How to make positive changes in our lives and then stick with them
Habits aren’t just about hanging your coat by the door or putting on your seat belt in the car, Wood says. Forty-three percent of our behaviors are habit driven — such as when we brush our teeth, what we eat for breakfast, which cocktail we pour in the evening. No surprise, these automatic, unthinking actions are difficult to change.
“It’s very hard to alter our habits once we formed them. In fact, many of us think that we should be able to make a decision, right? I am going to lose weight this year. I’m going to make more friends this year. I’m going to be nicer to my family, my partner, this year, I’m going to save more money,” says Wood, who wrote “Good Habits/Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes that Stick.” “But the problem is that so many of those behaviors are habits and that memory sticks,” making change frustratingly difficult.
The Washington Post spoke to Wood recently from her home in D.C. about the mental health challenges of changing our habits and why we shouldn’t get discouraged by the New Year’s resolutions we may have already abandoned, as well as new approaches to making lasting positive changes in how we live. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Why is it so hard to keep resolutions about changing behavior?
A: We form habits when we repeat a behavior over and over in the same context, and we start to connect the context with that response. Once habits are formed, when you’re in that context again, the habit automatically springs to mind. It’s like standing in front of your sink in the morning, you just automatically pick up the toothbrush. You don’t ask yourself if you want to do it. Until we realize that habit memories don’t fade easily, we’re going to be constantly challenged with New Year’s resolutions.
Q: You say most of our resolutions die. Why?
A: We start off being really motivated, and then we find that it’s not all that easy. And so we get a little less motivated but the [bad] habit memory is still there. Ultimately, three weeks later or whenever we quit. At that point, our habit is still there, but our motivation has decreased to the point where we just sort of give in and do the old habit anyway.
Q: What can we do to be more successful?
A: Find some way to make the behavior enjoyable. If you hate going to the gym, you’re probably not going to go on a regular basis unless you can figure out some way to make it more fun — like listening to podcasts, going with a gym buddy or finding a different activity. Any of those could be more fun. And that’s going to help you keep your resolution.
Q: What else can we do to have a greater success rate?
A: Change your environment, to make the behavior easier to repeat so it can become a habit. People are more likely to walk if they live in a pedestrian environment. If they live close to parks, they’re more likely to get exercise. If you take mass transit, you’re more Likely to get exercise than if you drive a car. All of these are things you can change and make [things] a little easier in your life. And then they’ll be more likely to become a habit.
A: The third thing is to forgive yourself if you don’t do it every day. If people go off a diet or eat something they shouldn’t, they figure, “I’ve already ruined everything. I’m just going to eat everything I want anyway.” Habit memories form slowly. If you don’t do something for a couple of days, the habit memory will still be there.
Q: I was going to have an alcohol detox in January, and I didn’t get very far. I felt that it was my willpower that was at fault.
A: Denying ourselves things is hard. There was a very clever study that was done several decades ago by [social psychologist] Daniel Wegner where he showed that when people tried not to think of a white bear, they could do it. I mean, no one ever tries to think of a white bear anyway, so it shouldn’t be a hard task. But once they’d been asked not to people started thinking about white bears all the time. They couldn’t stop. That’s what happens when we deny ourselves things. We start thinking about them a lot, and obsessing about them, and they sort of take over.
I understand your challenge because I love a good glass of wine or two at dinner, and I’m trying to cut down because it disrupts my sleep. I add friction to drinking wine by not having it in the house. There is a liquor store two blocks away, and I could walk there if I wanted to. But most of the time, I’m just not motivated enough to do that. Adding friction to behaviors that you don’t want to perform makes it easier to control them.
Q: Let’s talk more about friction since you say it’s key to changing bad habits.
A: I find that if I buy lots of fresh vegetables, they tend to sit in my fridge and I don’t use them, and I end up throwing them away. But if I go and buy vegetables that are already somewhat prepared, then it’s much easier to get myself to eat them. And even though I hate spending the extra money for prepared vegetables, in the end it saves me money because I’m much more likely to eat them. So understanding what’s going to remove the friction for you is important.
Q: You’ve written a good bit about executive control. Can you define that, and explain its role in behavior change? I understand it’s not nearly as important as understanding our habits.
A: That’s a term psychologists use to describe our decision-making selves. The parts of our neural and mental processes that control behavior thoughtfully. It takes effort, and it takes a little bit of time to exert that kind of control. We only rely on executive control once in a while. [For instance,] you could have a New Year’s resolution to sign up for a retirement program at work, or to switch to a new health insurance. Those are one-off decisions and you just have to muster your effort and energy and make the right decision. Do a little background research, figure out how to do the behavior, and then proceed from there. That’s executive control: Thinking, rational selves is how we experience it.
Q: When I’m stressed, sometimes I will fall back on my bad habits. But sometimes I assert my better habits. What did you learn about stress and habits?
A: We tend to fall back on both good and bad habits when we’re stressed. And that’s simply because we don’t have as much energy. Our cognitive resources are taken up by dealing with the stress. We’re thinking about whatever the thing is that’s worrying us.
We don’t have as much energy, resources, ability to be making decisions about our behavior. So we fall back on old habits. And that’s true for both good and bad habits.
Q: In the last line of your book you write, “That is the promise of a habit life well lived.” What is the promise you’re talking about?
A: That your goals and your habits are in line. So you’re not struggling with yourself in the way that so many of us do. That you’re living a life simply, straightforwardly, easily, automatically that is healthy and productive, and that allows you to have meaningful relationships with other people. That’s what understanding habits can do.