November 14, 2016
Interview with Jeremy Dean, author of the book Making Habits, Breaking Habits
Mike Carruthers: We all like to think we have control over what we do but try to change a habit and you discover you don’t have the control you think you do. Why?
Jeremy Dean: Habits run mostly in the unconscious. And if you think that maybe 50% of the things that we do every day (and that’s what the studies suggest ) are actually habits then it’s very difficult to have total control over yourself.
Jeremy Dean, author of the book Making Habits, Breaking Habits, says if you want to change a habit you have to be very specific.
So instead of saying to yourself I want to be healthy. It’s much better to make a really specific plan like; if I feel hungry between meals then I will eat an apple. And you want to repeat that as many times as you can until you’re doing it automatically. And that is in a nutshell how to make a habit.
Is it better to go cold turkey or take the gradual approach when you’re trying to change a habit?
This one I can answer pretty categorically and I would go for this gradual approach. Cold turkey is quite often used by smokers when they want to give up. And it really will kill your chances to try and give up immediately it’s much better to use the patches and wean yourself off slowly – it’ll be much less painful. And the same is true to a lesser extent with any other habit it’s better to go slowly and incrementally. And the pain will be less with the change if you do it slowly but surely.
