Have you noticed how easily you whip out your smartphone to start scrolling or fiddling around even when you don’t have any specific task that you want to accomplish with it? And there are so many reasons why we do this. Maybe you’re bored. Or tired. Or when you’ve just sat down with nothing else to do.
You may not even notice what you’re doing. It has become an automatic and unconscious behavior for many of us. This smartphone habit is one of the many that most of us have developed over the years.
Last month, when one of the participants in my Emotional Intelligence course for project managers asked a question, it triggered something else in my mind about habits and how they’re so difficult to change once formed.
While many of us have developed good habits that are helpful to us, rarely would anyone disagree that they have one or two that are not so helpful. The interesting thing is that even when we are aware of what our bad habits are, we still find it hard to change them.
Why is this the case?
We may know those behaviors are not in our best interests. Still, we just can’t help ourselves but engage in them. In many instances, we know exactly what we need to stop doing. We just seem powerless to do so.
One thing most of us have failed to realize is that habits (even the bad ones) tend to serve a purpose in our lives. A habit is formed when you consistently meet an important need with a chosen behavior. Choosing that behavior each time the need presents itself is what leads to a habit being formed.
Once formed, the behavior is no longer a choice. It’s now done automatically without your conscious awareness. Our brain does this in order to free up brain power for the more important stuff. Studies have shown that habits form almost half of our daily actions.
The unfortunate thing is that we continue to engage in them even when these habits are not serving our best interests. More often than not, we delay or prevent our own success in life with some of these harmful habits. In some extreme cases, people engage in habits that eventually kill them.
I have come across people who have formed the habit of reacting negatively to constructive criticism even when it will help them. These people are shunning valuable counsel that could make a difference in their lives.
I’ve seen others who have developed the habit of being disrespectful to people they ought to show respect. They may realize it and feel guilty after they’ve exhibited the disrespectful behavior, but that doesn’t stop them from repeating the exact same behavior the next time the opportunity presents itself.
People could realize that a specific behavior is not helping their cause and then make a decision to change it. In most cases, however, they’re not able to follow through if the behavior has already become habitual.
This particular disconnect between what people say, feel, or believe and their actual behaviors was of interest to researcher Dr. Wendy Wood, a psychologist at the University of Southern California (USC). “I became fascinated by why changing attitudes don’t always lead to a change in behavior,” Wood says. She continued: “One answer is habits - how they keep us persisting in old actions - and how people underestimate the role of habits in their daily lives.”
Dr. Wood, along with her colleagues and students discovered a few reasons why our feelings about a particular behavior may not translate to the changing of said behavior. One of these is the context under which the behavior is performed. One critical context cue they discovered was the location.
Change the location that brings the habits out of you and you’re well on your way to breaking the habit. For example, if I want to break the habit of stopping for coffee at a drive-thru each morning while driving to work, I need to change the location context, i.e. take a different route to work. If sitting on a specific couch in a particular spot of your living room is the context for a habit you're trying to break, sit somewhere else.
The same approach works for starting a new habit. Find a location that will be the context for the new behavior to take root.
Wondering if it’s that easy?
Well, breaking a habit that you want to change is never easy, but this gives you a very strong leg up.