Habits II: Taking Conscious Control

By Christopher Gibney, LAc, DHom

Habits serve a purpose

The basic mechanism of habits is part of an efficiency function of the sub-conscious mind. It saves you from needing to re-learn how to ride a bike, as if always for the first time. Every action you perform is recorded, not just as a memory, but as a psycho-physical reaction pattern. The more often the action is repeated, the stronger becomes the recorded pattern, and the more numerous and sensitive become the associated cues and triggers. Any repeated action eventually reaches a critical mass of momentum when it becomes a habit; an automatic reaction to all associated triggers. Little or no conscious effort is required from this point forward. That is, until you want to change the habit!


Non-discriminating

If the up side is efficiency, the down side is that it is indiscriminate. Every repeated action is dutifully recorded, including all thoughts and feelings, regardless of whether they are helpful or harmful, creating sub-conscious tapes that are not easily erased. So it is a two-edged sword. Innumerable skill-patterns are stored that run on their own and save you a lot of extra effort, but so are all your reaction patterns, including those developed under stress. Such habits are driven by emotion, making them exponentially stronger. Especially entrenched are those formed in childhood, when you are most vulnerable and least self-aware. These can carry powerful, hair-triggered, life-or-death emotional charges that stay with you as part of your survival arsenal.


Irrational

Whenever situations arise that feel even remotely similar to the original habit-instigating experiences, your psyche shoots first and may never ask questions later. This is especially true if you are feeling threatened. The heritage of never being good enough for your can’t-be-pleased mother may paralyze you whenever you have to “rate”, such as with meeting new people, or in a job interview. Or you may have learned to be a door-mat people-pleaser from years of trying to avoid the wrath of your rage-aholic step-father. Or your self-worth may be welded to being a winner, making you compulsively competitive in every relationship. It does not matter that the habitual reaction may be entirely inappropriate under the current circumstances. Reason has nothing to do with it. Emotions operate within their own reality; if it feels the same, it is the same. And there are no half-throttle emotional reactions; once triggered, they turn all the way on.


Irrepressible, but not unchangeable

As discussed in Part I, attempting to control habitual reactions by suppressing them does not work; the truth will jack-hammer its way out eventually. Repressing them so thoroughly that you no longer even know you have them is far more dangerous; you cannot resolve a problem you do not admit exists. The longer you avoid dealing with it, the more power it has over you. You become like a fundamentalist zealot, who thinks he has exorcised the demons of sexuality, only to have his desires become violently obsessive and distorted as they inevitably force themselves out of the pressure cooker of denial. So how can you reasonably change such deeply engrained irrational patterns? It seems a Catch-22.

Let’s summarize what we know so far about the laws of habit:

  • Habit = Sub-consciously recorded pattern of repeated action
  • Habit Triggers = All associated thoughts, feelings, or circumstances, whether conscious or sub-conscious, rational or irrational
  • Habit Strength = Frequency of Repetition x Emotional Intensity


Dare to be aware

Before you act, you have freedom, but after you act, you have consequences. If you do not like your harvest of consequences, you must begin by looking into the roots of your actions. As already stated, you cannot change that which you do not know or admit exists. To become conscious of the subconscious workings of your mind, you must be willing to face yourself, look within, and purposefully pay attention to your thoughts and feelings as they arise. As you get better at the art of introspection (another article for another time), you are able to detect inner urgings at ever more subtle stages, until eventually you are aware of them in real-time, right at the trigger point. At whatever stage you become aware that a habit pattern has been activated, you are now able to choose a different action track.


Replace reactions with responses

You need to create new associations with the old triggers. Greater self awareness of what sets a habit into motion gives your better judgment a chance to start replacing subconscious reactions with conscious responses. You gradually become less driven by blind compulsions and more directed by purposeful choices. With repetition, the law of habit is activated, and new behavior patterns take the place of the old reactions, with corresponding changes in consequences. Healthier results reinforce the new habits. Plus, those actions we choose to perform consciously take hold much quicker than unconscious reaction patterns. Just as emotional charge magnifies the force of reactionary habits, so does conscious focus greatly accelerate the formation of new response derived habits.


Gauge the resistance

To take hold, a new habit must surpass the power of the old habit. It is necessary to gauge the momentum of an old reaction pattern in order to successfully employ a strategy for displacing it with a response pattern of your choice. Though you can displace a habit much quicker than it was formed, it still takes an amount of time that is proportionate to its strength. The math is simple; how intense is the need that drives the habit, how long has it had you, how often have you performed it, and how strongly do you feel about it? Obviously, those most deeply rooted in need, with the longest history, most repetitions, and strongest emotional charge, have the greatest hold on you. Craft your response strategy accordingly. To have a realistic chance of success, it must answer the core need that drives the old habit (see Part I), and be applied with sufficient force of focus and repetition to fulfill the math of habit formation.


Perseverance works mathematically

Impatience is one of the pit-falls of becoming more aware of the workings of an undesirable habit. It is humiliating to watch yourself once again do something you have resolved not to repeat, or fail to do what you vowed to keep doing. But you must not let discouragement undermine your resolve. You have to expect that a very deeply rooted, intensely charged habit will continue to dog you for awhile (until you master the science of spontaneous healing; more in Part III). If you just as doggedly pick up your chosen response-behavior each time with calm determination and purposeful focus, the mathematics of habit formation will work for you at an exponential rate. Less intense effort is required the further you proceed, until the critical mass is reached when the new habit runs on its own, as long as you keep fueling it with repetitions. Thus good habits provide a foundation of support that frees your attention and will power to achieve your higher goals.