The 5 Roadblocks to Habit Formation

I have written about the importance of habits and how they play a key role in achieving our goals and dreams. However, even though we are aware of the importance of habits, and the kind of habits that we need to develop, often we are not able to begin or develop the habits that we would like to. How many of you have decided to exercise everyday, but were unable to follow it after two or three days?. Or to read a book daily or to use the phone less etc. 

We all have been there, trying our best to make these good habits habitual. However, what stops these habits from becoming a routine? What stops us from doing these habits everyday even if we want to? Let’s understand a few reasons today. 

Familiarity: One of the main reasons being familiarity. We always go back to what we are used to. We always do things that we are used to doing. For this, we have our brains to blame. Our brain is a complex mechanism, it always tries to reduce our effort and energy spent. For this purpose, whenever we try to do something new, our brain creates a discomfort to stop us from putting effort into something new. Due to this discomfort, we stick to what we are familiar with rather than do something new. Imagine our brain to be like a child who doesn’t want to go to school and cries so much to stay back home. Due to the crying, we decide to let the child stay back rather than send him/her to school. Similarly, anytime we begin to do new habits, due to the discomfort and effort needed we go back to the old habits.

Waiting for Motivation: “Many are writers, but only few write”. Unfortunately, we were taught that motivation is essential to begin. However, the truth is that motivation is depleting, meaning it is not constant. It could come anytime and go anytime. Thus, the more we wait to have motivation to do something, the more we will only keep waiting. So what do we do about it?. Start taking action, even if they are very small. If your goal is to walk everyday, and you don’t find motivation to do so, tell yourself that you will walk only for 10 mins or even 5 mins. Start walking or do the exercise that you want for that 10 mins alone, you will notice that motivation to continue will come to you automatically. You would want to do it for more than 10 mins. Similarly, if you would like to read, begin with a page. This will motivate you to read more. For any habit that you would like to begin, start taking small actions towards it, motivation will follow.

Not knowing ‘WHY’: Recently, a student told me that he wants to be the topper of his class, however, he does not feel motivated to study. I asked him, why does he want to become the topper of his class?, he paused for a minute and said. “I don’t know, seems like everybody wants to be, so do I”. Sometimes, we develop habits in the same way. We want to do it, because everybody else is doing it. This enthusiasm will not go far enough for it to become a habit. We need reasons why. We all know the story of Thomas Edison, he tried almost 10,000 times to make a bulb. Can you imagine someone trying again and again so many times to do something and failing ultimately? What kept Edison going? He had a strong why. He knew why he wanted to make a bulb and what it would mean to him and the world. Know your why. As an exercise, note down all the habits that you would like to develop for yourself, and also note down why (reasons) you want to develop these habits. Make your reasons personal. May it be something that you want to achieve and relates to you strongly. Take time and think about it. Once done, place the note in a place where you could see it easily. Make sure you see it often. The more you see it, the more you develop the need inside to develop these habits. 

Unrealistic Expectations: When you begin with a new habit, you will have the result or the end goal in your mind. You will know what the habit can give you. Exercising will make you healthy, reading will make you wise and using your phone less can keep you less distracted. However, if we believe that all these should and will happen immediately, we are setting ourselves for a downfall. The less we give time to see the results, the less we would become motivated to continue the habits. Studies says that it takes 21 days for any activity to become a habit, however today research says that it takes 60-90 days. Keep at it, focus on the small steps. Take one day at a time, it’s okay to miss some days. The important thing is to come back to your habit.

Perfectionism and Being Hard on Self: How many of us like to be perfect in what we do? How many of us have actually become perfect?. For the first question, there would be many to say yes. For the second, there wouldn’t be though. The reason being perfectionism is unattainable. When it comes to building certain habits, we would want to be perfect. “I must exercise everyday”, “I have to read today” etc. Yes, having a schedule is important and helpful, but if we attach it to perfectionism, it can lead to disappointments. For e.g. if you are not able to do an activity that you want to, due to certain reasons, you will become very disappointed and start blaming yourself. You will become angry and frustrated with your own self, which will affect your other activities and things you could do. Thus, what you could do gets affected due to what you could not do, due to being hard on yourself for not doing it. As it is said, “Perfectionism is self abuse at the highest order”. 

As we saw earlier, it is okay to miss sometimes. Be kind to yourself when you miss or make mistakes while building habits. Learn to tell yourself, ‘it’s okay, I will try again’. This will help you to pick yourselves up and get back to habit building.