By Dr. Jim Bailey
The other day I looked up from my reading and saw a small millipede walking in circles on the patio. We have a wooded yard, so it’s not unusual to see insects, but this guy kept moving in the same left-hand circle like he was a miniature NASCAR driver. After watching him for five minutes, I determined that he wasn’t going to be able to escape his circular wandering.
Why couldn’t he break free? Was he smelling something or following a chemical trail like ants do? Was something wrong with his insect brain or his ability to move? It reminded me of something I’ve seen in the lives of the people I’ve met. Throughout the years, I’ve met hundreds of folks who can’t seem to break out of unwanted or dysfunctional life habits and behavior patterns that prevent them from having the better life they want.
Research shows us habits are comprised of initial cues (“triggers”), routines, and rewards in our brains and that you can change your patterns if you can interrupt or change one of these. Conventional wisdom teaches us that these life habits are best broken by making gradual changes that lead to new neural pathways in our brains. After four decades of people-helping, I’m not sure that’s true. Sometimes, breaking free from a negative life pattern or habit requires making a radical change.
In my late 20s, I taught patients with nicotine addictions how to stop smoking and stay tobacco free. The myth of gradual change would have led us to help them wean themselves off nicotine by slowly reducing their cigarette consumption. That doesn’t work. Instead, we had them identify the situations and conditions (cues) that led them to light up a cigarette. Having a drink, eating a meal, taking a work break, or even being bored were typical times for them to have a smoke. If they could substitute another behavior at the point of those cues, they had a better chance at staying smoke free.
All habits and behavior patterns (routines) begin as conscious action steps controlled by the pre-frontal cortex of our brains, but with repetition they become neural pathways in the brain striatum. At that point, our habits and patterns become somewhat automated and unconscious. If you’ve ever driven your car somewhere and arrive without having been aware of your surroundings, then you’ve experienced a neural pathway. Human brains like these routines because they save energy.
Rewards are just that – some form of payment for using the routine. Most of these are chemical reactions in our brains for performing certain routines. Normal things can set off these chemical reactions, such as eating, reading, watching movies or sports, being physically intimate – all of these can set off a chemical response in your brain.
If the brain perceives that reward as pleasurable, it often establishes neural pathways to ensure you repeat the pattern. Unfortunately, other behaviors can easily set off the same chemical rewards in our brains, and these can lead to addictions. Seemingly benign behaviors that we don’t think of as addictive – like scrolling through social media on our phones, playing video games, and even eating – have the same potential for establishing neural patterns as over-drinking, drug use, gambling, and pornography because they cause chemical reactions in our brains.
The producers of smartphone apps and illicit websites understand brain chemistry better than the rest of us and work hard to set up habitual patterns in our brains. If you don’t believe me, just try to pry a smartphone out of the hands of a teenager. These aren’t just habits – good or bad; they’re the result of intentional brain manipulation.
The myth of gradual change would have us taking steps like “reducing screen time” to establish more positive activities and life patterns in our kids or ourselves. Unfortunately, the human brain is very resistant to those efforts once a neural pathway and reward pattern have been established. One of my mentors described it as the “well-worn paths of behavior.”
If you’ve ever driven in the middle lane of an interstate highway, the one the big trucks use, then you’ve experienced a well-worn path. The repeated passage of heavy trucks causes grooves in the asphalt that can make your car resistant to movement in or out of those lanes. It’s like the experience of hikers and mountain bikers on a highly traveled path – continuous use can create a rut that’s incredibly difficult to get out of. In fact, sometimes you must risk falling or wrecking a bike to break free.
There are times in our lives when we must embrace the idea that gradual change is a myth if we’re going to experience lasting life changes. That’s what my mentor meant when he told me, “Sometimes it takes radical action to break free from the well-worn paths of behavior.” Sometimes we need to ask, “Will the patterns that got me here ultimately get me where I want to go?” If the answer is no, then perhaps a radical change is what you need to get out of the rut.