Our habits shape who we are. Though we admit, forming positive habits isn’t always easy. Depending on whether they are healthy habits or bad habits, habits determine if we are going to be happy or unhappy. Healthy or unhealthy; Tired or well-rested; Strong or weak. The power of habits is far reaching. Habits shape our attitudes, actions, and decision-making abilities. They affect every aspect of our lives. But before we can build good habits, we need to understand what habits are and how they’re formed. We also need to know what mistakes we should avoid in the process.
What is a habit? A habit is a tendency to do something, whether harmful or health-promoting. A good habit will help you reach your goals, develop both personally and professionally, and feel fulfilled. However, not all habits are good. Habits are driven by reward-seeking mechanisms in the brain. They’re often triggered by something specific. For instance, walking past a cafe and smelling coffee beans can trigger you to want a cup. Feeling stressed at work can trigger you to smoke a cigarette. After a while, habits become a repetitive part of your lifestyle. Forming habits is the brain’s way of being more efficient. As far as the brain is concerned, the more tasks you can complete without wasting time thinking about them, the better. Our brain’s tendency toward efficiency can be positive.
How do habits form? Habit-forming is the process in which behaviors become automatic. It can be an intentional process, or it can happen unplanned. One thing to keep in mind about the habit-forming process is that it doesn’t happen occasionally. It’s an endless feedback loop that’s running and active during every moment you’re alive. That brings us to the habit loop.
How long does it take to form a new habit? In a study run back in 2009, researchers at University College London found that, on average, building habits takes around 66 days before the behavior change becomes automatic. However, the choice of habit was a major part of how long it actually took (between 18 and 254 days). In short, some habits are harder or easier to form than others. In the end, how long the habit takes to form will depend on how motivated you are and how much effort it takes to perform a behavior.
There is a concept in chemistry known as activation energy: Activation energy is the minimum amount of energy that must be available for a chemical reaction to occur. Let’s say you are holding a match and that you gently touch it to the striking strip on the side of the match box. Nothing will happen because the energy needed to activate a chemical reaction and spark a fire is not present. However, if you strike the match against the strip with some force, then you create the friction and heat required to light the match on fire. The energy you added by striking the match was enough to reach the activation energy threshold and start the reaction. Activation energy is involved in chemical reactions all around us, but how is this useful and practical for our everyday lives and building better habits?
The Activation Energy of Building Better Habits: Similar to how every chemical reaction has activation energy, we can think of every habit or behavior as having activation energy as well. This is just a metaphor of course, but no matter what habit you are trying to build there is a certain amount of effort required to start the habit. In chemistry, the more difficult it is for a chemical reaction to occur, the bigger the activation energy. For habits, it’s the same story. The more difficult or complex a behavior, the higher the activation energy required to start it. So, the Chemistry of Developing Better Habits is here:
The fundamental principles of chemistry reveal some helpful strategies that we can use to build better habits.
1. Every habit has an activation energy that is required to get started. The smaller the habit, the less energy you need to start.
2. Catalysts lower the activation energy required to start a new habit. Optimizing your environment is the best way to do this in the real world. In the right environment, every habit is easier.
3. Even simple habits often have intermediate steps. Eliminate the intermediate steps with the highest activation energy and your habits will be easier to accomplish. And that is the chemistry of developing better habits.
(The author is a teacher at Govt. Higher Secondary School Damhall Anantnag. Views are his own)
