LESSON #6: CREATE NEW HABITS VIDEO

https://youtu.be/JXas5NbMRe8?feature=shared

Smoking takes up a lot of time in your day. So, when you choose to quit, you’ll get some time back. At first, you may feel a bit lost about how to fill your new found time. Try not to be too hard on yourself – everyone who quits struggles with creating new routines.

To the extent that you can, try to reframe this challenge as an opportunity. This is your chance to replace smoking with new, healthier habits and activities. Some days this may feel easier to do than others. But, keep going. Just as it takes time for a new home to feel like home, eventually your new activities will become your new normal.

You may find that the people and places you choose have a big impact on your habits and routines. We have a tendency to mimic our friends’ or coworkers’ behaviors. When you spend time with people or in certain environments, they “rub off” on you. Environmental cues – these people and places – play a large role in steering your actions and choices. So, choose your environments wisely.

<aside> 📌 INTERACTIVE COMPONENT

Think of some of the people and places that influence your life. Now, grab two index cards, one for people and one for places. On each index card, make 2 lists: one of the people or places whose influence will be supportive of your new smoke-free or vape-free lifestyle and one of the people or places that are less likely to be supportive. It can be hard to distance yourself from the less helpful bunch, so consider being honest with people, letting them know it’s not them you are avoiding, it’s the pressure their smoking or vaping puts on your tobacco sobriety. You might even say something like:

“I might need to press the pause button on our hanging out right now. My goal of quitting smoking/vaping is important to me, and your understanding means the world to me. Thanks!”

Next, make a commitment to avoid spending time in places or with people who might get in the way of your quit goal. Ask yourself:

"Where can I go and who can I be with instead?"

By shifting your environments, you’ll have a much stronger chance at sustaining your new healthier habits over time.

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Habit Loops

In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explains that habit is more than a repetitive behavior. It’s a habit loop made up of three sequential components.

These three parts are the Reminder (Trigger or Cue), the Routine (the behavior) and the Reward (the incentive). Habit reminders can be internal or external. Internal reminders include emotions, memories, or thought patterns. External reminders can be places, people, events, time, smells, sounds, even colors, or a blend of factors. To change a habit like smoking, you need to better understand reminders (triggers/cues) and replace your routine.

• The Reminder is an environmental or internal trigger that provokes you to learn a behavior. An example of a trigger is the chime you hear when you sit in your car and insert the key. That sound triggers you to put on your seatbelt (the behavior). Hunger pangs cue you to eat, and for some people, depression or stress triggers the urge to drink an alcoholic beverage or eat a pint of ice cream.
• The Routine is the actual action we commonly think of as the habit. This learned behavior occurs automatically, free from a specific goal or task. It may be as simple as always tying the right shoe before the left shoe, or doing an activity—like showering—in a sequential manner (get wet, shampoo, rinse, condition, shave, wash body, rinse, dry).
• The Reward, or incentive, makes behavior stick. The “high” that runners feel after a 6-mile run is enough to make them want to repeat the experience. Even though smokers know lighting up isn’t good for them, they still get an immediate blast of endorphins the moment they inhale. Fast-food companies have been known to engineer food to hit your tongue with salt and fat in the quickest way possible, so the taste will trigger the brain’s reward centers. Rewards teach the brain that the behavior in question promotes pleasure.

Transforming Old Habits

To change a habit, find a way to create the same cue and reward by using a different behavior.

Step 1:

• Identify the Reminder-Routine-Reward Loop - Multiple reminders and rewards can coexist.

Step 2:

• Change the Routine - Maintain the Same Reminder and equally compelling reward.