Dr. Raymond Prior and Chase Cooper discuss the rewards of habits, emphasizing the need to identify how habits make us feel. They explore habit formation, survival instincts, and the challenges of breaking deeply rooted habits. The importance of aligning behaviors with desired outcomes and providing clear alternatives to shift towards better habits is highlighted.
Understanding the reward system is crucial in changing habits, as habits are deeply ingrained in the brain's automatic processing system.
Habits are formed by triggers, behaviors, and rewards, with consistency and intensity influencing their automatic nature.
Conscious attention and self-reflection are key in reshaping habits, by disrupting old rewards and aligning behaviors with desired outcomes.
Deep dives
Understanding the Complexity of Habits
Changing habits can be challenging due to the intricate layers involved in how our brains process behaviors. Habits, once formed, are deeply ingrained in the brain's automatic processing system, making them effortless to execute. However, altering habits requires a deep understanding of triggers, behaviors, and rewards, which may not always align with our conscious intentions. By delving into the nuances of habit formation, we uncover the complexities that influence our daily routines and decision-making processes.
Dissecting the Components of Habits
Habits are composed of triggers, behaviors, and rewards, forming a loop that guides our actions. Triggers can be both internal and external events, influencing our responses and subsequent rewards. The reward system in our brain reinforces behaviors based on their perceived value, with heavily reinforced actions becoming automatic habits. Whether positive or negative, habits are shaped by the consistency of their triggers and the intensity of their rewards, illustrating the intricate interplay between our behavior and brain mechanisms.
Challenging Habits through Conscious Awareness
Conscious attention plays a crucial role in reshaping habits by disrupting their automatic nature. By consciously examining our triggers, behaviors, and rewards, we bring habits into the realm of awareness, paving the way for transformation. Stage one of habit change involves mapping out these elements to illuminate the underlying mechanisms driving our actions. Transitioning to stage two requires disenchanting the brain from outdated rewards, highlighting the discrepancy between perceived and actual benefits of our behaviors. Through consistent effort and self-reflection, we can realign our habits with our desired outcomes and experiences.
Understanding the Reinforcement of Bad Habits
Bad habits, like the yips in golf, are deeply ingrained in the brain due to the survival response they trigger. The brain perceives these habits as essential for survival and reinforces them, even though they lead to negative outcomes. The yips, characterized by a startle response to perceived threats, demonstrate the brain's priority of ensuring survival over nuanced performance. By consciously recognizing the negative impact of these habits, one can start to shift the brain's perspective and reduce the reinforcement.
Disenchanting Old Habits and Creating Better Options
To change deeply ingrained habits, such as the avoidance triggers related to failure, individuals need to reduce the reward value associated with those habits. By actively showing the brain the unproductive nature of certain behaviors through direct experience, individuals can start the process of disenchanting old habits. Stage three involves presenting the brain with a better option that is not only performance-oriented but also aligned with what the brain perceives as beneficial, creating a pathway for habit change.
In part 2 of our 3 part series on Habits, Dr. Raymond Prior and Chase Cooper take a closer look at the rewards we are getting from our habits. In last week's episode (habits 101), we identified what a habit actually is and discussed the differences between behaviors and habits. In this episode, we start to break down the first step in changing our habits, and that is identifying how these habits make us feel and what benefit we are getting from them (both the good and the bad). Enoy!
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