It’s easy to assume people don’t like to suffer. People want to be happy, right? I mean, what kind of people would choose to harm themselves over and over?

Tons of people do this, it turns out! How else do you believe addictions are created in the first place?

Yes, the original poor choice was long ago. However, by choosing not to fix your bad habit, you are choosing to suffer.

It sounds harsh, but it’s nothing compared the the suffering you choose by refusing to change!

I have read how people with addictions are nearly powerless to stop their bad habits. (Hang on — we will discuss the power to change in a later post.) This may be mostly true. If there is momentum, it will take much active energy to turn things around.

Once habits are formed, they require very little brain power to maintain. It’s pretty much following a script without thinking.

But let’s not call you a victim just yet. There is still plenty of personal accountability you need to accept for your situation.

For you to create this bad habit, this addiction, you had to make a poor choice many, many times. Over and over, choosing the wrong path each time.

Even if this is obvious to you, the next part may not be.

By choosing not to change, you choose to suffer.

Do you agree with this concept? Speak your mind in the comments.

Think about it. The choice — and the power — are yours, even now.

When we discussed habits previously, we learned they are composed of a cue (trigger), routine, and reward. Though the routine is the part we think about, it is really the reward which drives us to do the bad habit.

So what is your reward?

It is what you hope to receive as the result of your routine. You need to discover your reward to stand a good chance of changing your behavior. This drives the habit in the first place.

Let’s look at an example.

A young woman moves to a new city and is spending a ton of money on food and entertainment. She can’t afford this lifestyle and she knows it.

Determine the cue, the routine, and the reward. Where does overspending fit in?

Since something else likely triggers the desire to spend money, it is not the cue. We don’t fully understand the reward yet, so we can’t know the cue. Let’s leave the cue for last.

Overspending might not be the reward either, since there may be an ulterior motive behind this behavior.

Overspending, in this example, is the routine — the bad habit which she wants to change. It may help to think of the routine as a symptom of the root problem, the reward.

So what is her reward? This gets tricky.

Some digging reveals she is very lonely in the new city. She finds herself alone in her apartment too often and doesn’t have any friends yet. So she goes out for dinner and a show to be around people.

The cue, then, might be seeing a couple hold hands on the sidewalk or walking by a restaurant full of people.

Did you catch that?

Overspending is not the problem! The routine is the path to a reward. In this case, it is social interaction. Her desire for relationships (the reward) leads her to overspend (the routine).

Instead, she could use loneliness (the cue) as a reminder to call an old friend or join a club which shares her interests. And this will lead her to satisfy her desire (craving) for social interaction.

Does that make sense?

Changing a habit will be difficult without understanding your reward. Otherwise, it is easy to get stuck on the routine and miss the desire behind it.

Once you understand the reward, you have more leverage to change the habit.

For extra credit, read this article by Charles Duhigg. His example explains this concept further.

We now realize there’s a hole in that road, and it leads you right into a bad habit. Yet even though you are more aware of your triggers (cues) and don’t do your bad habit every time, you still end up falling into the same hole.

In short, being aware of your triggers is definitely not a long-term solution. It will help drastically at first as you realize you can avoid them, but only for a short while.

What then, is a good long-term solution? How do you kick a bad habit, for good?!

Instead of not doing something — avoiding your triggers and carefully walking around the hole in the road — why not do something else?

Being aware of your triggers will help you to avoid them. But it’s incredibly hard to not do anything. Not doing something is similar to creating a vacuum by squeezing ketchup from a plastic bottle. The result is a vacuum — one which will is resolved by deforming the bottle or by letting in air to take its place. Either way, something displaces the ketchup no longer in the bottle.

It is incredibly difficult to stop habits. However, it is much easier to change an existing habit. (Feel free to confirm this with your own research.) Specifically, the most effective way to change a bad habit is to find another routine (and sometimes trigger) to yield the same reward.

Again, the best way to change a habit is to switch it.

Let’s say you want to stop watching TV. You could put an interesting book by the couch so you will see it when you sit down (the trigger). (Additionally, you could hide the remote or put a picture in front of the TV.) This way, reading the book would naturally replace your previous routine of watching TV.

Do you notice how both reading and TV have the same reward? In this case, it is mental stimulation.

This is important! The reward — the desire you want to fulfill — may not need to change. Often there are healthy ways of achieving the same reward.

To review: The routine goes. The reward stays.

Don’t just avoid the bad habit, but displace your bad routine with a better. There’s a hole in that road. So take another one instead!

This is much more reasonable than not doing something bad.

But wait — how do you figure out a habit’s reward? Tune in to the next post to find out.