Think about the very basis for defining life of an organism – any organism.
Question: What one condition is critical for all life?
Answer: Relative sameness, relative stability!
Habit change can be hard because the major measure of 'good' as far as your body is concerned is its reference to 'normal'.
As illustrated beautifully by Prof. Antonio Damasio, life occurs within a very narrow set of conditions. Your own life is lost if you get too hot or too cold by only a few degrees, if the chemical mix within your body is without oxygen for only a few minutes, if you do not replenish critical nutrients.
Life is only possible by maintaining conditions of relative ‘sameness’ within an organism in the face of large fluctuations in the surrounding environment. Whether it is -40°C or +40°C outside – inside us it needs to remain around 37°C; a degree or two and we feel the effects of, to us, intense cold or heat, more than a couple of degrees for any prolonged period and we are in serious trouble.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see this ‘relative sameness’ imperative is true of all life. From the very earliest formation of reproductive life the ability to maintain and defend the integrity of the organism and the relative sameness (homeostasis) of the conditions that support life within the organism have been at the very foundation of life and key to evolutionary success.
For example, the conditions inside a single cell organism are relatively static when compared to the conditions outside. The cell wall – the barrier between the cell and the world outside – regulates movement of materials in and out of the cell. Only under conditions of relative sameness can the various interior parts of the cell do their thing and sustain life long enough to reproduce.
Our bodies are infinitely more complex but this biological imperative is as important as ever. Consider the lengths your body and brain goes to to maintain conditions within. Germs get in and they are attacked and removed by your immune system. Nutrients are allowed in and waste is expelled. Your temperature is regulated. Your autonomic nervous system is highly attuned to potential, imminent and actual threats to the integrity of your body (What is your fight/flight response other than a system to protect you from physical harm?).
In fact most, if not all, of the functional structures that make up you are there primarily to defend and maintain your structural integrity long enough to produce viable offspring. The nervous system, the immune system, the digestive system, the cardiovascular system all function to maintain the conditions for life in their area of demarcation. Want to know what it feels like when one of these homeostasis maintenance systems malfunctions? Just ask a diabetic. When you look around at any other being – flora or fauna – you can see this imperative to maintain homeostasis of the organism is a basis for life.
Your brain, your sense of self and ‘what it feels like to be you’ is not immune from this core imperative – how could it be? The mind is the place that regulates and coordinates all of the systems. Moment by moment, and in every moment of your life, it is essentially mapping images of you (all of you) and checking it against earlier maps. Moment by moment your senses scan the world outside and inside comparing the historical model (what it expects to see) with current status. Changes and surprises are problems to solve and worthy of attention. This includes things like your body weight and shape, the levels of nicotine in your body, the level of chemicals for stress you typically have flowing through your body and your ‘normal’ state of background emotion.
It also includes your idiosyncratic habitual responses stimuli, to stress, your method for attending to work and play, many of your core values or beliefs.
If you attempt to change something too quickly (e.g. lose weight) your mind notices this change as a threat – it is a threat to homeostasis and ever since the earliest forms of life, maintaining homeostasis has been a winner – and so it does whatever it can to restore you to what it considers ‘normal’. Unless you implement strategies to help maintain the change you will just as quickly return to ‘normal’.
The hypothalamus is generally considered a ‘thermostat’ for your bodily normal; managing a continuous feedback loop to help your body stay within the ‘normal’ range of operation. “Good” and “bad” as far as your hypothalamus is concerned is determined in reference to ‘normal’. This drive for normal extends beyond the hypothalamus and is consistent across other areas of the brain and outcomes of mind. Normal is good – abnormal is bad.
Familiar feels true
Change requires change
In order to change the way you behave and subsequently feel you need to behave in spite of how you feel. Your body will be making every effort, offering every rationalization, offering every excuse to return you to your comfort zone. A massive help to your motivation for change is that when you feel the tug of your mind seeking homeostasis you are in the realm of change and control. You can recognise this feeling for what it is – an attempt to return you to normal. Resisting this pull in these moments is where change occurs. These are the moments when you need to act differently.
Case Study: Changing from coffee to tea
Let’s see how this works on a simple example. You have decided, for reasons of your own, that you want to replace your morning coffee for tea. I cannot understand why anyone would actually want to do this, but hey, we’re learn’n’.
In the diagram below: under normal circumstances, you might wander into the kitchen in the morning, and remember that “I ought to drink tea instead of coffee, I drink too much coffee”. In the above diagram this is the red triangle. It is a change in intent, you intend to, or are considering, having tea. As far as your mind is concerned ‘thought crime’ is real. Corrective mechanisms are engaged. So the next several thoughts that inexplicably pop into your head might be something like “I should have tea, but I am really tired this morning and need some caffeine”, “tea is for nerds and hippies”, “Mmmm, the wife/husband will want coffee, no point putting the plunger on for one, would be a waste”, “I will have tea tomorrow, I really don’t feel like it this morning, so I’ll just have a coffee now and have tea afterwards or later”.
You will also likely remember some obscure article that says that coffee is actually good for you and tea has caffeine in it anyway. Give any article that supports the ‘it’s ok to drink coffee’ idea a free pass and then thoroughly question the morality and motivation of any article that says coffee is bad (probably part of some conspiracy and written by members of the Twinning's PR team).
But your linguistically expressed thoughts are not the only tools at your minds’ disposal. At the thought of coffee, like one of pavlov’s dogs, you remember the smell of coffee, the taste and warmth. You start to salivate and your body is actually and literally changing in readiness for coffee. Your whole body is feeling and screaming “I expect coffee; hmm coffee = good”.
If you proceed to have a coffee; homeostasis is satisfied and the comfort zone is re-enforced.
I bet the coffee drinkers reading this now have the urge for a warm cuppa joe – well stay with me we’ll can fight this scourge together.
Alternatively: If you were to pay mindful attention to this moment. You recognise the feeling ‘for a coffee’ and your unfair prejudice against tea for what it is; your mind attempting to maintain your habit. You remember that this is an important for your health and happiness (assuming it is of course), and that this is the only moment that exists and the only chance you have to change this habit. There is no ‘next time’ – tomorrow never arrives. You seize the moment and pop a tea bag into the cup, pour and enjoy with a well-deserved sense of satisfaction (this may in fact be the true reason why tea drinkers are so smug).
You have just succeeded in behaving differently to the way you feel and have struck one small blow for habit change. Repeat this success in your mind, repeat it often in reality (ideally daily) and over time your ‘default drink’ in the morning will be tea.
Behaving differently to the way you feel and paying attention to that decision will, over time, change what ‘normal’ means. At that point your mind is working for you and helping you maintain a habit that you actually want.
Therefore changes to long held habits (which include your values, beliefs and emotional states) requires a change in what your body and brain thinks is normal for you. The whole ‘it takes 21 days to change a habit’ is BS; it takes as long as it takes. Attempting to change a habit without understanding the power of homeostasis is to make it much more difficult than it needs to be, plus it will have you feeling guilty or giving up when set-backs occur (which they will).
You can improve your chances and increase the speed of change through the adoption of strategies that work with your mind and not against it.
It is time to build a new ‘normal’.
Contact me today for help with change management; whether for you personally or for your organization.
 Pavlov was in the bar, when someone rang the bell for last drinks, he jumps up and says “oh no, I forgot to feed to dogs.”