Deborah says:
It’s hard. Building habits that is. So hard. Every time you go to do something, you have to stop and think. Is that my intention? Do I really want to eat that? Do I really want to skip the gym? Do I really want to work this hard? Do I really want to go insane hearing the sound of my voice ask me all these questions all the time? It’s really, really exhausting. Would be so much easier to just do it the old way – follow the old habits – no real thought process involved – brain on autopilot.
So why do I keep doing it? Everything the hard way?
Because here’s what I learned about habits. Habits are really pathways built in our brains. We we do something, a series of neurons fires and when we do it successfully, we get a little hit of dopamine at the end (brain heroin – what we all live for!). The longer we’ve done a specific habit or behavior, the more ingrained that pathway is, the more neurons fire when we perform the taks and the bigger the hit of dopamine at the end. That’s one of the reasons overeating feels so good in the moment, but then we are surrounded by guilt and we do it again to get that great hit for a job well done. Compared to the old habits, our new habits are a tiny, weak little series of neurons that gives us just a tiny little hit of dopamine if we manage to stay on the path.
But guess what? Everything we perform this new habit successfully, the new pathway gets bigger and stronger. Conversely, if we slip back to our old habit, we are actually reinforcing and rebuilding the old pathway.
So why do I have these endless discussions in my head? Why do I put myself through these challenging decision making processes? Because I want to build that new pathway as strong as I can as quickly as I can. Every time I think about slipping back, I think realize that tomorrow it’s going to be twice as hard to get back to that new neural pathway I’m building. And my hope is that the more frequently I make the right decisions, the sooner it will get easier.
So all science-y and brain-y and how do we know this really works? Because when I quit smoking ten years ago, I thought about smoking every minute of every day for the first three months. Now, I think about smoking maybe twice a year. When I broke up with my boyfriend I thought about him every minute of every day for the first week. Now, it’s only a couple of times a week.
I know this will work for my healthy lifestyle too. So in a way, I’m taking the easy way out.
