5 Strategies to Internalize Your New Habits

Bad habits refer to those “habits” that people say they want to stop even while indulging in them (e.g., overeating, dwelling on negative thoughts, episodic rage, and chronic procrastination). The main problem with most bad habits is that the costs occur in the future, whereas the pleasures from them occur in the present.

Behavioral economics views the individual as a divided self with conflicting preferences. That is, at time 1, the person chooses indulgence; at time 2, this person wishes that he had made a different choice. For example, ice cream may seem like a bad idea when considered a few days before it appears at a birthday party. Yet when the occasion for indulgence comes closer in time, the immediate benefit of indulging in ice cream is more appealing than the long-term potential for negative effects. To maintain good health, people often need to deal with conflicting desires, such as wanting to lose weight and wanting to eat a delicious dessert.

The following describes a few evidence-based strategies to internalize a new habit.

1. Know your cues.

Cues are the context where you tend to engage in bad behavior. Temptations are triggered by situational cues (stimuli), by means of Pavlovian conditioning, that promise immediate satisfaction at the cost of important long-term rewards. Avoiding temptation requires anticipating situations where unwanted desires might emerge and taking proactive steps to ensure that one doesn’t succumb to the problematic desire. For example, it is recommended people who want to stop drinking or smoking avoid where these activities go on. It is easier to change our environment than to change our habits.

2. Forming an if-then plan.

Formulate an “if-then” plan to connect a certain triggering situation with a concrete action. “When the waiter is taking my order in my favorite restaurant tomorrow, I will order a salad.” “If I find myself checking Twitter, I’ll get up from my desk immediately.” “If people mistreat me, then I will take a deep breath and count to 10.” Forming an if-then plan automates goal striving by strategically linking critical situations (e.g., encountering a temptation) to goal-directed responses (e.g., coping with temptations). Repeated practices strengthen the association between the specific situational cues and the intended response.

3. Fight emotion with emotion.

Individuals may train themselves to care less about certain desires, or even to find them repulsive, by associating them with vivid, disgusting images (e.g., fatty foods with images of clogged arteries), and conversely by pairing positive images with delayed-gratification actions (receiving an award, achieving success, etc.). For example, someone with substance use disorder struggling to maintain abstinence may cultivate an emotional revulsion to alcohol.

4. The power of pause.

Pausing is essential to the process of reflection. If we are mindful of our emotions, we can make the following choice: Do we want to act upon the craving or anger, or do we simply want to observe it. A pause can be created by a walk or 20 minutes of meditation. Psychologist Rollo May equates pause to freedom. That is, freedom is the capacity to pause in the face of stimuli from many directions at once and, in this pause, to choose our response.

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5. Create a new pattern of behavior.

While the physical independence of today and tomorrow is real enough, the fact remains that actions today affect actions tomorrow. Psychologist Howard Rachlin argues that self-control comes from choosing “patterns” of behavior over time rather than individual “acts.” The decision to stop smoking is, in effect, a decision to begin a pattern of behavior. Not smoking tonight makes it easier not to smoke tomorrow and not smoking tomorrow makes it easier not to smoke the next day, and so on.

In sum, these strategies are tools that enable individuals to stick to a new habit. They are attempts to reduce the power of momentary desires.