The power of a habit

Excellence in sports is a matter of habit. An athlete starts out with a small goal and works towards it. As the goals become bigger, other forces or persons with conflicting agenda get in the way, and stronger habits have to be formed to get increasing results. Researchers like Malcolm Gladwell have written that 10,000 hours of practice in a given field (including sports) guarantees that one becomes world class. That much practice definitely creates good habits.

Habits are primarily created to free up space in the brain for more important activities. We basically program part of our brain’s functions to tackle tasks that don’t require higher brain functions so that we can focus on more critical or creative tasks. In other words, repetitive, perhaps even machinelike things we do regularly can pretty much take care of themselves. It’s similar to a coach delegating warm-ups and drills to an assistant so he can focus on diagramming plays for an upcoming game. Duties that are considered menial or routine are passed on to free up more brain matter for heavier work.

In an article for the current issue of Scientific American, Prof. Ann Graybiel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and brain scientist Kyle Smith of Dartmouth College explain the neurological factors that influence the creation and imprinting of habits on the brain. It is, admittedly, still one of the areas that science struggles with. The pair also analyze the difficulties of changing a habit, particularly if, as earlier mentioned, it is already “delegated” to another part of the brain and figuratively falls below the radar of our own consciousness.

“The more routine a behavior is, the less we are aware of it. We lose the fully alert surveillance of that behavior,” Graybiel and Smith reflect. “Did I actually turn off the stove before I left the house? This loss of surveillance not only can interfere with our daily functioning, it can also allow bad habits to creep up on us.”

How do habits form? In technical neurological terms, the prefrontal cortex communicates with the striatum in the brain, and the striatum recruits the help of the midbrain to access dopamine, the substance which aids in learning and helps us assign value to goals we consciously or unconsciously set. When we continuously repeat a behavior, a strong feedback loop forms between the sensorimotor cortex and striatum in our brains. The routine becomes a single unit, or chunk and becomes reliant in dopamine from another part of the brain, as sort of reward system. After this, it became easier for the infralimbic cortex to step in to deepen the imprinting process for this series of actions which is now just one chunk of behavior.

How many times have you seen someone light up a cigarette without even realizing it? Do you remember driving home last night? Do you even think about which leg goes into your pants first? These are some of the routine actions which we commit to habit and become chunks in our brains. And the more we think about it, the more we realize that our life may be running on automatic. This is where a great deal of change can begin, if we are aware of all the little things we have ingrained into our behavior at even that miniscule a level.

There are many sports that thrive on beneficial habits. An extreme example would be a bodybuilder immediately before and during competition. They avoid sweets, and barely even drink water, risking dehydration just to appear more cut for the judges. Imagine if, out of habit, one of them had a big meal or even a chocolate bar or doughnut. That one act would practically throw all of their preparation out the window. Bodybuilding is one sport that is so intense, the best can only compete in two to three major competitions a year. It is that draining. But often the habit – like eating just that one doughnut – is harder to overcome than we think, because we’ve initially convinced ourselves that the consequences are positive.

“Habits become so ingrained that we perform them even when we do not want to, in part because of what are called ‘reinforcement contingencies’ “ the research explains. “These consequences of our actions - the contingencies - push our future behavior one way or another... By monitoring our actions internally and adding a positive weight to them, the brain reinforces specific behaviors, shifting actions from deliberate to habitual – even when we know we should not gamble or overeat.”

The reason it is so hard to fight established habits – good or bad – is that they have become labeled or stamped as standard behavior in our brains. It would take a similar but more difficult process for us to supercede them. In other words, the habit has somehow been transformed from software to almost hardware in the wiring of the brain. Since we have convinced ourselves that the habit is of value or offers some form of reward, our brain makes it a part of us, almost. That is the challenge. That is why some researchers insist that it takes 28 days or more to change a habit, because we are overriding or writing over an existing program that has been deemed close to essential by our minds, often without our knowing it.

So if you are driven to start exercising but find it hard to get up early in the morning, or can’t resist that extra slice of chocolate cake, know that you are in control. If you stick with it long enough, you can overcome your own internal programming. Remember that you are worth the effort, and you can turn your life around.