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A habit loop is a repetitive pattern that helps your brain create habits. Habit loops are what drive you to consistently wash your face every morning or go to the gym.
Without habit loops, starting and sticking to new habits is nearly impossible. Establishing habit loops is essential to building positive habits that will help you maintain your health and wellness goals—and avoid quitting after a few weeks.
Starting a new habit requires more than willpower; it involves training your brain. A habit loop is a repetitive brain cycle that recognizes and continues a habit. Think of a habit loop as your brain set to autopilot when it continues a specific routine.
Journalist Charles Duhigg popularized the concept in his book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. The three-part habit loop model describes the formation of habits through a cue, routine, and reward.
This model was inspired by research from Ann Graybiel, an MIT researcher and expert on habit formation. Graybiel’s research identifies that social encounters, emotions, and actions help the brain program behavioral routines.
A cue is any trigger that tells your brain to start a specific behavior. Cues can be an emotion, time of day, location, previous action, visual item, or the people you encounter.
If you wash your face every morning after you wake up, walking into the bathroom could be the cue to start your morning routine.
The routine is the actual habit or behavior that happens after a cue. The routine of a face-washing habit would be the act of washing your face.
Continuously performing a behavior creates a neural pathway in your brain. Neural pathways are instructions that tell your brain to start a habit after encountering a particular cue.
The reward is the positive response of completing a habit. For example, with the face-washing habit, the reward could be feeling refreshed after washing your face or noticing that your skin looks brighter. The reward is what reinforces you to continue a behavior in the future.
The reward is a powerful part of creating a habit loop because it helps your brain release dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, or chemical messenger in your brain, that makes you feel pleasure or happiness. Your brain will notice what makes you feel good and program itself to keep chasing that feeling.
Habit loops also apply to bad habits. It can be hard to break a bad habit because your brain is trained to keep doing it. To break a bad habit loop, you must replace the bad habit with a new habit that involves the same cue and reward.
Say you have a habit of drinking a late afternoon coffee to feel more energized, but it’s wrecking your ability to sleep at night. The cue of this habit is that you feel tired in the afternoon, the behavior is drinking coffee, and the reward is you feel more awake.
To break this habit loop, you need to replace drinking coffee with a different wake-promoting habit when you feel tired, like taking a walk or drinking a large glass of water. When you feel tired (the cue), taking a walk (the routine) may help you feel energized (the reward). The more you practice this positive habit, the more likely your brain will recognize the shift to the new behavior.
Forming a habit loop can help you develop and stick to positive habits, such as consistent exercise or drinking more water. To make these habits regular, you need to make them part of your routine.
Here are some ways to get started with a new habit loop and train your brain to make positive routines:
It may seem daunting to train your brain, but even little habit loops can make a big impact on your health and wellness. Some habit loop changes you can make right now include:
Habit loops are how our brains create habits through cues, routines, and rewards. Cues trigger your brain to start a routine, and the reward reinforces your brain to continue a habit loop.
Habit loops can be good or bad, and kicking a bad habit loop requires replacing a negative routine with a positive one that uses the same cue and reward.
If you want to start a new habit loop, start with small habits first and stay consistent with the cue, routine, and reward. Eventually, a positive habit loop can become second nature.
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