Become a Habit Mechanic and improve any aspect of health or wellbeing

‘I’ve just come back from the supermarket. The cupboard’s so full of chocolate biscuits that I can’t close the door... I’ll start the detox on Monday. The trouble is, there are 52 Mondays in a year. I say that every week!” - Peter Kay, comedian

When it comes to improving any aspect of our mental or physical health, we might know what we want to do or achieve, but accomplishing it is a different story. The quote above is lighthearted but it helps us to understand this idea.

And to expand even further, I want to tell you a story about how your brain works. I’ve created this story to make complex psychology, neuroscience and behavioural science easy to understand, and to help people begin improving their physical and mental health by building better habits.

First, imagine you have a lighthouse in your brain. Two characters live there. The first is HUE®. This stands for Horribly Unhelpful Emotions. The second is Willomenia Power, or Will Power for short. Most importantly, Will Power is HUE’s guide and mentor.

HUE

HUE works in the lighthouse’s control room. Its first instinct is to search for threats. Imagine HUE using a beam of light emitted from the lighthouse to mindlessly scan your thoughts, feelings and the environment around you. It scans for past mistakes or regrets. It also projects worst-case scenarios about what might happen in the future. And it searches for any immediate problems.

HUE’s second instinct is to find easy, new and exciting things that make it feel good. HUE loves doing things and having experiences that give it short-term gratification.

Will Power

There is a library in the lighthouse. Will Power likes to learn about the outside world and spends most of its time in there, studying and learning. When HUE notices a problem, or a short-term gratification opportunity, it calls Will Power for help. When everything in your brain is working properly, Will Power guides HUE to solve the problem or manage these unhelpful impulses.

This makes it easier for HUE to deal with similar problems if they occur again.

The way Will Power mentors HUE looks something like this:

Step 1

Stress response. HUE signals Will Power for help.

Step 2

Will Power calms down HUE. This helps Will Power gain some perspective, because if HUE is not calm it cannot think clearly.

Step 3

Will Power analyses the problem.

Step 4

Will Power assesses the problem in one of three ways:

1. It is a real problem that needs to be addressed;

2. It is a false alarm or an uncontrollable problem; or

3. It is a problem, but HUE’s reaction is over the top.

Step 5

Will Power coaches HUE. They either create and deploy an action plan, or HUE learns how to interpret similar signals in a more helpful way.

Step 6

Some of the behavior used to solve the problem becomes more automatic, making it easier for HUE to resolve similar problems in the future.

When Will Power is able to do its job properly, it should be easier for you to do things like successfully manage stress, spend less time thinking about unhelpful thoughts, perform well under pressure, be productive, creative and innovative, build and maintain robust levels of confidence and significantly - in terms of our physical and mental health - build good diet, exercise and sleep habits.

The problem is that in the modern world we face many new challenges that can overwhelm us.

We can find it hard to switch off, which can negatively affect sleep, rest and recovery
Social media leads us to compare our life to others’, and we beat ourselves up too much
We are tempted to eat bad food, buy things we don’t need and spend money we don’t have
We become distracted, so a 10-minute job takes 20 minutes. Over a week, this accumulates into several wasted hours.

These types of challenges result in an unhelpful imbalance between HUE and Will Power. HUE can become overactivated, and Will Power can quickly get overwhelmed and exhausted. This makes it very difficult to be healthy, happy and at our best.

If you want to feel well and perform at your best, your first job is to get HUE and Will Power working together efficiently and effectively, creating more balance between your two most powerful assets.

So how can you learn how to do this?

To do this we all need to become a ‘Habit Mechanic’. By understanding your internal mechanics (or how your brain works and how to change it) you will have a much better chance of being at your best more often and achieving your health and wellbeing goals (and of course any other goals in your life and work).

Dr Jon Finn is an expert in Resilience, Leadership, Wellbeing and Habits and the founder of Tougher Minds, a company which helps people to build better habits for well-being and performance. Dr Finn and his colleagues use cutting-edge insights from psychology, behavioural science, and neuroscience to help organisations develop resilient people, outstanding Leaders and World-Class teams.

You can learn more about becoming a Habit Mechanic and learn how to start improving any aspect of your life (including your physical and mental health) in my FREE short Tougher Minds® Foundation course. It includes easy-watch-videos.

To access it, click here.