Habit (re)Formation
Hello and welcome to my first blog post ever! I will keep it decently short and minimal. It is common for me to ask my clients what their goals and plans are for the new year, so I’ve also thought about my own. This year, I plan to focus on habit (re)formation, which is a fancy term for changing automatic behaviours. I put the (re) in there because it’s sort of unlearning old habits in the process and (re)placing them with better ones. Recently, I got a speeding ticket in the mail which I was expecting since I knew the moment I got flashed. I was going 60 km/h in a 50 zone close to home for no reason… meaning I wasn’t in a rush to get home or anything. It’s purely a bad habit that I’ve had forever and I don’t really know where it came from. But when it comes to habit (re)formation, it doesn’t really matter because Insight is not necessary for behavioural change. Because I come from a CBT background, I’m sure my speeding habit was somehow learned and reinforced overtime. I’ve gotten the occasional punishment in the past (speeding tickets) where I immediately vowed never to speed again, but clearly it didn’t last for long. Intention is not enough for behavioural change maintenance. Literally I know it’s happening when it’s happening. You must put it into practice! What is practice? It is basic repetition. Most of the time, it’s unconscious like many habitual things we do are, so in the words of Carl Jung, I needed to make the unconscious conscious and become more aware of when I’m speeding in real-time and then practice slowing down. Again, notice when I’m speeding in real-time, and then practice slowing down. Again, notice when… (like my repetition practice?). So far, so good. I keep witnessing my habitual tendency to speed since I’m making it more conscious, but each time I notice I just slow it down and I truly believe that by Q3 going the speed limit will be my new unconscious habit. This is an example of focusing on the behavioural goal without getting too caught up in the whys and wheres and beating myself up each time I catch myself speeding. To sum up, habit (re)formation includes 1) setting the intention 2) becoming consciously aware 3) repetition/practice
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. I know it’s a very simplistic example and that other habits have more complexity.
New blog posts will be quarterly (March 1, June 1, Sept 1, Dec 1).