An unconscious crack of the knuckles, an automatic grab for the salt shaker, a seemingly
innocuous eye roll in front of the boss. Bad habits are way too easy to come by
and, despite whatever quick-remedy self-help cure-all is blowing up the Internet
this week, often way too hard to break.
Whether it's that innocent flip of the hair or
something much more insidious, behaviors learned over time — and reinforced time
and time again — mostly can't be changed in a couple weeks. That was the major
takeaway of a study done in 2009, the results of which appeared in the European Journal of Social
Psychology.
Certainly, bad habits can be changed. That's the
good news. People stop smoking, give up chocolate, get off the couch to start
exercising and stop torturing their poor knuckles all the time. Good habits can
be formed to replace bad ones, too. In fact, switching out nasty for nice is
something scientists and psychologists have been preaching for
years.
But changing a lifetime of cola-guzzling, for
just an example, in a couple weeks? In 21 days?
Well, it's possible. Maybe. But you'd better
plan for it to take a lot longer than that.
"I think that's one of the biggest problems,
when people think they can do anything in three weeks," Amy Morin, a
psychotherapist, clinical social worker and author of "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't
Do," told MNN. "I think that can set us up
for failure."
Number 13 on Morin's list — which first appeared
as a blog post on lifehack.org, then went practically viral in other places,
with more than 10 million total views — is especially pertinent when it comes to
breaking bad habits. Mentally strong people, Morin insists at the bottom of her list, don't expect immediate
results.
"When you think about it, even from a logical
level, it makes no sense," Morin said of the 21 days to a miracle movement. "We
really like our habits. [Breaking them] requires a lot of hard work. I think we
underestimate how hard it's going to be. And we overestimate our abilities [to
break the habits]."
The paper in the European
Journal of Social Psychology studied the length of time it took participants in
a study to replace bad habits with good ones. The fastest was an astonishing 18
days. But the average time to change, among the participants who self-reported
their results, was not three weeks but closer to three months (66 days). The
high end of the spectrum, for replacing bad with good, was a whopping 254
days.
So someone expecting to
change a life habit in 21 days — no matter how motivated that someone might be,
or who that someone might be — is probably expecting a little too much. Still,
huge numbers of books (just check out this
Amazon list) all but promise that it
can be done in 21 days or so by following a few easy steps. And, of course, by
shelling out a few bucks for the book. Plus shipping and
handling.
"The more you do it,"
Patricia A. Farrell, PhD, a clinical psychologist in Englewood, New Jersey, and
author of "How
to Be your Own Therapist," told WebMD,
"the more difficult it is to get rid if it."
It's hard to pinpoint where the
idea that it takes just 21 days to kick a bad habit began. Many cite a 1960 work
from a plastic surgeon, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, who is regarded as a pioneer in the
self-help book industry. His book, "Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More
Living Out of Life," centers on improving a person's self-image. Some of his
advice for breaking bad habits: "To change a habit, make a conscious decision,"
he said, "then act out the new behavior."
Ahhh, if only it were that
simple.
A lot of psychological
and biological reasons exist to explain why it's so difficult to lose a bad
habit. One important one: Some of our most enjoyable or satisfying actions (say,
reaching for the salt or pulling off that oh-so-sweet crack of the knuckles)
trigger the production of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is present when we do
it over and over again, creating the habit, Dr. Russell Poldrack, a
neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, says in this National
Institute of Health feature. And
dopamine creates a craving to repeat the behavior. Again and again and
again.
So even when the behavior
itself does not provide
the satisfaction we crave — that salt
just isn't making those fries taste any better, and that knuckle-crack was just
okay — the body is telling you to keep going for it anyway.
It's important to keep in mind,
as experts everywhere will tell you, that kicking a habit, even the nastiest of
habits, is doable. Whole books — heck, whole libraries — are available to
explain the steps that must be taken to break a bad habit and keep it broken.
First off: acknowledging that there is a bad habit. Writing down your goals.
And "put your gym shoes where the remote is," Morin suggests for a start to
kicking that TV addiction and getting in shape.
The better news is that
trashing those bad habits and replacing them with good ones can be absolutely
transformational. Even if it might take a little more than three weeks to do
it.
By John Donovan
By John Donovan
With thanks to MNN
