Break Bad Habits & Build Better Ones Using the Habit Loop

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.

And 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