Habits Don’t Exist

I've been looking at habits in a new way.

Ok, let's start with why habits are a beautiful testament to how well we are made.

But for our innate ability to form habits, we would find life a lot more cumbersome. The fact that common behaviours become wired in as automatic unconscious loops in our brain, is good news.

It means we don't have to learn the same thing over and over again, and instead can quickly move into action on things we've done before. It means that without a lot of effort or thinking on our part, we brush our teeth, ride bikes and walk around.

This is the main purpose and magic of habits!

Where habits become an issue, at least in our minds, is when we've deemed a habit as not helpful.  We then decide we need to break our "bad" habits, and replace them with new ones.

Simple, but in my experience (and perhaps in yours as well), not so easy to do.

Which brings us to some questions.

Do habits actually exist?

Or are they simply the result of our mind focusing in on certain past behaviours, while ignoring other past behaviours that don’t fit its search criteria? 

In other words, when I say that I have a habit of eating when stressed, am I simply focusing on the times that this was true, and ignoring all the times it wasn’t? Is it possible that there have been many more times when I’ve been stressed and NOT eaten, and yet still conclude that I have a habit of eating when stressed?

The answer for me is a resounding hell yes!

Now let’s say I have a habit of eating potato chips after dinner and I decide to keep track of this. At the end of the month, I notice that whenever I’m home, I eat potato chips after dinner. I could say I have a habit, mostly because my mind has the ability to carry images from the past into the present moment, but why is this problematic?

Let’s say because I want to loose weight and my eating potato chips is keeping me from that goal. Again without my mind holding this goal in my mind as a concept, there is no issue because life would simply be happening, and I would be whatever weight I am, and all would be fine.

Are you beginning to see that habits, good habits and bad habits, can only exist as constructs in our mind?

Further to this, without engaging in the endless mind chatter about “my habits”, I would be much less inclined to eat potato chips after dinner, because doing so is much more a reflection of being lost in our busy minds and the struggle between something we don’t want long term, and something we think we really want right now.

so, if all habits happen in the past, do they actually exist in the present?

Can my struggle with habits exist without a judgement of the past or a prediction for the future. The more I look in this direction, the more I recognize that habits are a testament to our minds’ bias toward pattern recognition, rather than a true reflection of reality.

And even if habits did exist, are our categorizations of good and bad valid? 

Why do we deem a habit as good? Because we believe it’s leading us somewhere good? How do we know?

Is it good because we feel better when we do it? And if this is the case, do we feel good as a result of the action, or our thinking about the action? 

Is a bad habit leading us somewhere undesired? Is it 100% certain that it’s leading us there? 

And even if it is, does categorizing it as bad help us or hinder us? Does it lead to joy and peace (antidotes to doing unwanted actions), or blame and shame (fodder for unwanted behaviour)?

I hope you’re beginning to see that this is a bit more complex than we might think. Complex, only because it’s different than how we normally think about habits.

In reality it’s quite simple. Habits don’t exist. They only exist as a construct in our minds and seeing this in our own lives, starts to change how we approach behaviour and change.

Which brings us to our next area of exploration.

If a habit is the brain's way to make it easy to do something over and over again, how do we modify that cycle? 

There are several books that are packed with helpful tips to make it difficult to do what comes naturally, and make it easy to do what requires effort.  

These strategies work, sometimes, and for just long enough that when we revert back to the comfort of our old habits, it means something about our lack of willpower and motivation, and not a reflection on the strategy we deployed.

Which brings me to:

Is there an effortless way to approach habits that has nothing to do with willpower or motivation?

I believe YES!

Let’s look at attention.

Habits are hard to break because the way we go about trying to break them is to place more attention on them, rather than less.

This is similar to thinking the way to stop a fire is to continue to add wood to the flames. The truth is, we still may be able to put out the fire, but it's going to take a lot more effort.  And, it's a lot easier to simply not add wood to a fire we don’t want to continue burning. 

“Attention is the air we give habits.”*

By keeping habits on our mind, we give the habit power, which then requires willpower to break. We inevitably get tired and revert back to the action that is easy. Then we give ourselves shit for not having enough willpower, which takes up even more energy, and so we go to bed feeling exhausted and crappy about ourselves!

(is that just me or does this sound familiar to anyone else?)

What if we simply ignored the old habit and instead placed our attention on the "fire we do want to burn", without the added pressure of having to make it a habit.

What if we directed our energy not onto willpower, but towards creating what we want in the moment we're living, without worrying whether we'll do it tomorrow, next week or a month from now.

In other words what if we ignore the "bad" habit, knowing it will take care of itself when we are fully engaged with life. 

“You see habits may be hard to break, but they are easy to extinguish.”*

Let me explain. 

Every habit you've adopted makes sense to you at some level, otherwise you wouldn't do it. So, trying to break a habit from the same level of thinking that created it, is hard. Why would you?

My coach and mentor Michael Neill often says, I've never had anyone come to me to help them stop poking themselves in their eye. Why? Because it doesn't look like a good idea.

If you're doing something, at some level it looks like a good idea to you, otherwise there's no way you would ever do it.

But, extinguishing a habit because your world starts to look different, is super easy! A habit can disappear in a instance. Done. No effort at all.

For example, if I believe that eating helps my stress, well then of course I will eat when I feel stressed. And of course it will take effort to not eat when I get stressed. I'm going against the behaviour that has been wired in, AND I believe it helps. These are two powerful motivators. 

Now, if I begin to question the world where my behaviour is helpful and valuable, and that world starts to look different, than effortless change is inevitable. It doesn't matter how many times I've done it in the past, I can stop it at a moments notice. 

The frustrating part is that I don't have control over when I will see something different. I can look in a direction, I can explore a new understanding and I can practice being fully present to life, all of which may increase my chances of a new insight, but it does not guarantee it.

It takes the time that it takes, and trying to force it or judging ourselves for not seeing more only seems to keep us stuck in our old world, rather than revealing a new one.

The good news here is that if it’s not up to you to produce an insight, and the only thing you can do is look in a direction, then there’s really no reason to give yourself shit.

It’s not up to you!

If that sounds like giving up, and you’re really wanting to ‘do’ something, well go ahead and do it. Why would you ever not follow a sincere wanting?

But if you’re doing it because forcing yourself is the only way real change happens, you might find yourself exhausted and disillusioned and doing the same ole thing you’ve been trying to change for years.

Because the fight is what keeps you in the throes of the arena, and seeing anew is what ushers in the space of effortless transformation.