SOCIAL INFLUENCE, HABIT CHANGE AND WHAT’S MISSING! (ISSUE 98)

By Diane Gold

What is it with social influence and habit change? For habit change, it seems very obvious that people like support. And that more people change a habit using a buddy system or enlisting an accountability partner or group. This article will focus on what about groups helps us and what’s basic to success.

THE MOTIVATION WE GET FROM GROUPS

When thinking about social influence and habit change, I think of doing physical fitness like tai chi, going to the gym, going to a weight watch group, going to a rehab center. The function of each of these group activities is motivation of some kind. Let’s look at how the group motivates us.

1) We are social creatures and can enjoy being in the company of others.

2) Because we are the ultimate creatures of habit, a new group setting can be a safer environment than one we have been around when acting out our old habit.

3) We can get courage from hearing that someone else understands us, whether we are talking about drugs, weight loss or anything else.

4) Being with others is a big distraction that can assist us when breaking in a new habit. After all, when we are alone, we are our sole distraction, and the only person on whom we rely; but, in a group setting, we have more social influence keeping us on track.

5) Because we are so impressionable, for the most part, we pick up the habits of others. Therefore, if we are around people who are productive, we will be more inclined to be productive.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

We should note that the group experience is not everyone’s preference. If we look at how Americans spend their time, according to the America Time Use Survey, done by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, a similar percentage of people work out alone as together. But this statistic is not specifically for habit change activity, so I would suspect if there were a time use survey done for people who are changing a habit, there would be more groupies than soloists.

SUCCESS RATE

When we look at the amount of people who go back to their old habits after six months, a year, five years; it can be disheartening. There’s an interesting statistical article from 2004 about how treatment doesn’t work at:

http://www.soberforever.net/currenttreatdoesnt.cfm.

Unfortunately, after writing about how treatment doesn’t work, the article’s publisher contradicts itself by saying its treatment facility has a success rate 30% higher than anyone else.

It is fairly accepted that most people who become residents in rehabilitation centers succeed between 3% and 10% of the time to maintain their habit change. The data at centers is usually compiled without scientific method, and, because individuals only answer survey questions to arrive at conclusive data, it is extremely difficult to maintain study integrity.

SIDEBAR

This fact reminds me of another modality whose studies are sporadic, don’t always use scientific method and are small. It’s how tai chi, which saves lives, does its magic. Studies that involve mind-body answers and compare one’s lifestyle before and after are very expensive. To conduct a nice-sized primary study (one that uses fresh data to arrive at conclusions vs. a secondary study that analyzes and interprets a primary study), it can cost $250,000 and that would be for a small mind-body study.

WHAT’S MISSING?

So, what’s missing from all these programs that include one-to-one therapy, group therapy, peer group therapy, tai chi, chi kung, yoga, massage, sauna, meditation, organic vegan food and more?

I’m going to repeat what makes up a habit: a cue, a behavior and the resulting reward. This habit model doesn’t change. So what are we shooting for?

When we go into a program and do all the therapies mentioned above, we have one purpose. It is to change a habit. This requires that a new system be put in place. To build this, we must change the mind and develop skill and build our foundation. After all, we need to have something to hold on to when our urges show up in order to direct us to execute our new behaviors we have developed.

BUILDING FOUNDATION

Let’s use how tai chi changes us since I have seen it first-hand in many hundreds of people. Any mind-body work or other creative discipline can do it as long as the instructor understands how foundation is built and instructs it starting with the basics.

People think tai chi is for exercise or defense, alone. It’s really for perception change. By doing a powerful exercise as tai chi is, we learn a systematic approach to movement. This system gives us tools to use in everyday life. As we acquire the patience to endure tremendous body exertion, we are learning a tool that works with anything in life. We have the understanding to know that the physical exertion and mental concentration needed to physically execute the movement is teaching us to follow through. And it is showing us we can do it.

This type of training gives us a foundation of skills that can be used to change a habit. They are self-esteem, pride, temperance, patience, tolerance, strength, balance and many more. These are the traits needed for habit change. If a rehab program misses teaching these skills through some type of system, the program participant is left in relatively the same condition as when s/he arrived, only learning a few rote skills which usually fade away, exposing the old habit.

CONCLUSION

We are socially influenced in many ways. When we see lots of people doing the same thing, we are more inclined to do that same thing. I always give the example of helping a fallen woman on the sidewalk. If no one has stopped to help, we are less likely to stop. If someone has already stopped to help, we will be more likely to inquire if we can help (unless we are public servants or feel like public servants and believe it is our duty to protect).

It’s the same if we surround ourselves with people who do not take drugs or drink or overeat or gamble. We will be more likely to accept behaving in a similar fashion, especially if they know we are working on habit change. If we keep repeating a new behavior in place of the old habit at the same time as building a personal foundation, we will succeed. And what’s missing at the start will no longer be missing. We will have developed, not only new behaviors, but a structure within ourselves that will sustain the way we wish to live.

ACTION STEP SEQUENCE

In order to see how easy it is to reach out to another, meaning, to form a group, here’s an action that might be helpful.

1)  Approach someone who is in your life or just someone you meet at the library or supermarket.

2)  Tell her (him) you are doing an experiment and that you need help one time between 6 pm and 7 pm one night this week. (It can be a different time.)

3)  Tell the person that, when you call, you will ask her to tell you how important you are to your mission.
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Let us know how it goes.
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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She has been influenced by group dynamics and seen how others sometimes get trapped. She says,

“Fortunately, I was raised to be very independent. But groups still influence me. Whether we are helped by the group or our own personal way, the one that works is the right one for each of us.

“As for building a foundation, there’s only one way to go about it: one step at a time. Slowly, with consistency and follow-through. As we begin to build upon ourselves, we become very strong. Then we become the social influencers, and nothing more is missing.”

THE ONE SECRET TO HABIT CHANGE: GET IT AND USE IT! (ISSUE 97)

By Diane Gold

There is one secret to habit change. We don’t need to be college-educated to understand it. We don’t have to have been brought up in a wealthy home to use it. It is the same in every country. It applies to every habit. We all know the concept as it applies to daily life. Yet, it’s still a secret.

Before we spell it out for you, let’s look at the characteristics of habit change. We have three ingredients: the URGE, which is the itch or cue that we want to experience a particular pleasurable feeling; the ACTION, which is whatever is done in response to the urge; and the REWARD, which is the glorious feeling of pleasure we get from the action we chose to take after we had the urge.

In order to hear it, we must be ready at this very moment to realize its truth; and that if we don’t make it a priority in our lives, we will go another way. Easiest is best, and that’s upon what this secret is based.

Are you ready? Here it is.
In order to eliminate lots of wasted time from roller coaster habit change work, act within 5 seconds of feeling the urge. And you will have the easiest road ahead. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I am saying this method makes it easier. Simple, right?

Let’s look at a few examples.

Picture the situation where we get an urge to eat cake. We are on a strict regimen not to include cake in our food plan. If we don’t act with instant motion within five seconds of the urge, we have already given ourselves time enough to plan which way we will walk to the cake store, passing an Automatic Teller Machine along the way, since we keep no cash with us to avoid running out to buy food. Oops, we forgot about the ATM card. Or figuring out how to run up an account with the local grocer if we have no cash, if we have remembered not to have an ATM card around.

[Note to self: if not already done, place the ATM card in the safety deposit box.]

If we do act within five seconds, we can dissipate our urge and have one more experience of staying within our food plan.

Here’s another.

Imagine it’s the end of the work day, we are closing up our store and start getting the urge to join all our buddies across the street and drink alcohol. Yet, we know, at this time, we have decided to abstain from alcohol because it does not support us. So, when we feel that craving, we have a choice: we can act within 5 seconds and take a new action that does not involve alcohol OR wait and go drink alcohol, a behavior we already know is not working for us. If the people at the pub are really our buddies, we will see them later, not in the bar.

This urge and this situation have happened to me more times than I can count. My live-in boyfriend had left work early and was always at the bar. So, my mind did its jealousy dance about his having alcohol and fun without me or having more alcohol than I was having. Crazy, right, that I would be jealous of someone else’s having more substance than I? Crazy, but true. Vividly, jealousy green, true.

The only way for me to replace this cycle was for me to act IMMEDIATELY before I thought about alcohol, jealousy, whatever else my crafty mind came up with. If I didn’t act quickly, I’d be sucked into the old habit behavior.

And finally, a last example follows.

Let’s say I had stopped smoking cigarettes for a year. And no one smoked around my job or house. One day, I was taking a walk in the metro area, and someone who was smoking passed me by. I got a whiff of smoke and instantly wanted to smoke. Without instant action, I would be urged to bum a cigarette from that very person. That would start the old familiar cycle of smoking which was the familiar behavior I knew that satisfied the craving for smoking. When I moved quickly and took a different action, I learned how to create new rewards with my different actions, and the urge to smoke went away again.

CONCLUSION

We have a very short window of opportunity in which to execute the one secret to habit change. It’s usually in that five second range that we must act. If we don’t take a new action within that time, we will habitually do our old behavior. And changing our habit will wait on the sidelines another day.

Think about it. What happens when we procrastinate? Nothing new. If we do nothing new to change our habit, we will gravitate toward what we know: our old habit. Most of us know our old habit with our eyes closed because we have repeated it so often.

It requires focus to take a new step. The more we take that step, though, the more it replaces our old action. If we do it once, it’s a novelty. If we do it twice, we see its merits. If we carry it out a third, fourth, fifth time; it becomes more natural, although usually it requires 21 days for the mind to accept the new behavior as becoming a possible replacement.

ACTION STEP

The one action we will take when we feel an urge works for all kinds of habits. It can’t hurt us either. It can only help.

We will drink water, two glasses, eight to twelve ounces each, as soon as we feel our urge to fulfill our old craving, no matter what it is. The act of drinking water dissipates any of the oral addictions biologically, such as eating, alcohol drinking, drugging, smoking. It has the following effects on all habits.

1) It physically dilutes the blood so that the usual amount of substance (food, alcohol, drug) cannot produce the same reward.
Perspective

2) It changes our mental perspective so that we are no longer focused on whatever we were focused on before we drank the water.

3) It changes our emotional status because it has a calming effect.

4) It teaches us a technique we can use almost anywhere), at any time, as long as we are in a place fortunate enough to have freely running water.

5) It is our first habit change buddy, always loyal, never a flat leaver, always faithful.

Do it. It is massively impactful, requires little activity, not much effort other than the effort of doing magic on or tricking one’s own mind. And it works on all the urges to a large degree.

May the change be with you!

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She has used the one secret to habit change many a time and would like to see it go public. She says,

“Habits are learned by repeating one behavior, over and over again. If we were Vulcans (from Star Trek) and had no emotions, we’d have no trouble taking the secret step at any time and adjusting our behaviors.

“Because we are not Vulcans and are so attached to our emotions, cravings, urges, desires, passions; each behavior is motivated by many emotions. Thus, we need boldly to move ourselves to the new behavior, whether our emotions agree or not. This takes focus. If we put on horse blinders, we would have an easier time. Although the very idea might diminish our self-esteem, another important emotion; so we don’t use them.

“The secret to habit change is water, two glasses. Let’s make an effort to drink it as a technique of change. It works and empowers, all by itself. Consider it. There’s nothing to lose.”

THE HABIT CYCLE: CUE-ACTION-REWARD-CUE-REPLACEACTION–REWARD (Issue 45)

By Diane Gold

In the past several weeks, I’ve been talking about and looking at habits, reading about them, examining my own. There are so many different factors, but there seems to be one common cycle.

CUES

We get a CUE.

It can be visual such as the photo of an apple pie to a dessert hound.

It can be olfactory where we walk into a bar, smell a whole array of alcohol tonics and can’t resist them.

There are so many cues that result in habitual action. Anything can set off someone who gambles to excess to create gambling by saying,

“I’ll bet you $10 that it won’t rain today.”

NAIL BITING

I was reading about a nail biter and how examining the cue and looking at the reward might help with the habit of biting. Then I realized that I bite my nails, not as much as I used to. But I do, from time to time. I have still not identified the cue, that is, what signals me to execute my nail behavior; but it has something to do with working. As I begin to concentrate on work, I am driven to start to bring my hands to my mouth. I have been able not to bite my nails because I am enjoying the control of not biting, because I examined the behavior and because I was rather surprised that I hadn’t counted this behavior in my list of negative habits.

The REWARD for this nail biting was that I like the feel of biting. Or maybe it is a soothing behavior. I am not sure yet. My NEW REWARD, though, is laughing at myself because I am controlling this behavior. The reason I can do this is because I have lots of experience with changing habits. And I have learned to replace the bad ones with good ones. They are all still there, just waiting for the right cue.

ACTION STEP

Take a look at what you do that is in excess and that you want to change. Look for the cue that starts your craving feeling. Look at the reward that makes you feel euphoric. Tell someone about your self-examination, and say that you BELIEVE IN YOURSELF and commit to successfully being a different way – out loud. Go do the different behavior every time you get the cue. Even if you can’t figure out the exact cue, which I can’t with the nails, whenever you find yourself craving, keep looking at it as you do your new activity.

The explanation will show up. While you’re looking, though, doing what’s new will replace the trigger activity and become the new habit.

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OLD HABITS ARE HERE TO STAY

I am still reading Charles Duhigg’s The Power Of Habit. He mentions all the research about the fact that a habit doesn’t go away when we replace it. It’s easy to see this when people go back to old habits under pressure or lost focus. Have you experienced this?

If you can’t imagine addiction or being out of control with some habit, I am going to describe an allergic, physiological behavior to make a point about being out of control.

Imagine getting poison ivy with its toxic oil. The urushiol oil binds to the under layer of skin and stays there for 2 to 4 weeks. It affects 80% of people who come into contact with it.

After getting poison ivy many times in New York, I thought I was free of it when I moved to Florida. Ha! Little did I know that the precious mango tree that hung over the fence was loaded with the very same toxin. Cashew and pistachio, too, but I haven’t come into contact with those.

So we get a cue. The itch. We take action: we scratch and scratch. This behavior is not addiction, but it demonstrates how we can be out of control and the driver is similar. It is also not an antisocial behavior, so we are not stigmatized if we scratch. Everybody does it, across the social, ethnic and self-control lines. It illustrates being driven in ways very hard to control.

When I come into contact with the air that is near the powerful poison ivy plant, or if I touch the plant by accident, I break out into a rash and am doomed for a few weeks. I came up with a strategy for not scratching which is parallel to my strategy for controlling self-destructive habits. First, there will be a small little itch. When I get an itch on the wide part of my arms or my hands or feet; this is a cue for me to examine the area to see whether I have exposed myself to urushiol. It used to be the cue to scratch, but I know the feeling so well that I control it and determine whether it is the dreaded poison.

For years, I have been covering the dermatitis rash with bandages. This was for 2 reasons: 1) to keep the rash from spreading when the blisters broke and 2) to keep me from scratching it.

I just found out tonight that covering the area protected it from infection and scratching only, but that we can’t spread the rash on our own bodies, are not contagious once we are rashing and the blisters contain our own immune response to the oil and not the oil, itself.

So the bandages themselves created a new cue for me, even though I had them on for the wrong reason. Every time I touched the bandage, I remembered not to itch. I replaced my bad habit with another cue (the bandage) which led me to a good habit , not scratching. The reward? Not hurting myself with scratching.

CONCLUSION

Admitting there is a cue is really important, even if you are still in the dark about it, as I am about the nails. But taking the time to examine behavior with no defense is a good thing. Defense only prolongs the bad habit. Examining it starts a new cycle with a new behavior.

The belief part of the equation comes from inside. We need to believe in ourselves to get the job done because we must be strong enough to remember our self-examination. Statistics say this is done in a group, even if it is a group of 2.

ACTION STEP

So, whether you call someone a sponsor, an accountability partner, a friend, a mentor, a coach or a consultant; go tell someone about what you are self-examining and what direction you want to take with your habit.

Almost anyone will listen and be interested. So don’t use having no one to talk with as an excuse. Find an ear and talk about your behavior out loud. Whether it’s Weight Watchers’ or Overeater’s Anonymous, or just that one other person, get your story written by telling someone today.

See your cue. Talk about your cue. Talk about what it makes you want to do. Talk about the reward when you follow your old pattern. And pick a new activity for the old cue that brings the same or similar reward.

Good luck to all of us!

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Moms For Healthy Daughters, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert and a dedicated mom.
She is fascinated by the habit process. These are such strong pathways that are branded into us, difficult to change, and requiring our focus. Diane says,

“We are very powerful, we humans. We have the ability to set and reach tremendous goals. These are achieved, for the most part, by will power. When we climb a mountain, it is more with our mind than our body. Just the same, when we change a part of ourselves, we are, in essence, climbing the mountain of our own strength. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Keep going for one more minute. That minute will make the change. ”

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ANATOMY OF A HABIT: 10 EXCUSES THAT NO LONGER WORK. OR DO THEY? (Issue 43)

By Diane Gold

A habit is a fascinating little “acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it becomes almost involuntary,” according to the dictionary from Ask.com (owned by InterActive Corp., new owner of About.com, bought from The New York Times last week. Understanding the credentials of the dictionary I am using somewhat helps me evaluate the definition I am putting to print).

Since this definition of “habit” correlates well with Charles Duhigg’s The Power Of Habit, which I am reading, I am satisfied that it is a good representation of what a habit is.

Since I am about to speak on animal experiments, let me say that I applaud any research that does not involve the use of animals (gorillas already have rights) , that any animal should have the right to live a leisurely life in a posh facility as a reward if s/he has donated her time to human science;
computer simulation or sculpture as education should be used instead of working with animals; and any facility that uses animals should have a mandatory residence with services and staff for aged-out animals that has been paid for up front in case the facility loses funding. Now on with the article.

In Charles Duhigg’s book, cited above, he talks about experiments done by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, where they studied habits using mice. They gave the mice a cue  – which is the first of the three-part make-up of a habit – and, thus, created a habit. When the mice had learned to successfully respond to the cue, in this case, pull a lever, they were rewarded with food. This went on until it was quite routine for the cue, the action (the second part in the habit cycle) and the reward (the 3rd piece of the cycle).

Phase 2 in the study involved poisoning the food so that the mice got sick upon eating it. The floor that led to the food was also electrified, causing a shock to the mice if they walked on it. They stopped going for the food and walking on the floor. Until they were shown their cue again. Then, automatically, because the habit was so ingrained in them, they walked on the floor, got shocked, ate the poisoned food and vomited.

This behavior is so common in humans, and we now know it is the pathways in our brain that get embedded with habits, not all the environmental stuff we always blame. When we feel the rise of a particular hormone in our bodies, this is our cue. We begin craving whatever it is we have trained ourselves to crave. We have two choices. Go get the reward we have trained ourselves to get, or go do something that will replace the old reward. Yes, we can create new habits, but we have to begin doing just that.

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Duhigg, in his The Power of Habit writes an accounting of Wolfram Schultz, a neuroscience professor who worked with macaques. Using the same cue, acquired action, reward system; Schultz taught Julio, an 8-pound macaque, to touch a lever when he saw a particular cue.

For this action, he would get a reward of juice. After repeating this cycle – cue, acquired action (Duhigg calls this “routine”), reward – touching the lever to get his reward became an ingrained habit.

Schultz had had an electrode placed in Julio’s brain to read his neurological activity. It showed that Julio would get excited or happy when he got his reward. More activity at reward time in this simulation.

As Julio’s habit became stronger, from more time doing the same behavior, his neurological activity changed.  The spike in activity came from anticipating his reward. So the cue became the trigger. The excitement that used to come from the reward was now coming when he saw the cue (in this case, it was visual). Ah, primates! How alike we all are.

This sounds like all of us who have walked through fire to satisfy our habits, whether candy, drugs, bread, gambling, being late, staying lethargic, a relationship, a lifestyle. Of course, everyone is different. And changing a behavior is different in each of us. And there are so many factors involved as there are chemical levels in our body, tendencies in our heredity, environmental cues that are habits we are not aware of, and more.

There are so many questions that arise from hearing about habits. Why does one of two twins raised in the same household have a more difficult time changing a habit than her twin? So many reasons.

EXCUSES

Let’s talk about excuses. Many of us come up with reasons why we are habitual. How true can these be if our neurons change automatically with repetition? Does that mean that all the following excuses have to be thrown out?

1)    I drink because my mother was mean to me.
2)    I overeat because I was an only child.
3)    I gamble because we were poor.
4)    I have excessive behavior because I was sent away to boarding school.
5)    I compulsively shop because they fed us junk food in school.
6)    I hoard things in my house because my friends didn’t like me.
7)    I overmedicate because my grand aunt did.
8)    I steal clothing all the time because I was abused.
9)    I will always be late because we ate fast food at home every night.
10)  I have an excuse because my parents weren’t ever home when I came home from school.

We all have used an excuse for our behavior. Most of us have, anyway. Can an adult habit be attributed to a childhood experience? Probably yes, but proclaiming it is not going to change the habit.

HABIT CONTROL

Let’s talk about Julio, the macaque, again. He had a strong habit. When the professor took away his reward or reduced the sugar content in his juice, he would become angry or depressed. He was hard to distract even when he was given the opportunity to go out of the experiment area and socialize with others because he was busy having an urge for what had been taken away. He continued to stay near his computer monitor which had given him the visual cue, continued to press the lever that had previously given him his reward, craving his reward.

Other macaques who had gone through the same sequence of creating the habit but who did not reinforce it over and over again through a long period of time were easily distracted and broke the habit immediately. When given the chance to go out and socialize, they were just as happy to do that as to push a lever and get juice.

CONCLUSION: HABIT CHANGE

The only way to make a change is to do it consciously. According to Duhigg’s Change A Habit chart, when we feel the cue, we need to choose a different reward. That’s why deprivation is so hard. That’s replacing something with nothing. That doesn’t usually do it. Replacing what we used to do with something new like reaching out, talking, dancing, doing martial arts, meditation, running, swimming, eating salad, drinking water, just might do it. We are so different, but we are so much the same.

Knowing that all our excuses are not the real reason we crave shouldn’t matter. Our experiences, wrapped up in these excuses, certainly have an impact on the habits we have formed. If we are too sad to go to school, we never get to college because we don’t have a high school diploma. If we were not taught about nutrition, we probably have hugely unhealthy habits. This lack of food education does not create the craving, itself, but because of the lack of education, we may have created certain pathways in eating habits we may need to change.

ACTION STEP

There’s no way around it. No matter why we have a habit, if it’s time to change it, DO IT NOW. The sooner we start, the sooner we change.

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Moms For Healthy Daughters, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert and a dedicated mom.
The more she reads and talks to people, the more she sees how much we are the same. Diane says,

“Today is the day we can change one habit. It won’t happen overnight, and it will take conscious effort. It doesn’t have to be difficult. It just has to be consistent. Easy and consistent. That’s it. Pick a habit, and plan a new move in advance. That way, the next time that physical trigger (the cue) starts the habit cycle, we can instantly start forming our new habit.”