Kick the Habit

Think Tank #20

People love routine.

If you work with children, you learn quickly to establish a routine—it makes them behave better.

Elderly people thrive on routine, also, and can get pretty worked up when their routine is disturbed.

Hell, this doesn’t even apply just to humans. If you have a dog that’s not doing well, one of the first things that’s usually asked of you is whether you have a routine, and if not, how soon you can start one.

It makes them feel safe, especially because they have to depend on others to survive. By knowing what to expect, and having the rewards of seeing their expectations fulfilled, they know that everything is okay.

Routines even offer comfort to the self-sufficient adult. They’re simply efficient—they reduce the amount of choices that overwhelm one’s day. Knowing what time to wake up, when to go to the store, what to eat, when to go to sleep—this can make life a lot easier, a lot simpler.

Of course, if you’re not satisfied with your life, routines can be very limiting. Maybe your routine is to come home after work, have a glass of wine with dinner, and then lay down on the couch watching TV. Fine, if you’ve done everything you want to do for the day. But let’s say you always tell yourself that you want to read more, or go to the gym more, or do anything more—if that’s the case, then your routine is no longer serving you.

It’s not easy to change a habit. Breaking an existing one is only possible if you replace it with something else, and even when you’ve chosen your course of action, making the switch involves a decent amount of practice and discomfort before it starts to feel ‘natural.’

It seems that our brains are wired to make habits, but not to break them. It makes sense, if you think about it. If our primitive, biological goal is to avoid danger, then doing the same thing you’ve been doing (which hasn’t yet killed you) seems to be a safe bet.

As always, if we are to thrive as humans, we need to override our wiring.

Take a look at the routines you’ve been following. You have a few, even if you’ve never consciously chosen them.

Are they serving you? Or are you better off trying something else?

It’s New Year’s Day. Whether you like the custom or not, change is in the air. Energy is contagious, and people are starting diets and exercise plans, starting projects, kicking habits.

Of course, the only way to change your life is to change your habits.

So try it. Shake up your routine, and stick to it for a while, until doing the new thing doesn’t suck anymore. See what happens.