HOW TO GET RID OF A TOXIC HABIT

 

A toxic habit is a maladaptive or counterproductive behaviour that causes you or those around you more harm than good. If a toxic behavior remains unattended it might end up causing you your career, your loved ones, your possessions, your health, or even your life.

This article was inspired by a book I recently read; 'Atomic Habits by James Clear where he clearly expounds a pattern through which a Habit is reinforced and he goes on to psycho-educate his reader on how you can break this pattern to essentially get rid of an unwanted habit. 

According to James Clear, for a habit to be reinforced it has to go through four phases in the brain; cue, craving, response, reward.

• The Cue Phase: This is the initial phase where a cue or a hint triggers the brain to initiate the behavior. A hint could be subtle or pronounced. For instance a tv commercial or song lyrics that praise and advocate for the unwanted behaviour.  
• The Craving Phase: This is the desire or motivation behind the behaviour. Once the brain gets the hint of the unwanted behavior  in the cue Phase, it develops the justification behind the behaviour. For instance the need to smoke a cigarette to calm the nerves.
• The Response Phase: The response is the actual habit which could take the form of thought or behaviour. You respond to craving for a smoke by actually smoking. 
• The Reward Phase: The reward phase is where one feels content or relief after giving in to the unwanted habit. The Reward Phase is the end goal of any habit.

Toxic habits are reinforced and  characterized by this loop. If a behavior is insufficient in any of these four phases then it is less likely to develop into a habit. Eliminate the cue and the habit will never start, reduce the craving and you will not have enough motivation to start, make the effort of actually performing the habit difficult and you won't be able to execute, if the Reward is not satisfactory then you will have no reason to repeat. For example is the reward of taking alcohol is the good feeling one gets when drunk but then there is a terrible hangover that hangs on even longer then it simply implies that the reward is not satisfactory as it should be.

In essence, what James Clear is saying is that in order to get rid of a toxic pattern you should strive to starve any of the four phases and the pattern will automatically collapse. 

Nb: As highlighted earlier, this article was me sharing a piece of information that I thought might be useful to some of you.

Just so you know there are several theories in psychology which explain acquisition and reinforcement of behaviour as well as some interventions on how to actually tackle unwanted behavioral patterns. 

We shall discuss these in subsequent articles.