Establish Healthy Habits

Good Habits Are Great For Your Mental Health

A good habit never stops being useful

Leading A Healthy And Productive Life Is Dependent On The Habits You Form

Habits are behaviors that become automatic. They start as deliberate decisions but gradually turn into knee-jerk responses. The problem with this is that it doesn’t just affect the activities you do every day, but starts to shape your identity.

Our habits are the framework architecture of our lives. — J.D Rehbein-Wrightstein

This is because your habits form your identity in two ways: the story you tell about yourself and the actual qualities you possess.

Here’s how it works: Your brain wants to feel in control. It does this by constantly trying to predict the future and take control of it.

This is done by taking your past experiences and extrapolating them into a pattern. The pattern is then used to make decisions and expectations of the future so you can better prepare for what’s coming.

The problem is that your brain isn’t very good at knowing where the patterns it’s looking for start and end.

This is why superstitions, stereotypes, and prejudices seem to stick around even when they are clearly illogical.

The same applies to habits. If you’re used to doing something because it’s always been the same way, then your brain will start believing that you always have to do it that way, too.

By becoming a master at doing the same thing, you trick your brain into thinking you can’t do anything else

Everyone is guilty of seeing a pattern in something that isn’t there. It’s a natural product of an overactive brain trying to make sense of the world.

Now the problem with this process becomes very apparent when you’re doing something new. Your brain is trying to fit everything you do into a pattern, but it hasn’t seen the pattern before so it doesn’t know what to do.

To make up for this lack of information, your brain will pull the best possible explanation it can come up with. And if the explanation is coming from someone who’s inexperienced in something, chances are that explanation will be “that thing is impossible for me”.

But it may seem as though we’re somehow doomed by our habits, and there is a lot of truth to that. But the fact is that there’s a lot of control over these habits in our hands.

These are called “habit triggers” and they can be changed very easily.

A Good Habit Never Stops Being Useful

As I’ve said, the way to change your habits is to look at your current habits and work out which ones are causing pain. The easiest way to do this is to figure out which habits are causing you the most trouble in your life. If you feel like a prisoner under a habit, that’s a good place to start.

If you’re trying to lose weight, for example, then one of your habits might be regular snacking after dinner. You’re eating as a form of reward for finishing your meal and it’s stopping you from sticking to your diet.

But if you can figure out that the reward of eating after dinner is causing trouble, then you can work on removing it.

Here are some useful tips for changing your habits:

• Figure out your reward for the habit. This is the thing that’s causing trouble and you want to change it.
• Work out what triggers the reward. What’s causing you to do it? Is it something in your surroundings? A certain time of day? Your mood? Etc. By understanding these things, you’re starting to put together a pattern that can be analyzed and manipulated.
• Get rid of the trigger. The easiest way to do this is to remove the thing that triggers the reward. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight and you’re snacking on chocolate in the afternoon, get rid of all your chocolate or move it out of your diet.
• Find a different reward. This is what you want to replace the bad habit with. Maybe it’s something healthier, like spending time with friends or listening to music.
• Make the reward keep coming until the habit is no longer triggered. This will take time and it’s possible that you’ll need to reinforce it a few times to keep you doing it.

The best place to start is by figuring out what caused your bad habits in the first place. If you can figure out why you’re doing something and stop seeing it as a problem, then things will become easier. You’re working on preventing unwanted habits at their source.

But what causes bad habits in the first place? Here are some theories:

• Your biological prompt is prompting you towards something that’s dangerous or harmful to you. If you’ve just eaten a big meal, your brain might make you want to continue eating because it thinks that there’s going to be a famine and it needs more food for energy.
• Your environment is prompting you towards a certain behavior. If you’re at a party or bar, you might end up drinking too much because you’re expected to fit in with everyone there.
• You’re just wanting to have fun and don’t care about the consequences of your actions. This is one of the reasons why people drink and do drugs — they want to have fun and they don’t care if it’s going to make things worse later on.

Bad habits are almost always formed because of the theory of “better safe than sorry”. Your brain doesn’t want you getting into trouble and doing something that could be embarrassing or dangerous, so it steers you towards something that might hurt you but is a lot less likely to.

If you trip on something and fall over, your brain might make sure that your arms go out when you’re falling to soften the blow. This might lead to a stronger arm or hand. But if you trip over a curb, your brain might make you stick your hands out in front of you so they absorb the brunt of the impact.

Your brain is the best problem solver around, but one of its weaknesses is that it has trouble seeing patterns in things. If you stop seeing a problem as a problem then your brain will stop trying to solve it.

Unfortunately, habits are how your brain plans what to do, and only looking at the short-term consequences can get you into some real trouble later on.

You need a balance between thinking about the short term and thinking about the long term.

It’s better to err on the side of caution since this means that you’ll avoid more problems in the long run, but it’s important not to be too cautious that you aren’t achieving anything either.

Most of us notice ourselves doing things like this and we usually just call it dumb luck or a fluke. But the fact that our brains are making us do these things means that we could be avoiding some serious health issues by changing our habits. And when you’re aware of this, then it’s much easier to control your actions.

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J.D Rehbein-Wrightstein founder of The Savytech articles is a writer who loves to help people discover their hidden potential as well as their true purpose in life. He inspires and educates people on living an awesome life with inspiring articles. Connect with him on Twitter for more!