By DR MOHD FIRDAUS BIN A BAKAR.
Habits are like double-edge sword. Bad habits can cut you down as easily as good habits can build you up. At individual level, we all desire to make positive changes in our life and it feels right to do it especially at the dawn of a new year.
A “new year, new me” vibes always come to mind when the New Year’s Eve is looming. However, we always find that our new year resolutions are short lasting.
It is a recurring problem for me personally until I experimented this mini habit approach just over a year ago and it really works wonders, almost magical in helping me to form new habits.
In his book, “Mini habits: smaller habits, bigger results”, Stephen Guys explained the scientific discovery on how our brain works when it comes to habit formation, and the strategies we can utilize to effectively form long-lasting habits.
Our pre-frontal cortex and basal ganglia are two parts of our brain that play an important role when it comes to habit formation. The pre-frontal cortex, our conscious mind acts as the “manager” as it can weight the good and the bad of doing anything, and help us making decision accordingly.
For example, it knows that running 20 minutes a day is good for your health, and hence encourage you to start running. The main issue with our pre-frontal cortex is that it tires quite easily and depends heavily on our motivation. This explains why we tend to give in when our motivation is running low.
The basal ganglia, our subconscious mind on the other hand, works like a “copier machine”. It will continue to repeat any habits on automated mode, hence conserving a lot of energy. This allows you to keep repeating any habits consistently as it does not tire as easily as its counterpart, the pre-fontal cortex.
The main issue with the basal ganglia is that it cannot “think” for you, hence unable to differentiate between the good and the bad. This is why we keep repeating our bad habits as well as our good habits.
By understanding the way our brain works in habit formation, we can utilize few strategies to effectively form new habits. This is when the mini habit approach comes into play. By putting a small daily requirement for our new habits, we can overcome the problem with the volatility of our motivation.
For example, a mini habit of “read two pages of book a day” requires a very small to almost no motivation to perform, hence we can still perform the habits even on the days when our motivation is running low.
The most important thing in habit formation is to be able to do it consistently long enough until our subconscious mind takes over. Some studies suggested that to achieve the point of automaticity, one needs to perform the habits for at least six weeks.
However, the duration is really depending on the difficulty of habits you are trying to do. To form a habit of drinking a glass of water every morning might take a shorter time than trying to form a habit of running 10 minutes every day.
Here are some examples of mini habits. Reading 10 pages of book every day can be minified to just reading 2 pages a day, running 10 minutes a day can be minified to brisk walking for 2 minutes a day, and doing 10 push-up a day can be minified to just one push-up a day.
You can be creative in creating your own mini habits, but the idea is to keep it small enough that you can do it within two minutes. The aim is not the size of the habits but to successfully do them consistently long enough until they become parts of you.
I hope by applying this mini habit approach, you too can effectively form long-lasting habits that will lead to remarkable results. Finally, I wish you all the best and happy new year!
