Habits

Last summer, I found a great bargain in the dollar bin at a sidewalk sale: a Christmas rug that plays “Jingle Bells” for at least thirty seconds whenever someone steps on it. Placed in the front hallway of our home, its increasingly annoying notes rang through the house frequently. When the delightful Elizabeth Holiday came to visit, the toddler discovered her power over the music, and went out of her way to activate its mechanism as often as she could.

Bah-humbuggers that we are, Larry and I got in the habit of stepping over the rug so we didn’t have to hear the melody one more time, as its one-horse open sleigh was getting on our last nerves. Now, however, two weeks after the offending rug was consigned to the basement storage closet, we’re still in the habit of stepping over the mat that sits in the same place. I also witnessed Elizabeth jumping on the replacement rug with a quizzical look, wondering what happened to the music.

Habits. Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit,” explains that every habit starts with a psychological pattern called a “habit loop,” a three-part process. First, there’s a cue, or trigger – in our case, the annoyance at hearing a tinny rendition of “Jingle Bells” one more time, which tells the brain to go into automatic mode and allow for a behavior to unfold.

“Then there’s the routine, which is the behavior itself,” stepping over the rug. “That’s what we think about when we think about habits,” says Duhigg, “the behavior.” The third step is the reward, something your brain likes that helps it remember the “habit loop” in the future. When we stepped over the rug, we were rewarded by the silence.

I had to chuckle at an 2012 NPR interview with Duhigg, for they used the example of parallel parking to introduce the topic of habit. “At first, parallel parking was difficult and you had to devote a lot of mental energy to it. But after you grew comfortable with parallel parking, it became much easier –almost habitual, you could say.” Never worked out that way for me, as I’d drive blocks to avoid having to parallel park. Now, though, I’ve got a back-up camera in my car so I’m good to go!

Habits, of course, can be positive or negative. Brushing our teeth on a regular basis is a great habit to maintain throughout our lives, but biting our nails or chewing on our hair are not so good. The good news is that it’s never too late to break a habit. “Habits,” Duhigg tells us, “are malleable throughout your entire life. But we also know that the best way to change a habit is to understand its structure – that once you tell people about the cue and the reward and you force them to recognize what those factors are in a behavior, it becomes much, much easier to change.”

We often use the advent of a new year to commit to changing our habits, either stopping familiar ones or developing new ones, and often wonder why we have a hard time doing so. As I learned from Duhigg, one of the problems is that our environment tends to reinforce habits. Have you ever noticed that when you’re on vacation your habits may not seem so entrenched? That’s because when the cues change, the patterns of behavior are broken up. That’s why the best time to quit smoking or start an exercise routine is on vacation.

My singing Christmas rug proves how quickly and unintentionally new habits can be formed. It’s also caused me to ask what positive habits I might develop if, instead of trying to avoid the annoyances of life, I step toward a habit loop to enrich my life and the lives of others. As British writer James Allen understood, “The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a character. Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.” It may not be time for vacation, but perhaps it is time to do some habit-sowing.