Breaking bad habits can feel impossible, and building good habits can seem just as hard. In this video, I show you how understanding your brain and the habit loop can help you take control of your behaviors and create routines that stick. You will learn how to identify triggers, adjust your routines, and reward yourself in ways that reinforce positive habits. Over time, these small changes compound into meaningful transformation.
In this video, you will learn:
How the habit loop forms your behaviors
Identifying cues, routines, and rewards
Replacing bad habits with positive ones
How consistency builds lasting habits
Tricks to reinforce good habits effectively
Bad habits can feel impossible to break and good habits can sometimes feel extremely difficult to develop. Now, in this video, I'm going to be sharing with you how to break bad habits and how to develop better ones. And all this boils down to is understanding your own brain and that habits are this concept called the habit loop, which involves three things. Your cue and then the routine and then the reward. When you understand these three things in a habit loop, then that helps you to humanize and take a step back and understand how habits are formed and why they're so hard to break.
Now in these three parts of the habit loop, the cue is the trigger. That is the thing that gets you to move into action to do the thing. Maybe you're at work and you're feeling overwhelmed. So that's the cue. And then the routine is maybe you overeat, snack on foods that maybe you don't want to snack on. And then the reward is that you get this temporary moment of satisfaction.
The cue where your social media notification pings you on your phone and then the routine is that you go and open your phone, scroll on social media, and then you end up doom scrolling for an hour and then you just like, and be like, wow, what did I just do? And where did my time go? And then in that moment you get rewarded because you get that dopamine hit and it gets you that temporary satisfaction. But in the long run, you didn't actually want that habit to occur.
Now on the flip side, you can also use this habit loop to your advantage. So let's say you want to start developing the habit of running. What you can do is you can set up your gym clothes to place them on your bedside table. And then that could be the cue when you wake up to see that. And then the routine would be to put on that clothes and then start to go for your run. And the reward is the endorphins that you feel after that run. And then you could also maybe treat yourself to a smoothie and reward yourself for that good feeling of exercising.
So what you're basically doing is creating a pattern recognition that reinforces the loops that you want and then replacing or displacing the bad habits that you don't want. And these things usually take time. And there's a wide range of different information out there that says it could take up to 254 days or as short as eighteen days to develop a habit, but it really just comes down to consistency and self-awareness when you're able to keep consistently and then noticing that you're doing it and keep with it.
Five short emails on what's actually keeping the loop alive. The mechanism, not the motivation. Free.
Start the ResetAnd then over time, once you... so the reason why you develop habits is because your brain creates shortcuts to do things that you already do all the time. And that's what creates habits. So that is also why it's hard to break certain habits because you can fall into those things because you've become so used to doing them.
So what you have to do in all of these situations when you want to break a habit is to interrupt your habit. And I hope that it's a positive habit that you develop.
So my name is Dexter. I'm a mindset coach. I talk about self-awareness and purposeful living. Please don't forget to drop a like and subscribe if you like this information. And I hope you have a wonderful day. Bye bye.
Sincerely,
Dexter Lam
The habit loop is the three part mechanism behind every habit: a cue, a routine, and a reward. The cue triggers you, the routine is the behavior itself, and the reward is the payoff your brain gets. Once you understand these three parts, you can step back and see exactly why habits form and why they're so hard to break.
Your brain creates shortcuts for things you do all the time. That's the whole mechanism. Repetition tells your brain a behavior is worth automating, so it stops requiring conscious effort. That's efficient, but it's also why bad habits stick: you've become so used to running the loop that you fall into it without noticing.
You interrupt the loop. First, identify your cue, the trigger that sets the routine in motion. Then notice the routine and the reward it's giving you. Once you can see the pattern, you can displace the bad habit by replacing the routine with something you actually want. Awareness comes first, then the swap.
The cue is the trigger that moves you into action. It might be feeling overwhelmed at work, which cues snacking, or a social media notification, which cues an hour of scrolling. Cues often fire without you noticing, which is why habits feel automatic. Spotting your cues is the first step to changing any habit.
The research varies widely, anywhere from eighteen days up to 254 days depending on the person and the habit. So don't fixate on a magic number. What actually matters is consistency and self awareness: keep repeating the behavior, notice when you drift, and keep with it. The timeline takes care of itself.
Absolutely, that's the flip side. Say you want to start running. Place your gym clothes on your bedside table: that's your cue when you wake up. The routine is putting them on and heading out. The reward is the endorphins afterward, plus maybe a smoothie. You're designing the same loop your brain already uses, just pointed somewhere better.
Because it's a complete habit loop. The notification is the cue, opening the app and scrolling is the routine, and the dopamine hit is the reward. Your brain gets temporary satisfaction even though you lose an hour and wonder where your time went. To break it, interrupt the loop at the cue, before the routine starts.
Keep the structure, change the contents. You're creating pattern recognition that reinforces the loops you want while displacing the ones you don't. Identify the cue and reward of the bad habit, then slot in a routine that serves you and still gives your brain a payoff. It takes time, so expect repetition, not instant change.
It's half the equation. Consistency builds the habit, but self awareness is what lets you notice you're running an old loop in the first place. When you catch yourself mid pattern, you create the chance to interrupt it. Without that awareness, the shortcut your brain built just runs automatically, and you wonder why nothing changes.
The reward is what teaches your brain the loop is worth repeating. Even bad habits deliver one, usually a quick hit of temporary satisfaction. That's why willpower alone rarely works: you're fighting your brain's reinforcement system. Instead, attach a genuine reward to the habit you want, so the loop reinforces itself in your favor.
