play a symphony?

When we are young, everything feels hard and foreign.

I remember when I was around the age of 5. My mom was trying to teach me how to tie my shoes, and I can vividly recall how she was failing. Back then, it seemed so hard to take two independent woven bands and combine them into something whole. A couple of months after my mom nearly gave up on me, I was tying my shoes while rambling nonstop about my action figure toys. Meaning, that I’ve mastered shoe-tying. (Not something you can put on your resume, but definitely something nice to have in your portfolio of skills.)

1. Dr. Woodruff, Alan. What is a neuron? The University of Queensland. On the web: https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain/brain-anatomy/what-neuron
2. Dupre, Katie. Arnold Schwarzenegger Advised a Teen on How to Avoid a Mundane Life. Men’s Health blog. On the web: https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a37179099/arnold-schwarzenegger-advice-happiness-vision/
3. This framework is also known as identity-based habits
4. DePaul, Kristi. What Does It Really Take to Build a New Habit? Harvard Business Review. On the web: https://hbr.org/2021/02/what-does-it-really-take-to-build-a-new-habit
5. Grosz, Elizabeth. (2013). Habit Today: Ravaisson, Bergson, Deleuze and Us. Body & Society. On the web: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258127055_Habit_Today_Ravaisson_Bergson_Deleuze_and_Us