“If it’s important to you, you’ll make it a priority.. If it’s not, you’ll make excuses”
This quote came to my mind as my coworker was lamenting one day about how difficult it is to find the motivation to exercise. But later on I realized it is not so much whether getting healthy is a priority or not. Of course why would one not treat it as priority? Duh!! The real issue here is we are creatures of habit. We don’t like pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone, even though we know the change sometimes is in our best interests.
If it’s in our best interest, why do we resist learning a good habit? My theory is that as much as we are motivated to cultivate a good habit, we are still attached to current habits. Learning a new habit is hard. Unlearning an old habit is harder.
Turns out there may be science behind this. Charles Duhigg articulates very well in his book “The Power Of Habit”. Basal ganglia, central part of our brain stores routine behaviors or “habits”. As years pass by, our actions (or inactions) become part of our behavior. Whether it is good or bad, it becomes an integral part of our nature. For e.g. Do you remember if you tied laces on your left or right shoes first? Do you remember if you switched off the stove when you headed out the door for work? Probably not. Because what seems like an important decision when we learn a new skill becomes deeply ingrained in our behavior. Your conscious actions eventually become subconscious habits. Basal ganglia turns conscious actions to unthinking habits.
When my son was learning piano, his piano teacher would give him exercises to practice. He would meticulously practice the notes and invariably he would pick up a few wrong notes along the way. When she recognized he played a wrong note repeatedly she would ask him to practice the right notes 40 times to unlearn. Not sure if there’s any scientific evidence to this, but I thought that was interesting.
So, the question is, how do you unlearn bad habits? More importantly how do you learn good habits?
Here are a few things that worked out for me:
1) Kick-In-The-Pants motivation – You so desperately want to be in better shape but don’t feel the urge to move. There is no better motivation than shame and guilt to drive yourself. You see professional athletes use such techniques all the time. When I started exercising, I used to look at my lipid levels every day as motivation till I brought that down. Nothing works better than a constant reminder that you deserve better.
2) Start small and improve over time – I am a big believer in “Aggregation of Marginal Gains” theory (by Dave Brailsford). To paraphrase if small improvements are made over a period of time it will aggregate to a larger gain. This is especially true as you form new habits. When one thinks of exercising, hours of rigorous workouts with bulky weights comes to mind. It doesn’t have to be that way. I started off with 20 minutes every day for a few days a week and increased it over time. Key is to consistently increase the intensity and target every month.
3) Track your progress – There is nothing more that gives you instant gratification than visually seeing how you are tracking towards your goals. I have been tracking my exercise routine for the past 9 years and it is a visual reminder when I slack off. With the proliferation of smart phones and mobile apps like Lift there are multiple ways to keep track of habit forming goal.
As with everything else, you will make habit forming a priority if it is important.
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