The Science of Habits Pt. 1

Living in a society where social media keeps us more connected than ever before, we are constantly surrounded by people and posts preaching that a "morning routine" will literally save your life. A "night time routine" will solve all of your life problems. Or that it's "discipline not motivation" that gets you to the gym to get your workout in. But is there any science behind all of these miracle working routines? Or is it just people and companies trying to make money?

Firstly, a routine is made up of a series of habits. For example your morning routine consists of you snoozing your alarm, getting up, eating breakfast and brushing your teeth. All of these tasks are individual habits. So, what is the actual definition of a habit? 

"A settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up." - Oxford Languages

The most important part of that definition that I want to focus on is the "hard to give up part". The reason habits play such a big role in establishing routines, is because they are repeated over and over until the brain doesn't actually have to put any effort at all into A) Deciding to complete the task and B) Actually completing the task; you're basically on auto pilot. 

The Bod Fitness, 2019

So, now that we have actually established what a habit is and the role it plays in creating routine, what is the actual point that I'm trying to make here. Well, I was listening to the podcast "Do You F*****g Mind" by Alexis Fernandez, and she has an entire episode on habits and how they affect your daily life. And it got me thinking, are habits really powerful enough to transform both our mental and physical health, and help us to reach our goals? After a bit of research and personal experiments, I've decided the answer is yes, and let me tell you why. 

It has been scientifically proven over and over again that our brains are very efficient machines. The brain is always looking for ways to save energy and simplify a process if possible. This is where habits come in. If you repeat a task over and over across a period of time, the brain will begin to recognise that this is a task that is going to occur often and will basically create a circuit for that task. Once this circuit has been created, the brain will begin refining this circuit so that it is as streamlined as possible. Then the circuit gets shipped off to the subconscious part of the brain and viola! A habit is created; no more decision making is required by you for both whether or not to complete the task, or how you're going to complete it, it's all done automatically for you in your brain! 

There are many many many advantages to this process; Firstly, with this habit now sitting comfy in the subconscious part of the brain, the active part of the brain has been freed up to focus on other, perhaps more demanding tasks at hand. Secondly, and this is what all of the fitness influencers are going on about, motivation is no longer part of the equation in regards to a task that has become a habit. There is no question about whether you can be bothered going to the gym and completing your workout, your brain is on autopilot and knows that at 5pm on a Monday night you go to your gym class. There is no decision left to make, as it has already been made previously when you were initially establishing the habit. This is an extremely powerful tool to help reach any type of goal, not just your fitness goals. It takes away the need for motivation to do something, and instead your brain just understands that this task is something that just has to be done, no matter the amount of motivation present. 

Another fascinating thing about forming habits is that the brain is extremely plastic. What do I mean by that? I mean it can be fairly easily transformed to be performing at an optimum level based on the stage in life you're at and your current (and ever-changing) goals. Let's say for example, you have a habit of waking up in the morning, turning your alarm off and then scrolling through Facebook before you actually get up. You may have deemed this a "bad habit" and you're frustrated because not only are you losing out on 30 minutes of your morning, it always causes you to be running late and having to rush to be ready on time. Well the good news is, if you're willing to, there are things you can do to try and stop this bad habit in its tracks. 

Research has also shown that habits cannot be destroyed, rather they have to be replaced. So, lets go back to the phone example. You know that you turn your alarm off and straight away pick up your phone to scroll in the mornings. Instead of just trying not to do that (which probably won't work or last long), try to replace this activity with another one. For example, instead of picking up your phone, decide you're going to get up and get a glass of water instead. Or you could jam to a song before you get out of bed. You can literally pick anything, you just need to want to stick with it so that the habit can be formed. If this is something that you do in the mornings and you want to try and break this habit, it may be handy to put some restrictions on your phone (if possible, check your settings) so that you can't access social media for 30 mins after you wake up. It will initially be hard work, resisting the urge to scroll through your phone and instead perform your chosen activity, but if it is consistently done each morning, you brain will eventually form a habit circuit and the new, more beneficial habit with overrun the old phone scrolling habit. 

With all this being said, you have to want to form/change habits, it doesn't just happen overnight. Research in the past suggested that a habit takes about 21 days of reinforcement before it completely forms, however more recent research now suggests that habits actually take around 66 days to form. So, if you want it, you have to stick with it, but if you do it'll make things in the long run a whole lot simpler.

If you're wanting some inspiration and practical examples of some habits that I have found really effective in changing my routines and mental wellbeing, jump to Pt. 2 of this blog post: The Science of Habits Pt. 2