Book Discusion: Atomic Habits - The Secret to Breaking Addictions
Week Five: Change the Environment | Change the Habit
In a previous Morning Coffee discussion on James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits: Tiny changes, Remarkable Results, we looked at the framework for behavior change (habits) from a purely behavioral standpoint.
Making bad habits invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying.
Conversely, developing good habits by making them obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.
Common sense, right?
Simple is not alway easy
So, why don’t more people figure this out?
The old adage that what’s simple isn’t always easy comes into play here.
Overall, I think it boils down to the fact that most don’t even think that change is even possible.
For any number of reasons.
The Pressure to Conform
The main one being societal/cultural norms.
When something is generally believed and accepted by society as being true, the pressure to conform can be overwhelming.
The example Clear gives in his book is that heroin addiction was considered a irreversible condition.
Research discovered that as much as 20% of soldiers in Vietnam were heroin addicts.
What was surprising, however, was that once these soldiers were back home, only around 10% continued that habit.
What happened?
The environmental cues that caused the addiction in Vietnam were absent once they were back in their home environment.
Clear’s and other’s research showed that habits, once encoded in the brain, will always be there. However, when we remove ourselves from a triggering environment, the bad habit becomes dormant.
The danger is that, even after long periods of dormancy, a single cue could trigger an urge to engage in activity we considered long gone.
We see this often with drug addicts, alcoholics, porn/sex addicts, etc. Years of clean living go by and then BOOM, a triggering cue finds its way in . . .
Replacement is the Key
As stated at the top of this article, the key is to replace bad habits with good habits - make bad habits invisible while making good habits visible and satisfying.
Jesus makes this point in Luke chapter 11:24-26:
When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he walks through dry places seeking rest.
And finding none, he says, I will return to my house from which I came out.
When he comes, he finds it swept and decorated.
Then he goes and brings seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and entering in, they dwell there.
And the last state of that man is worse than the first.
Applying that principle to habits/addictions, if we do not replace a bad habit with a good habit, we will pick up right where we left off and the habit (addiction) becomes exponentially worse than before.
The issue is that many times the process is complicated and overwhelming.
Bucking cultural norms or overcoming slothfulness (another bad habit) takes courage and effort.
The Laziness Factor - Will Power Alone is not Enough
Another big factor that we do not want to admit to is that humans are basically lazy and self indulgent. Change is just too hard. It takes too much effort.
So, we tend to stay where we are and continue to feed our emotional needs with mindless gratifications because it requires minimal effort.
Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit . . . (Zechariah 4:6)
That’s because the act of “breaking a habit” is thought of simply in terms of will power as a means of self-control.
The conversation ranged over differences between good habits, bad habits, addictions, and how we develop or break free from them.
This morning, we looked at how will power, alone, is an ineffective means of breaking a bad habit.
We must replace the environment (inside and out) to make bad habits invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying.
Conversely, we must develop good habits by making them obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.
Questions to ponder:
As you think about your own situation, are there habits that you can’t seem to break?
Are you using willpower, alone?
Have you set a goal to change a habit, but failed because you didn’t implement a process to change?
Is the environment (people, places, things) you have surrounded yourself with cueing bad habits or good habits?
What needs to change and what are you doing to accomplish that?
Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results has really opened my eyes (and mind) to things I had never associated with the formation and breaking of habits.
One of the first things was why so many goal setters fail. A goal is a result and while we should have a result fixed iin our minds, the main focus should be on a sustainable process to achieve the result we want.
So far we have looked at the 1st Law of building better habits -
Make Bad Habits Invisible and Make Good Habits Obvious
In the next Morning Coffe post, we begin looking at the 2nd Law -
Make Bad Habits Unattractive and Make Good Habits Attactive.
Until next time, friends . . .
This is great. I discovered a reference to you in the comments on a post by Rocco Pendola, to whom I also subscribe. I’m in!