Living Well with SoHum Health: How to Keep Your Resolutions, the Brain Science of Habit

Only about 25% of us keep our New Year’s resolutions for the first 30 days of the year, and after that fewer than 10% of us actually achieve the goal we strive for once Auld Lang Syne has become a champagne-shrouded memory for another year. Rather than falling into the negative trap of frustration and disappointment, arguably a bad habit itself, a look at the brain science of habit may help us do better at breaking a negative pattern or embarking on a positive new path.

Habits are formed through the repetition of actions or thoughts which eventually get filed in a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, an area deep in the brain with many responsibilities including the control of voluntary movements but also associated with addiction when not functioning properly. Once the frontal lobes (which govern executive function in the brain) have finished the active learning phase of a movement, action, thought, etc. the basal ganglia takes over and in a seemingly automatic way, facilitates the deed from that point forward.

When you first learn to ride a bicycle, play a scale on the piano, or recite the multiplication tables, your brain uses a lot of energy to perform the task. Because the brain is always looking for ways to conserve energy, after some 30-60 repetitions, or more depending on the complexity of the habit, the basal ganglia takes over so that the frontal brain can take up other demanding and complex tasks such as putting together your child’s new Lego set.

Once this automatic pattern is in place, it can be quite difficult to change, as those who give up on their resolutions know all too well. While forming a new habit takes as little as 30-60 reps, breaking an unwanted habit can be much more difficult, taking somewhere between 18 and 250 days depending on how long you’ve had the habit and how ingrained in everyday life it may be. Research has shown that it is easier to break a physical habit than a thought habit, such as that automatic frustration at not keeping your resolutions.

For forming a new, positive habit, or discarding an old, negative one, it’s helpful to know the psychology of habit, which has three phases: cue, routine, and reward.

A cue is a signal or trigger that your brain has developed a habitual response to, such as boredom causing you to feel hungry. It can be an internal emotion such as stress causing you to bite your nails. It’s similar to the reason we salivate when we smell dinner cooking or get sleepy when politicians start talking.

Then comes the routine, the action or thought habitually performed in response to the cue. You reach for an unneeded snack when bored, you bite your nails when stressed. Even though the frontal brain “knows” these behaviors are not healthy or reasonable, you are trapped by habit dictated by the basal ganglia.

Then the reward: your “hunger” is satisfied, your stress is diminished, or maybe at least derailed. The reward, whatever it is, completes the habit cycle.

The key to forming a new habit is to replace the routine triggered by the cue, reaping a new and preferably even more valuable reward. Identifying the cue itself can be tricky because the whole situation has become so automatic that you might miss the trigger. When you find yourself biting your nails, you might have to backtrack to realize what caused your stress in the first place. With patience and a little discipline, you begin to recognize your patterns.

Once you can identify the cue, being consistent about the replacement behavior you choose is essential, but not easy. Your rational mind gets why it’s not healthy to eat out of boredom, but your basal ganglia not so much; it’s on auto-pilot. To escape the cycle, it’s more effective to replace the frustration with a new choice, perhaps to have a drink of water or a cup of your favorite tea. Instead of reaching for a bag of chips or biting your nails, go outside and take five deep breaths, text a loving message to your sweetie, or listen to a favorite piece of music. Whatever replacement you choose, the reward needs to be as good as or even better than the reward you got for the negative habit.

In forging a new positive habit, the practice is essentially the same, except instead of replacement, you’re starting from scratch. On the surface, this might seem easier, but I refer you back to those resolutions you probably didn’t keep. If you resolved to walk 30 minutes a day and begged off the first time it was raining at walk-time, you interrupted the repetition needed to relieve the frontal brain of its hard work, and either delayed or thwarted success.

Motivation can play a big role in working with habit, as research shows that a high level of motivation improves your chances of changing your habit. Statistics say that pregnant women are much more successful at quitting cigarettes than the average smoker. Because the brain is wired to perceive and avoid immediate threat to life and limb, fear of harm can be your friend. However, effective as fear may be, it’s not applicable to many situations. That’s where reliance on the science of the brain’s plasticity can provide the foundation of your success. Re-training your neurons to take the roads less traveled takes persistence but frees you of self-judgment.

Support from friends or others dealing with similar patterns can be very helpful and provide an accountability loop that reinforces consistency. Going to meetings or just interacting with others in the same boat buoys your resolve.

Changing the environment that enables negative habits can also be helpful. Remove unhealthy snacks from your cupboard. Paint your nails. In forging new habits, have good rain gear at the ready so you are more likely to take that walk.

When you have a backslide, don’t beat yourself up with a lot of negative internal babble. Know instead that it’s brain science that will get you where you want to be. Channel your inner child and remember how badly you once wanted to ride a two-wheeler and how much freedom that represented. The exact same brain science that gave you balance on that bike can get you to your resolution goals. And reach out to a friend to support their efforts. We’re all in this together.