How to Make New Habit Patterns in Your Brain
by Alan Pritt
There is a fundamental difference between how the foolish and the wise see the world. Likewise, there is a difference between that of a genius and someone of average intelligence. Much of this is to do with the abilities of our brains, but this ability comes about for a reason.
That reason is: habit.
The types of questions we ask, the things we find interesting, our commitment to solving problems, the things we choose to learn, the daydreams we have; they are all choices we made at one time but are now automatic. We don’t usually decide to persevere with a problem we just do; we don’t decide that our daydreams will help us solve our problems; they just do. We don’t decide what to pay attention to; we just find our focus drifting to certain things.
A vital key to improving your intelligence is in your ability to make new habits.
At one time we had to learn the skills. This was usually achieved when we had a challenge or a problem we had to solve. But these skills gradually became more automatic as we used them more and more. Eventually they became habits.
All the skills you learn for improving your brain are practically useless unless you learn to make them habits. If you don’t make new habits of these skills, you’ll never use them; or you’ll spend more time focusing on the method than your actual problem.
Perseverance is an obvious trait that distinguishes those that solve difficult problems against those that don’t. It’s easy enough to tell somebody not to give up and to persevere, but what does one do with that advice? It can be almost impossible to actually apply it to one’s life.
To form the habit of perseverance you need a certain thinking strategy. I don’t want to get into that here because it will distract from the main focus of the topic. Instead I am going to use an example not associated with intelligence, and that is the good habit of being tidy.
To learn a new habit you need to do it consistently for 3 weeks; but this, in its self, is not an easy task. We make it easier by practicing first. We need to do two things here. Firstly, we need to be able to easily perform the require actions. Secondly, we need to link that action to a cue.
So, for example, imagine you wanted to form the habit of automatically making your bed without thinking about it. Firstly you would make sure you know how to make a bed. Secondly, you would link the action of making the bed to seeing the bed unmade.
There is one more complication that we have to consider when we make new habits: and that is conflict. For example, we may be too busy to tidy at a particular time; or maybe too tired. New habits usually falter because life gets in the way. If we had time we could deal with these as they come up. But during the long process of forming the habit we usually become too busy to deal with these conflicts. We therefore need a way of dealing with these conflicts in advance.
To do this we make new habits with a meditation (or visualisation) exercise. It takes a little while to do fully, so we do this exercise when we have plenty of time and know there won’t be any distractions. Some habits take longer than others; it really depends how many conflicts there are.
Also, while it is best to do it in one session, multiple visualisations can be carried out. If your habit doesn’t stick, go back to your visualisation exercise and explore the conflict that caused the failure.
Habit Forming Exercise
- Choose the habit you wish to install
- Make sure you know how to do the new habit easily.
- Find a quiet, comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed.
- Make new habit
- Imagine the scenario in which you want the habit to occur. Imagine it in detail. What do you see? What do you hear? What smells and tastes are there? What do you feel? Focus specifically on the cue you want to set off the new habit. (the cue is something in the environment or in your thought processes that you see, hear, feel, etc)
- Imagine, in detail, as your respond to the cue and begin doing your new habit.
- When you have run through the process in detail, repeat the previous step a number of times. Stop only when you feel you have covered a wide range of scenarios.
- Ask yourself if there are any conflicts. Are there any reasons why this won’t work? What if you’re too busy? What if you’re too tired? What if you get interrupted? You may get a response through an inner dialogue, or you may get a feeling, or a visual image.
- Acknowledge that the conflict is there for a reason and that your subconscious is trying to help you by bringing up these conflicts. Make yourself aware that you’re going to find a better way of dealing with this conflict.
- Come up with solutions to all of these conflicts. Maybe, under some circumstances you don’t perform the habit. Tell yourself that’s okay.
- Imagine scenarios where those conflicts arise and imagine responding to them with the solutions you have come up with.
- Repeat until you can think of no more conflicts.
- Test the new behaviour in the real world as soon as possible
If you notice yourself failing to do the habit during the next few weeks, go back to the exercise and reinforce the habit. Maybe a conflict that hadn’t occurred to you came up. Maybe you didn’t visualise the scenarios with enough detail. Go back and explore. Every time you do this technique the process will become easier. Soon you will be able to make new habits with ease.
Skills that are involved in improving your intelligence need to be applied to your brain in the same way. There are certain methods we use to solve a problem, there are certain ways we memorise something, there are certain ways we motivate ourselves. If they are not habitual we will be too wrapped up in our problem that we won’t think to use them. When we make new habits of these skills, they become part of who we are and we won’t even think about using them.
