Breaking Bad Habits: The Habit Loop

Everything we do in life is a habit; changing your habits changes your life. People say it takes about 21 days to break a bad habit but if we’re being honest, some bad habits take much longer. Why is this though? Why is it so hard to break these habits when you know it is something that is not benefitting you and oftentimes only hurting your progress. I want to dive into our psych a little bit and teach you about the habit loop and how we can retrain our brains.

So back to the beginning; everything in life is a habit. Skipping the gym, sleeping in, ordering takeout, going to bed late, etc. You get the point. I want to introduce (or reintroduce) you to the habit loop. The habit loop has three parts: cue, routine and reward. This is a cycle that you will follow over and over, day after day. The cue is what triggers your habitual behavior, the routine is the habitual behavior itself and the reward is what the behavior does for you.

Here is a personal example of mine. My goal was to leave my house by 6AM and go to the gym before I had to be at work for the day. Although, I got into a very bad habit of snoozing my alarm. I’ve never been a morning person so I knew this was going to be hard. My cue was my alarm going off, my routine was hitting the snooze button (multiple times sometimes) and my reward was getting extra sleep. Now, because I had trained my brain to believe I was helping myself by getting some extra rest before a long work day, it became my habit. Obviously, I was not helping myself because I was even more tired by the time I got off of work and had to drag myself to the gym. So I retrained my brain. My cue is still my alarm going off but I changed my routine to turning my nightstand lamp on right away and getting out of bed. My reward now is getting to the gym early, releasing endorphins before work and having extra time once I am home to cook, clean, shower and prepare for the next day.

There are so many bad habits that we have trained our brains to associate with a reward that is not really benefiting us. Bad habits are a big component of what keeps us from reaching our full potential and as you can see, we can retrain our brains and create new habits.

This upcoming spring, let’s do a spring cleaning. Clean out the toxic habits, behaviors and ways of thinking. Spring is just around the corner, so let’s take this time beforehand to work on changing our routines and creating better habits.

Take some time today to think about a habit you have been wanting to change and write down your cue, routine and reward for that habit. Think about how you can change your routine and reward. Let’s share some ideas and help each other out!

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