Ladies Who Launch

by Penelope M. Klatell
illustration by Barbara Hranilovich

 
Cicero said, “Mighty is the power of habit.” Time and again I find that the clients I coach in my life, health, and wellness practice are “stuck” or challenged because of habits that are so embedded that they’ve become their default mode of behavior.

Clients may not even realize that the behavior that’s causing the problem is a habit. For instance, have you ever gotten in your car to go to a familiar place, pulled out onto the road, arrived at your destination, and couldn’t remember the details of the trip? Or if you take the train to work, do you remember much about the ride, even if you have to change trains or add a bus? When you first got into the car or onto the train you consciously thought about where you were going, but during the journey your brain had gone on auto-pilot.
When you carry out a routine series of actions that you repeat frequently and consistently and can do without conscious thought, you are performing a habit, like:

• Biting your nails
• Eating popcorn at the movies
• Being consistently late for work
• Cleaning your plate at dinner whether you are hungry or not
• Checking your e-mail morning, noon, and night

Habits, sometimes called rituals, are developed through frequent repetition and reinforcement and are links between a stimulus and a response. It takes energy to become motivated to try new things, so habits act as energy savers by cutting down on extraneous steps and requiring less of your physical and mental strength. You don’t stop and think about tying your shoe or getting your food-laden fork to your mouth: You already have an established habit to do that.

Some habits are useful because they establish routines that create order and efficiency; others lock you into rigid patterns of behavior. They can also be negative-like that fork that reaches your mouth through mindless eating, or “putting the pedal to the metal” when you drive, having embedded the habit of driving too fast.

The human brain is fantastically complex and continuously rewires itself through experience. Very simplistically, habits are formed when your brain sends messages to the rest of your body through nerve cells. Each nerve cell has a central processing headquarters, a sending fiber for relaying messages, and tiny receiving fibers for incoming messages. Frequently used fibers from repeated thoughts or actions form tiny bumps, and the more bumps a nerve cell has the faster and easier it can transmit messages. This repetition creates a pathway in the brain similar to wearing a well-trodden path on a lawn. Because the bumps remain even when they aren’t being used, the old pathways continue to exist, creating the possibility of slipping back into the old habit.

So how can you change, or “break” your old habits? Changing an old habit is an uphill battle; it’s easier and more effective to form a new, stronger habit that displaces the old one. When it becomes easier to take the new path, the new habit is established and becomes your brain’s pathway of choice.

With each piece of visual, auditory, or tactile input, your brain searches its inner workings for connections that have already been created. Each time you think or experience something, connections are made and you strengthen the behavior. Under stress the strongest pathway is the one that is activated first, which is why it’s so important to be conscious of your thoughts and self-talk. Negative thinking creates one kind of pathway-”I hate myself because I’m so fat.” Conversely, the positive approach of focusing on the solution or the reward-”By eating sensible, small portions of delicious food I am helping my body to be strong and healthy” or “I’ll look great this summer when I wear my new clothes”-embeds that pathway. Placing your focus on a problem reinforces the problem. Focusing on the solution embeds the solution.

Because habits are psychologically comfortable, they feel like a nice, soft old T-shirt. Our brains are happy in this comfort zone, so there needs to be real motivation to change. Any new behavior feels uncomfortable, like a scratchy new shirt with too much starch. Repetition and reinforcement are key-new pathways need to be strengthened by using the behavior frequently and consistently or your brain happily returns to its default mode-the old neural pathway, the old habit pattern, the nice comfortable T-shirt.

Think about those wonderful, sparkly, and sweet tasty treats that Mom and Grandma, the queen of scrumptious butter cookies, offer you during holiday celebrations. You have decided that you want to lose 15 pounds and torment yourself with self-talk about how you can’t fit into your clothes and how weak you are in the face of calorie-bearing relatives and sparkly holiday cookies. Where’s the focus? On the problem. What neural pathways are being activated and strengthened with the focus on the problem, and where’s the default? It’s directly to the strongest pathway, the one that you have embedded with repeated self-admonishment that you need to lose weight, that it’s difficult during the holidays, and that you always fail when faced with colorful, scrumptious, and sparkly cookies.

So, here are a few tips to help you drop your unwanted habits:

• The time frame for forming a new habit varies with the person and the challenge.
• Generally, performing daily, consistent, and repetitive actions for at least 21 days will create the neural connections for the formation of a new habit.
• When trying to form a new habit to displace one that is multifaceted or that has been in place for a long time, the new habit may take 12 weeks, or sometimes longer, to embed.
• Trying to create multiple new habits at the same time is confusing, difficult to do, and often ineffective.
• The key is consistency and repetition of the actions necessary to create one new habit at a time.
• Without repetition and reinforcement, your brain will default to its old neural pathway and its old habit pattern.

So stick with your new habits, and you may just find your old ones fading away!

Penelope M. Klatell, R.N., Ph.D., ACC, is a member of the Fairfield County, CT, Incubator and has a life-coaching practice, Life Odyssey Coaching and Consulting LLC.