Whether you know it or not, your life is made up of habits. They help our brain to conserve power for more important things like that thing we’ve never seen before and how to handle it. Things that we know how to handle, we create habit loops for in order to keep ourselves running. So what is a habit loop, how do they get created, and how can we change them to do what we want them to do instead of the autopilot they often become.
A habit loop is quite simply a set of steps our brain goes through when dealing with stimuli or problems we have seen before. According to James Clear, we are constantly trying to solve problems. Problems that we know the answers to create habit loops for. Like you wake up, you’re groggy, you have coffee, you’re not groggy anymore. Therefore, our habit loop is to fix being groggy by having a cup of coffee. Many of us have this habit without thinking about it as a habit. We simply go through the series of steps the same general way every day without thinking about it. That’s the essence of a habit. You don’t have to think about it and it happens. All of us who drive have experienced getting to somewhere we know we’ve been to before without really being conscious of how we got there. Your movement to get to work is nearly automatic. Coming home, the same way. Your brain is busy with other things and your habits are running the show.
So how do habit loops get created? Easy. You have a problem. You solve a problem. Your brain stores the solution. You see the same problem again. Your brain pulls up the stored solution instead of coming up with a new one. This happens enough times, the pattern strengthens, and a habit is formed. Therefore, we are constantly in the process of creating habits. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. Bad habits, despite the fact that we think of them as bad, are solutions to a problem just the same. They’re just not the solution we’d probably prefer. You need to kill your anxiety, you smoke a cigarette, anxiety goes away, thus problem solved. Therefore, you are solving a problem and your brain stores the solution. As a stored solution, it becomes harder and harder for you (conscious you) to control your need to answer the question with that answer.
So how do you change or destroy a habit loop? First, you are never going to completely eradicate a habit loop. Pathways in the brain atrophy due to disuse, but never truly disappear. Thus, you will always have that habit loop buried somewhere inside of you. That is not a reason to despair. A habit loop does atrophy over time of disuse and that means, it will not always rule your life, especially if you build a more appropriate habit loop in a similar space. Let’s go back to the anxiety thing: You want to kill your anxiety, so you smoke a cigarette, and that kills your anxiety. Problem solved. However, if you take the same stimulus, anxiety, and layer on a new solution, meditation, then over time you will atrophy one habit loop and strengthen another. So there you go, you have interrupted and created a new habit loop which is more beneficial.
This sounds really simple, because it is. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. You are going to slip up. However, if you keep working at it, eventually you will get there. Just keep going forward.