While giving something up is difficult, it's often the change in 'identity' that puts people off, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
ADOPTING A healthier lifestyle means breaking old habits and putting better behaviours in their place. That fit body seems like such a good idea but getting it may mean porridge and wholegrain bread instead of rashers and sausages, not to mention abandoning re-runs of Murder She Wrote in favour of a walk in the park.
As most of us have found out, we need more than a simple resolution to get us out of our well-worn comfort zones. New York Times journalist Charles Duhigg suggests that looking at cues and rewards could help.
Duhigg, whose book The Power of Habit has been a bestseller in the US, writes that according to scientists he has interviewed, our bad as well as our good habits are triggered by cues from our environment.
These cues lead to us engaging in behaviours that result in rewards. We get into a cue-behaviour-reward loop.
Duhigg gives us a simple example of his habit of having a cookie every afternoon in the New York Times. His intention to cut out the cookie failed until he looked at that cue-behaviour-reward loop.
The cue was doing work that made him feel bored. The behaviour was to go to the cafeteria and chat to his colleagues while eating a cookie. The reward, he discovered, was not the cookie – it was finding someone to talk to when boredom struck.
He changed his behaviour by finding someone else to talk to in the office when boredom struck, but without the trip to the cafeteria. Bye bye cookie monster.
The key here is to work out what trigger in the environment keeps your bad habit going, what the reward is and how to get the reward in a better way.
This might sound simplistic but it’s valuable too because it recognises a simple truth: it is really, really difficult to give something up without putting something else in its place. So we need to ask the question: What am I going to do instead of the thing I want to stop doing?
Of course it’s not all about giving things up. Initiatives like the Kilkenny Healthy Town project (see panel below) are focused on good health and on creating healthy behaviours – ie healthy habits.
Here some of the complications of changing habits come into play. Duhigg points out on his blog ( charlesduhigg.com) that men and women may have different motivations for developing, for instance, a good exercise habit.
One study found that men were more likely to develop an exercise habit if they lived in a neighbourhood in which they saw people exercising.
Women were more likely to exercise if they were educated and if they had encouragement from their families. So it may be that men who exercise as a result of initiatives such as Healthy Town are responding to the example of others, while the educational aspect of the project is a big motivator for women.
The concept of the cue-behaviour-reward loop, while very useful as a means of designing a personal change programme, may not tell the whole story.
Changing our habits can involve a slight shift in our identity and we can be quite resistant to that, even if the change is good for us.
How many people have never even tried a vegetarian meal because to them “vegetarian” means a whole new identity, involving sandals and beads?
I drink gallons of tea during the day – but ask me to drink a cup of tea at night and I will react like Dracula presented with a garlic necklace.
I simply cannot see myself as the sort of person who can sit down and have “a nice cup of tea” in the evening.
Duhigg tells us that US soldiers during the second World War refused to eat fresh cabbage when it was presented to them on their dinner plates. When the army sliced and boiled the cabbage so that it looked like the other vegetables on their plates, they took it without complaint. My guess is that the “normal” cabbage was more acceptable because it didn’t oblige them to become the sort of people who ate leaves.
The identity issue may also explain why it took penalty points to make us slow down in our cars and why some drivers even today won’t put on the seat belt until they are half way down the road – it may have something to do with the freedom/autonomy identity that goes with driving.
Don’t get me wrong – I am not dismissing Duhigg’s approach. His cue-behaviour-reward concept is a valuable tool for anyone who wants to change a habit. But learn also to accept the small shift in identity that goes with change and you’re really on your way.
Padraig O’Morain is a counsellor and writes the Thats Men column.
Quitting advice: eat like a pig every time you feel like a cigarette
Smoking is an expensive habit, but so is quitting. It's not difficult to spend considerable amounts feeding a nicotine gum or patch habit, all the while maintaining your addiction to the drug. Spending money in itself can help you give up smoking, but it's best done in a single, large painful payment to a hypnotist, laser therapist or hardcore mystic monk.
Regardless of whether their methods work, the very act of parting with €200-€300 should create a powerful incentive to get your money's worth and make a serious effort to stop smoking.
There are cheaper ways of doing it though. One free method is to enter a relationship with a complete square. Forget those indie-goth bohos you've chosen as partners in the past. Extricate yourself from your mutual-dependency relationship with the Nancy Spungen/Johnny Rotten in your life, and instead fall in love with a clean livin', polo-shirt-
wearin' jock who's an out-and-out fascist about smoking. It'll make quitting so much easier.
Stop drinking. I know. You love it more than smoking. But you've taken the first step on the road to Boringville. Why not take one more? Yes, booze makes you do all those enjoyable things like eating kebabs, skinnydipping, travelling by rickshaw, and singing songs to gardaí. But it will not help you quit smoking.
Train for a septuacathlon. It's a new sport involving not only traditional track and field events, but a range of 70 physical activities, including running, swimming, bicycle jousting, Connect 4, monkeybars and hot yoga.
If that sounds a bit extreme, try any new activity that requires lung power: choir, playing the sax. That way, as you lose your smoking habit, you gain a new skill (or 70).
Quit your friends. If they smoke, they are the enemy, for a while anyway. Get back in touch with them when you feel definitively smoke-free.
If they are the types of friends who view you doing something to improve your health as an act of personal betrayal, just go the whole hog and move country.
A change of environment can help you reinvent yourself and your habits, and there are lots of appealing locations that also impose restrictive smoking policies. In Bhutan, smoking is theoretically illegal altogether. In Sydney, you can't smoke on some of the beaches.
Careful where you go though. In some countries, they almost punish you for NOT smoking. Yes Russia, I mean you.
And if none of that works, just eat like a pig every time you feel like a cigarette.
CONOR GOODMAN
Kilkenny healthy town: upcoming events
Today: Talk by Dr Mark Harrold, clinical psychologist, on Breaking the stress habit at Langton's Hotel, 7pm.
Tomorrow: Those contemplating giving up smoking can get free advice at Langton's Hotel at 7pm. Register on the website or tel: 01-6690298.
13th: Mayor's Walk at 11am from the Parade.
Taster sessions with local sports clubs. Try out some activities available on your doorstep – archery, fishing, hill walking, badminton, cycling, set dancing, and wheelchair basketball, etc.
16th: Dr Tony Bates, pyschologist, founder of Headstrong and Irish Times HEALTHplus columnist, will give a talk entitled Believing that you're worth it, in Langtons at 7 pm.
On the web: Healthy recipes cooked by award-winning chef Garrett Byrne.
For details of The Irish Times/Pfizer Healthcare healthy town initiative, see irishtimes.com/healthytowns