How to Build Healthy New Habits

Habits are behaviours repeated so many times that they become automatic. Behaviours are learned. When a behaviour result in rewards, it is repeated, and when a behaviour leads to unpleasant outcomes, it is avoided. These are called behavioural reinforcements, through reward and punishment, respectively

From the viewpoint of behavioural psychology, habits are the result of conditioning, the repeated reinforcement of behaviours.

Habit as Conditioning

I first picked up drinking and smoking when I was 16 years old. There was a part of me that wanted to fit in with my smoker classmates. Another part of me wanted to imitate the “bad boy” image.

The pressure of fitting in reinforced these behaviours by the reassurance of peer acceptance. And the bad-boy image I created in my head added a positive tone to them. Adding to these conditioning factors, the social norms I grew up with painted both behaviours as desirable social currency. I never saw anyone having a bad time doing them until I was much older.

These social and self-image factors are powerful enough to sustain many behaviours. For example, dressing in the latest trend or keeping up with the latest gossip both contribute to fitting in and looking cool. But alcohol and cigarettes also condition us chemically.

Both alcohol and nicotine help ease anxiety, relax our inhibitions, and release dopamine in the brain. The dopamine circuit is an important part of our motivational system and is responsible for the feelings of gratification and pleasure.

Any behaviour that releases dopamine is inherently rewarding and tends to reinforce itself through the reward system in our brain. What distinguishes healthy from unhealthy habits is timeframe.

Healthy habits tend to feature dopamine releases that require effort and healthy effects on our mind and body in the long run. Working out, for instance, releases dopamine just as candy does, but after about 30–60 minutes of sweat. Healthy food can be quite tasty, but not without some knowledge and skills about cooking.

Unhealthy habits, on the other hand, often features instant gratification and quick dosage of dopamine. They also tend to release this pleasure chemical in large amounts. Over the long run, however, unhealthy habits wreak havoc on, well, our health. Because of their easy access and overwhelming effects, unhealthy habits are easier to turn to and often get in the way of good ones.

Habits are formed through repetition of action followed by reward. Without conscious effort, our evolutionary history primes us to value short-term gratification over long-term benefits.

To build new healthy habits, we often need to recondition old unhealthy habits.

In Every Con, Also a Pro

To change unhealthy habits, it is crucial to understand that they have persisted in our lives because they benefit us somehow.

I wrote that smoking and drinking helped me ease anxiety and relax inhibitions. Being anxious and inhibited may lead to behaviours that hinder us in society. For instance, we can be too anxious to take action, or too inhibited to socialize with others. If smoking and drinking help take these away, then they have proven beneficial, at least in the short term.

But more often than not, these short-term benefits do not translate into long-term solutions. And they often come with side effects that are detrimental to our wellbeing.

Unhealthy habits lures us with instant relief and gratification by spiking our dopamine levels. They trade our long-term wellbeing with present happiness or at least the lack of unhappiness.

Most of these habits start off as a way to cope with distress that we haven’t learned how else to deal with. Through different neural mechanisms, these behaviours helped us feel better momentarily without resolving the root issue. So the distress returns, as does these habits.

Realizing that unhealthy habits have something positive to bring is crucially important in the effort to changing it. But once we have identified what the unhealthy habits are trying to protect us from, we can start to learn healthier ways to cope.

For example, perhaps you want to eat healthier, but you’re accustomed to the comfort provided by unhealthy food. Notice how your mood is before and after meals or snacks. If you notice you’re always stressed or tired before eating, for instance, then perhaps eating comfort food helps you decompress. So instead of unhealthy food, try other ways to decompress, such as taking a walk or a nap.

Feelings most commonly associated with unhealthy habits include stress, anxiety, inadequacy, insecurity, frustration, or anger. Try to identify how you feel when you engage in unhealthy habits, and think of a better way you’d like to deal with it.

But as with any new changes, there will be setbacks, and it’s important to plan for it.

Planning for Setbacks

Because habits result from conditioning, they can be quite stubborn.

It is true that people are creatures of habit, and a formed habit tends to stick around even when the situation has changed. In a way, the habit itself is a comfort zone we’re hesitant to leave because it is so familiar and predictable.

As we start to change our habits, the underlying feelings will surface and might feel too much to deal with, as our new habits have not become effective yet. Sometimes when we’re overwhelmed, we can still slip back into old habits, just like when we feel we’re in danger or defeated, we tend to return to our home.

A growth mindset is important. Don’t see the slip as failure, but learning opportunity. Understand how the lip happened and learn from where a wrong step might’ve been taken. Then try to avoid it next time.

Another way to plan for setbacks is to intentionally set ourselves back occasionally. Of course, if the problem involves addiction or trauma, this is a bad idea. But for regular habits, something equivalent of a cheat meal while dieting might be a good idea.

Especially after we have kept up the new habit for a while, sometimes we need to let loose and indulge a little. But it’s important to set limits on these intentional cheats, or else we might go down a slippery slope.

Over time, however, if the new habit is something we can truly enjoy, we might not even miss the hold times.

Expect Slow but Steady Progress

As already mentioned, change doesn’t happen overnight. But we can often be impatient with getting to that place where the old habits are just that — old and in the past. So when we start building new habits, it is for our benefit to keep a realistic expectation for ourselves.

Incremental progress is a lethal weapon. Even if we take two steps forward, one step back, we’re still one step ahead of where we were. So don’t compare to someone else who’s further ahead on the journey, or even to our ideal selves. Compare to yourself yesterday and focus on progress rather than results.

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The last trump card for building new habits is to never give up. Keep going, and one day you’ll have gone further than you’ve realized.

- Bill Yuan, RPQ