Breaking Bad Habits

During 2021, I noticed media content about morning routines blowing up, and everyone (including myself) was trying to live THE life–productive, early-rising, and successful. Some people maintained that 4 AM or 5 AM lifestyle, but I always ended up falling short. After a week of trying, I ended up back in my usual routine: waking up ten minutes before class and feeling remorse about my willpower.

And if only this were my sole bad habit in my daily routine! I have so many bad habits that it is almost impossible to count all of them. Nonetheless, I am trying to tackle them one by one, and I would love to introduce to you the tactics of breaking bad habits and building good ones that I have learned while taking a fitness class (Cardio Development) at Andrews.

P.S. The class content was inspired by Charles Duhigg's book “The Power of Habit” and Professor BJ Fogg's TED video. If you are interested, go ahead and check them out!

The first step of everything is identification! Maybe your bad habits are very obvious to you, but that was not the case for me at all times. I always had to note the bad consequences happening in my life, like constantly feeling tired in the morning. Then, I needed to realize that I might not want to feel fatigued for the remaining (possible) sixty or longer years of my life. If you are also having trouble identifying your bad habits, start thinking about what outcomes you want in life. In Dr. Fogg's words, we have to "design behavior that will lead to our outcome." In my case, I wanted a fatigue-free morning.

Yes, I know fatigue is seen as a prerequisite for modern-day people and college students. I do give kudos to the obnoxious combination of Intro to Animal Science and Foundations of Biology tests that often happened together during my Freshman Fridays. However, I am already in my Junior year, and I didn’t know that the aftereffects of Stay-Up Thursdays would last this long. And tests and assignments were not heavy every day, so they weren’t apt reasons as to why I always felt tired. A few of my younger friends suggested that I was getting older, but I have only just started my twenties.

So, what was the problem here?

I concluded that it was my sleep habits–irregular, late, and contaminated with electronic devices. There were a lot of factors to tackle at once, so I decided to use the second step to help me choose which one to work on first.

The second step is to find the cue and reward earned through the bad habit. Since there was nothing that I possibly could gain from irregular and late sleep schedules, I decided to get on the electronic devices first. After all, they were the main contributing factors in my late sleep schedule, so I found it quite reasonable to start from here. At first, the cue and reward seemed pretty apparent to me. If I saw the electronics, I would grab them, and they would entertain me. But scrolling through Instagram without even comprehending what I was reading was not entertaining. To figure out why I was using the devices, I had to consciously separate myself from the devices and analyze what I was feeling and thinking.

So, I lay on my bed.

I closed my tired eyes.

Yet, I still wanted to touch my phone, or maybe listen to music–just something.

In my case, the silence was the cue, and my reward was distraction from endless thoughts that attacked me when silence came in. It was not the content I saw on my phone that I needed, but just some form of information to occupy my brain, so that I would not have to think, imagine, or worry. This realization explained why I always needed to listen to music when I was younger. Learning what my cue and rewards are helped me move on to the final step of the breaking-bad-habits routine.

As you find your cue, remember that it can be anything, including location, time, and a pattern of behavior, that leads you to your bad habit! The reward is why the habits persist, so it is not always a no-brainer. It might be more related to your personality or characteristics that you didn't know before. As you explore the cue and reward of your habits, you might be surprised to discover what they are and how they reveal a part of you that you were not aware of for a long time.

The last step is building new, positive habits to replace your bad habits. The cue will remain the same, and the reward will remain the same. Since I needed to occupy my head with something other than my thoughts, I decided to read books or write diaries. So whenever I lay on my bed, I tried to reach out for my journal or books and calm down my thoughts, while physically distancing myself from the electronic devices. Compared to my phone that endlessly brought in new stimuli, I found it much easier to deal with the silence and fall asleep when I used my diary or books.

I am still training myself to reach for the books instead of my phone, and what I try to do in the process is give myself positive reinforcement (that sounds a bit cheesy but encouraging) whenever I grab my book or diary.
It's encouraging, not just because it sounds good, but also because it serves as a reminder that I am capable of changing the bad into good. Silence once served as a trigger for restless nights and tired mornings, but I saw the potential of changing this cue into a trigger for restful nights and motivated mornings. And this does not even require a significant amount of motivation; it is such a simple and tiny action–I just have to grab the book when the cue comes in.  

"Your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny." I think there's a great deal of truth in this quote reportedly by Gandhi, and more so after trying to fix my sleep habits. So, what is the life you dream of? What habits need a replacement? Whatever those might be, remember that change begins with a small action and a positive reinforcement.