BayouHealth: Changing Habits

How to drop the same old resolutions and make changes that stick.

BY SHANNON DAHLUM

Change is hard. Forty percent of Americans are making New Year’s resolutions, but 80% will fail to keep them. This month, we’re busy making promises to ourselves to instill better habits, and quit those that aren’t good for us. Our intentions are good, but the follow through is where we’ll struggle, because history tells us that by February, most of us will have slipped right back into our old patterns and will have already failed to implement the changes we promised to ourselves. How can we approach our goals differently this year, so that we may have a better chance at creating meaningful changes in our lives?

Your thoughts trigger your brain to release specific hormones and neurotransmitters, and these create certain feelings in your body. According to Dr. Joe Dispenza, author of “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself,” your thoughts are the language of your mind, and your emotions are the language of your body, and together, these direct your behavior. Your thoughts, feelings and behavior are who you are; they are your personality, which creates your personal reality. If you want to change something about your reality, you have to change all three parts. Implementing new behaviors without changing your thoughts and feelings can’t last, because it creates a dissonance within you. The things you’re doing (your outside) will no longer align with your thoughts and feelings (your inside). Successfully creating new habits or breaking old ones requires you to address all three elements: your thoughts, feelings and actions.

THOUGHTS
Your brain and body don’t know the difference between something you think is real and something that actually is real. If you believe you’re being followed in a dark alley at night, your brain will trigger the release of stress hormones that put you on high alert. Your heart rate will increase, your pupils will dilate, blood pressure will be elevated, and you’ll be in a state of high alert. You’ll feel fear and panic in your body, which will lead to even more thoughts about who could be following you, then more stress hormones, and more feelings of fear. Your thoughts and feelings lead you to make the unconscious decision to either run, turn and fight, or hide. It doesn’t matter if there really is an attacker behind you or not; if you believe there is, then your brain and body will respond as if it’s true.

The power of your thoughts are demonstrated by the placebo and nocebo effects, which have been very well studied and documented. The placebo effect is when someone has positive expectations about a drug or treatment, and they experience the expected benefit simply by thinking they’ve been given the treatment. The nocebo effect works in the same way, but it’s when a patient has a negative expectation and then experiences that negative effect. In both cases, patients aren’t actually given any real drug or treatment. The physical effects they experience are simply a result of their beliefs that they’ll happen. The brain doesn’t know the difference between what they think is real and what actually is real!

In one particular study for a new chemotherapy drug, which often comes with the side effect of hair loss, patients in the control group were given injections of saline. The saline had no physical impact on them, but the patients didn’t know that they weren’t receiving the chemo drug. Thirty percent of those patients lost their hair. Their hair fell out of their heads, simply because they believed it would happen! In another study, patients were all given a liquid and were told it would make them vomit. The liquid was nothing but sugar water, but 80% of the patients vomited as a result. They threw up, because they believed the liquid they drank would cause them to do so.

The above examples show how good your subconscious mind is at making sure your physical reality matches your beliefs, and this includes all those negative beliefs you have about yourself. If you criticize yourself for being unhealthy or out of shape, implementing healthy eating or exercise habits will be impossible to stick with. You’re telling your brain that you’re out of shape, so it’s going to ensure that you keep doing things to make being “out of shape” true for you. When you start going to the gym or eating more broccoli, you’re going to experience uncomfortable feelings of, “Whoa, this isn’t right! What the heck are you doing? This isn’t who you are!” Then you’ll slip comfortably back into your old habits that continue making your beliefs of being “out of shape” a reality for you.

Let’s say, like many Americans, you’d like to lose weight, so you decide you’re going to eat healthier this year. The first step in achieving this goal isn’t to use willpower to stay away from the chips and ice cream while forcing yourself to shove kale and chicken breast down your throat. That may last a week, at most. Before you even attempt to change what you’re eating, you need to change what you’re thinking. Spend a few days paying close attention to your thought patterns and noticing which ones don’t align with the reality you’re attempting to create. Thoughts like, “I’m overweight,” “I’m unattractive,” “I don’t have time to cook,” “I can’t afford healthy food,” etc., are not going to get you where you want to be. Remember that your thoughts create your reality, so if you’re thinking, “I’m overweight,” then that will likely be the experience you continue creating for yourself. Start noticing your thoughts and write down all the ones that aren’t in alignment with your desired reality.

Once you recognize which thoughts are holding you back, stop them. Notice every time one of these thoughts pops up, and replace it with a new thought that aligns with the reality you want to create. One of the most effective ways to crowd out negativity is with gratitude, so switch your negative thoughts into something you can be grateful for. When you notice yourself thinking, “I’m overweight,” change that thought to, “I’m grateful that I’m strong.” Instead of, “I’m unattractive,” show gratitude for your beautiful eyes or your awesome hair day. When thoughts of not having enough time pop up, be grateful for the time you’re able to spend doing other things, which are obviously a higher priority for you. In every single situation, there is always something to be grateful for, so look for it! With practice, your new thought patterns will stick, and your previously limiting beliefs will be gone. Then, new healthier habits can easily emerge without the need for willpower, because they’ll be created automatically by your new beliefs. Your new beliefs will become your new reality.

FEELINGS
When you create a goal for yourself, examine why you want to achieve it. What’s the underlying feeling you’re after? What do you believe will change for you once you achieve your goal? The physical achievement you’re chasing may be something you believe will provide a sense of accomplishment, confidence, or acceptance from others. For example, one of the most common things I find from the women who come to me with weight loss goals is the desire to gain more confidence.

What happens, though, when the new feelings you feel from accomplishing your goal wind up being uncomfortable? Self sabotage. This is when you’re making strides toward your goal, or maybe you’ve even reached it, and you feel those positive feelings you’re after, but these new feelings are uncomfortable. It’s easier to slip back into your old, familiar territory of self loathing than to hold on to these new feelings of confidence, so you backslide right back to where you started. It seems odd that human nature would cause us to desire holding onto negative feelings rather than experiencing new, positive ones, but what we’re most drawn to is what we know. We tend to be more comfortable with the status quo, because there, we know exactly what we’re dealing with. We prefer to stick with the familiar, because anything new is a risk. It means creating uncertainty, and this can be extremely uncomfortable territory.

The key to preventing self sabotage is learning to become comfortable with the new feelings you hope to achieve. You need to find situations that help you experience those feelings in small ways right now. Create those situations for yourself more and more, so those feelings can start to feel more familiar.

For example, if you want to lose weight because you believe it will bring you confidence, think about other things you can do that make you feel a little more confident in yourself right now. What are some small things you can achieve today that will make you feel this way? Perhaps simple tasks, like making your bed in the morning, provide a sense of accomplishment that helps you feel more confident as you start your day. Maybe spending an extra five or ten minutes to fix your hair in a particular way or dressing a little nicer provides an added sense of confidence. If your ultimate goal is to fit in and feel more accepted by others, what else can you do right now that makes you feel a sense of belonging? Try planning some social outings with friends, or joining a group of like minded individuals. Search out clubs that revolve around hobbies that interest you, like book clubs, gardening clubs, gym classes or church groups.

Experiencing new feelings and learning to get comfortable with them is kind of like learning to feel comfortable in a new style of clothing. I have this experience with shoes all the time. All of my work happens either in a gym or at home, so I basically live in tennis shoes, flip flops, or bare feet. When I need to dress up for something, I break out the “fancy” flip flops with sparkles, because I don’t have the guts to go out in heels. I have a great pair of heels that I’m sure would look beautiful on anyone else, but I feel like they just look goofy on me. I still put them on every now and then, thinking, “I’m going to wear them this time.” When I see myself in the mirror, though, I feel really uncomfortable with how I look, so I kick them off and back into my closet they go. As usual, I wear my sparkly flip flops instead. I realize the problem isn’t that the shoes don’t look good on my feet; they’re just not my usual style, and this is what makes me uncomfortable.

If I ever hope to leave the house in my fancy heels, I need to wear them for short periods of time around the house. Then, eventually, I should probably leave the house for small outings while wearing them. I know that if I continued to do this, I’d no longer feel goofy wearing them, and could put them on confidently for a nice evening out on the town.

In order to get comfortable with new feelings, you need to take the same approach as I should take with my fancy shoes. Try those feelings on in smaller ways, for shorter periods of time. Keep doing it until those feelings begin to feel familiar. Once you reach your physical goals and feel those positive feelings all the time, in even more significant ways, you’ll be comfortable with this new version of yourself and won’t unconsciously slide back into the old version of you.

ACTIONS
Stopping or starting new habits may require a change in thoughts and feelings in order for them to stick, but some conscious effort on the action you want to change has to be done, too. According to Charles Duhigg in “The Power of Habit,” successfully changing an existing habit requires you to break it down and understand the three parts that make up the habit, which he calls the habit loop. The three parts of the loop are the cue, the reward, and the routine.

The cue, or trigger, is what immediately precedes your craving for the habit. What happens directly before the craving hits? Is the urge triggered by a particular time of day, your environment, other people who are around, a particular emotion, or something else that you just did? Let’s say you have a habit of eating potato chips every evening, and you want to quit that habit. Notice which of those five elements (time, environment, other people, emotion, or activity) is always the same every time you have the urge to eat the chips. You may discover that the craving hits every time you feel bored or lonely. It may happen between 3:00 and 3:15 every afternoon. It may be sitting down to watch TV that triggers the urge.

Now that you know what precedes the craving, explore other ways that you can experience the sense of reward. What craving do you think your habit is fulfilling? If you crave the chips every time you sit on the couch to watch TV in the evening, you may feel that real hunger is the trigger. Test your theory by finding other ways to satisfy that hunger. Replace the chips with an apple and see if it satisfies you. If so, you’re right, you were probably experiencing hunger. If not, then the craving must be related to something else, like boredom. Next time the chip craving hits, try calling a friend to chat or work on a crossword puzzle. Find something else that stimulates and entertains you and see if that makes you stop thinking about those chips! This may take a lot of trial and error, but eventually, you’ll figure out what your craving is truly for.

Finally, the last part of the loop is the routine. Once you figure out what you’re really craving, you can replace that old habit with a new routine that satisfies that craving. Simply trying to stop the old habit without replacing it with a new one keeps that habit loop open and leaves you completely unsatisfied. That’s a very difficult thing to maintain!

If you’re trying to start implementing a new habit, rather than just stopping one, you can reverse engineer the same process. Start with step three, the routine. What is the new routine you want to incorporate? Let’s say that you want to start going for a walk every day. Now, move back to step two: the reward. Come up with some sort of reward for completing that new routine. Maybe you have a cozy pair of slippers you like to wear at home in the evening. Set a rule for yourself that you only get to put your slippers on after you return from your walk. Maybe you love listening to podcasts or talking to your mom on the phone, so you can reserve your walks as the only time you do those things. If watching TV is how you enjoy spending your evening, perhaps you should decide that the TV doesn’t get turned on until after your walk. Even simply checking things off of a to-do list can provide a sense of accomplishment and may be all the reward you need. This works wonders for me, so I’m a big list maker! It’s so satisfying to have a daily to-do list and check each item off as it gets completed. If this sounds like you, just write down “walk” on your calendar every day, and after you return, check it off!

Once the routine and the reward have been established, come up with your cue. What’s going to be your trigger that it’s time to take that walk? It could be after you brush your teeth in the morning or once you finish cleaning the kitchen after dinner. Then, you’ll have your entire new habit loop established.

Changing your habits isn’t easy, but if you focus on creating new thoughts and feelings that support your new action, you’ll have a much greater chance at succeeding. Work consistently on creating thoughts that support your goal. Know what feeling you hope to get from your goal, find ways to feel that way now and get comfortable with it. Then, work on the habit itself. Take small, consistent steps and celebrate every success along the way. It’s a slower process than trying to make big changes all at once, but that’s what makes it stick! Try it, and maybe next January, you won’t find yourself having to make the same promises to yourself all over again.