Have you ever realized that we often pick up bad habits more quickly, and it takes time to adopt good habits in life?
Habit and behavior changes are essential for shaping our personality. Whenever we are spending our quality time scrolling social media, engaging in physical activities, maintaining a schedule for book reading, or engaging with pets. All these activities shape our personality in more depth than we realize. Even our small daily activities guide our whole personality. So, it’s necessary to evaluate our daily habits and behavior for a healthy personality.
Before understanding those issues, lets familiar ourselves with some terms, with definitions.
What is habit?
From a psychological perspective, habit is a learned behavior and mental processes that have become part of daily life via repetition of the actions. The habits become consistent after repetition of that specific behavior in some specific situations. These thoughts require attention and consciousness in beginning, but after some repetitions, they become more practical and less attentive. For example, driving is a habit; in the learning process, we pay more attention to vehicle functionalities, and gradually this attention disappears with more exposure and experience.
What is behavior?
Habit and behavior seem the same to some extent, but they differ from situation to situation. Behavior is the response to a new condition (stimuli), requiring more attention to tackle situations. Behavior is shaped by our choices, as it includes our awareness and planning to handle the situations. For example, we have a conscious choice either stay cool or burn out in an uneasy moment. We have a conscious choice to
Habit acquisition
Human habits can be learned for various psychological purposes. The mind is a non-stop thinking machine. Whenever we feel bored or empty, the mind seeks some activities for pleasure and attention-grabbing. Mostly, we engage ourselves with electronic gadgets, especially when we start to scroll through our mobile for a short time of pleasure and attachments. Gradually, this activity became a daily habit via daily practice.
Firstly, our mind tells us that we are free and need some activity. After that, we engage ourselves with mobile scrolling (in most cases). Then we repeat this behavior often. Finally, this mobile scrolling becomes a daily habit.
The brain’s role in Habit formation.
Psychologists suggest that all habits and actions are related to the reward system. Especially for pleasure moments. Every part of our mind performs specific functionalities. Some parts monitor reward responses, and some of the parts generate emotional responses. For example, the prefrontal lobe of our mind is responsible for decision-making and the self-controlling system. This part is really essential for habitual changes.
The dopamine chemical is the main source of the negative habits. Once the temporary negative habits start to release dopamine, the mind demands more amount of dopamine. To fulfil such a chemical, we automatically engage ourselves with habits which release dopamine, and we found a temporary pleasure for the moment.
Why are bad habits often developed?
Our mind also prefers easy and quick results compared to future long-term outcomes. Bad habits provide immediate pleasure rewards, temporary stress relief situations, emotional escape from threatening situation and also give us a dopamine simulation for happier moments.
For example, junk food gives instant pleasure, but affects our health negatively. Alcohol also gives a temporary pleasure. Apart from that, social media provides temporary entertainment, excessive use of which changes our behavior as well.
The brain always prefers instant rewards, rather than long-term benefits. And mostly the negative habits can learn in a short time.
The psychology of behavior modification.
The empiricists see behavior as a learned process from the environment through our sensory organs. While rationalists rely on our rational thinking for learning processes. Albert Bandura, in his Social learning theory say that we learn behavior, attitude, and emotions through modeling and observing others. For that, both sensory experiences and mental processes are important features.
For changing our behavioral patterns, we need persistent control over our actions. Behavioral can’t changeable via inner motivation; it needs regular practices and discipline as well. Behavior can also be changed by changing our environment. For example, by changing our company, avoiding toxic relationships.
Sometimes our negative self-perception also leads to a negative behavioral pattern. For that, always try to be grateful for what you already have, instead of wishing for more and more opportunities. This practice is essential for positive mental health and creativity.
Why are habits and behaviors so hard to break?
Sometimes, habits become an integral part of our personality via continuous repetition. That can’t be changed easily. To change such habits, we need strong discipline and patience. Furthermore, negative behavioral patterns provide instant pleasure with less mental effort. That’s why the mind itself is not willing to change those behaviors and habits. When we try to change our negative behavior, the instant rewards disappear, that make our mind uncomfortable and makes the behavior difficult to change.
Is Habit and behaviors changeable?
Yes, the negative habits and behavior are changeable at any stage of life. For that, must have a deep introspection of the negative habits and behaviors we possess. Here are some steps for changing our habits and behavior.
Identify your bad habits
This required a deep introspection of our negative attitude and behavioral patterns.
Start with small tasks
After identifying our negative attitudes, we need to make changes to small tasks and activities. We can’t abruptly avoid alcohol; try to minimize the dose. For social media usage, try to limit the time for social media platforms.
Use scheduling
Create clear plans and follow up on them
Create an alternative
Instead of removing the negative habits, it’s easy to replace them with a positive one. For example, we can engage ourselves in sports or music to minimize social media use.
Consistency.
Behavioral changes need a high level of patience and consistency. Without consistency its impossible to replace negative thoughts with positive ones.
Measure the progress.
Day-to-day monitoring will guide you on the progress. That’s essential for evaluation and inner motivation as well.
Conclusion
Attitude, habit, and behavior are the main components that shape our whole personality. Habits are learned phenomenans via repetition of the actions in a specific social context. Behavior, on the other hand, refers to our planned actions and emotions for a specific stimulus. Habit is an automatic and unconscious action of the body, while behavior requires deep planning for such actions.
We often learn bad habits quickly because those habits provide instant pleasure. On the other hand, good habits require a longer period of time to achieve such benefits. Our mind refers to quick, pleasurable responses instead of long-term benefits.
Habits and behaviors are not permanent components of our personality; they can modify in any stage of age. Behavioral modifications need deep introspection of our own actions and thoughts. To change your negative attitude, it is first important to identify the cause of that negative attitude. After that, negative attitudes can be reduced by consistently adopting alternative attitudes. Always try to start with smaller tasks to change a negative behavior.
Changing doesn’t mean completely changing yourself in a single day. Changing minor attitudes plays a huge role, as small acts shape our whole personality.
