5 Tips To Make Lasting Change A Reality
It is not that some people have willpower and some don’t.
It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.
James Gordon, MD.
What makes it difficult to change? For centuries, people have been fascinated by the few that make it look easy to accomplish lasting change. How about the rest of us? We may feel that we have tried everything and nothing works. We could be suffering from insomnia, weight gain or lack of regular exercise. When we say “nothing works” we are trying to describe the period of short term success of stopping the problematic behaviors. But soon… we go back to our old ways. This common pattern is experienced by many of us as we attempt to change our unwanted habits into good ones. In the face of multiple failures, we get discouraged and give up[i].
The experience of change is very much related with the wiring of our brains. As humans evolved over millions of years the survival instinct always stayed front and center.
In a nutshell; back then humans truly tried to stay alive, to survive. In today’s modern world, for survival we try to be in control of our day to day lives, we want stability and to avoid pain while hanging on to things that give us pleasure.
While these are reasonable, real life doesn’t work like that. We don’t have control over the world around us. We can neither avoid all misfortune, nor secure all happiness and comfort. In addition; our bodies, our thoughts, in short we change. Something that may have worked in the past, no longer does.
To give an example; after a long stressful day at work, if the stress reliever is snacking while watching TV, then comfort and happiness is associated with this activity. The avoidance of pain would be working to relieve stress and the happy-maker would be snacking and TV. As these actions get repeated time and over again, these behaviors become hardwired habits of the brain. (Yes, neuroscientists can see neural pathways in our brains in the form of habits. More on that later.) They are now a short term solution to relieve stress, to feel contentment and peace.
Sooner or later, there may come a moment of awakening.* May be it is the beginning of a new year, or may be it is just that we reach a tipping point. It may be the realization that watching TV and snacking each night has caused a weight issue, loss of sleep or worse, this lifestyle habit is truly affecting one’s health in more ways than one.
This is when we know that we no longer want to be the way we are. It is time for change.
However, even when we know it is the right course of action, change can be hard. It can be scary. Especially when we do not know where to begin. Or worse; how to continue what we started.
Creating new habits takes time. Especially, if the existing habits are practiced for years. And this brings me back to the neuroscience of change:
We call habits habits, because they become automatic after having been repeated over and over for weeks, months, years and sometimes decades.
For example, if we had the same dietary habits for the last 10 years, some things like making coffee as soon as we wake up (to feel awake), reaching for a piece of chocolate after dinner (comfort) or getting soda everyday at 4PM (because the sugar and bubbles gives us a second wind for the rest of the afternoon) eventually become automatic. We don’t think about it. We just do it.
And as we repeat these same actions over and over again, those repeated behaviors create actual neural pathways in our brain. What this really means is;
Habit = Pathways of the brain
This piece of information, that a habit is an actual physical pathway in the brain, is news to me.
More on how our brains are wired and how this effects our everyday choices can be found through this link from Loretta Breuning, PhD.
Forming New Habits
The great news is, in that same way, when we decide to change a habit or create a brand new habit, repetition and frequency is key. With frequency and repetition over time, the new habit starts forming. According to the Author of Atomic Habits it is really the frequency and not the time, that is of upmost importance. You may exercise 2 times in one month, or 20 times. It is the frequency that determines whether the new action will become a habit, and not the time[ii]. As we repeat the new action, in our brain, neural pathways start forming and connecting with each other. As we continuously repeat the new action, pathways grow stronger and stronger.
Please click this link to learn more about the neuroscience of change from Loretta Breuning
And voila! At one point, we have a new habit. One of the reasons we get discouraged is because according to research change is not linear. We do not know when the habit will click.
In Atomic Habits, this process is likened to heating an ice-cube from 25 to 31 degrees in a room with a starting room temperature of 24 degrees. We want the ice to melt but as we wait, nothing seems to be happening as the cold room temperature reaches 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 or 31. All the action happens at 32 degrees. This is why it is very important for the habit forming to persist, so that we can break through the plateau moments. In short; lasting change is possible. And there is a method to accomplishing lasting change.
I have completed Duke University’s Integrative Medicine Health Coaching Program. The entire premise of Integrative Medicine Health Coaching is based on the proven process for behavior change. We started one of my classes with this 8 minute video[iii].
In this mind-bending video, an engineer and Smarter Every Day Founder Destin Sandlin walks the viewer through how one’s brain learns a new habit. He does this through a personal/real-life experiment-experience. There, he proves the neural-plasticity of the brain by his mastery of a skill after 8 months of practice of 5 minutes per day. His 6 year old son masters the same skill in 2 weeks. (This is why we talk about having a potential versus reaching that potential. Ms. Loretta Breuning, PhD., shares that in children the neural pathways are more like “highways” until puberty. That is why it is most important to place our children in the right environment and schools that will encourage and teach them the methods to fulling their potential, creating the right highways. Through systems, routine and frequency the children thrive in advanced curriculums, take in the human element of a job well done, become world citizens, know to reach for their potential and build habits that will support them over a lifetime. )
5 Tips to Conquer Change
Now that we have proven that habit change is possible and we can accomplish sustainable change, here are some health coaching tips I find helpful with establishing healthy habits:
Be Ready: Be ready for change like it is an idea whose time has come. You should really want to make the change like there is no other option, but change.
Embrace it: Think of what this change means for you. See yourself in the future, may be 5 years from now, having made the change. Develop a clear vision of what this new future looks like. How does it make you feel to be healthy and energized, to have more quality time for your loved ones, to sleep well or to have maintained the weight you desire, or to be smoke free? Now, think of how your future looks like without the change, say 5 years from now. How does that make you feel? How important is this change for you and for your loved ones around you?
Be Positive: Scientists say that positive emotions create balance and an environment for people to continue to grow and change. We are much more likely to stick with change when we stay positive. And working towards a positive orientation can draw us in that direction. It is a full circle!
Small Steps are OK: Sustainable change sometimes means that we need to be ok with small (and slow) steps towards big change. Smaller, specific steps that are achievable on a daily/weekly show us that our goals, with each step, are within our reach. As we continuously accomplish our goals we become more confident to take on bigger ones towards our goal.
Practice Makes Perfect: We learn many new things each day. Forgetting is a critical brain function to keep up with our learning [iv]. This is why repetition (like exercising regularly, or creating a bedtime routine) is important, as it allows the new habits to be formed by practicing them with repetitive frequency, as these actions create new brain pathways. In other words, the brain memorizes them. And that is how the change becomes sustainable.
Questions? Comments? Email me! I read every one <3
RESOURCES
[i] Duke University Integrative Health Coach Professional Training Materials.
[ii] Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Big Results, James Clear, Avery: An Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC., 2018.
[iii] An American engineer and science communicator widely known for his educational video series Smarter Every Day (SED), hosted on a YouTube channel of the same name launched in 2007.
[iv] Duke University Integrative Health Coach Professional Training Materials.