It’s Time to Kick That New Unhelpful Habit
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If a quarantine-caused negative behavior pattern weighs you down, take some steps to free yourself.
Being extremely limited in our social interactions for almost a year hasn’t had the best effect on all of us.
Many people, particularly women, started consuming more alcohol than usual. Forced to cook for ourselves, many individuals on lockdown ate much more than in pre-pandemic times — and only some of the food was healthier. Collectively, we also watched a staggering amount of television.
And now that our nation is reaching a point of widespread vaccinations and social reemergence, it’s time to start the hard work of replacing bad habits with healthier practices.
How to become unstuck from negative habits
If 2020 foisted some behaviors that broke with your norm and longer-term goals, don’t be too hard on yourself. It was a difficult period, and there’s a human tendency to seek comfort in things that may not be healthy in times of crisis.
Overindulging in food, drink, or doomscrolling on social media are habit-forming when practiced consistently. And these behavior patterns are proving not so easy to shed as things become more “normal.”
The key is to consciously replace any unhealthy behaviors you’ve cultivated during the pandemic with healthier choices. It’s important to begin by making small changes and carving out minor victories for yourself. And getting "unstuck" from last year's negativity may start with getting off the couch and enjoying the company of fellow humans — preferably outside.
It’s not easy to reemerge either personally, by reestablishing your social activities, or professionally, by returning to the workplace at least part-time. But these transitions are the perfect incentives to break those quarantine-fueled bad habits.
Turning to science for answers
Behavioral science abounds with evidence that the easiest way to stop a negative behavior is to replace it with a positive one.
Combine that fact with the knowledge that environmental triggers contribute to habit formation, and you have a game plan for altering your post-quarantine self. Your return to work or play, even in familiar settings, will create the sense of being in a “new” environment. Being away from the past year’s surroundings of confinement should give you a clean slate for trying out replacement behaviors.
The “habit loop” is a concept introduced in Charles Duhigg’s 2012 best-seller The Power of Habit. It breaks down the process of habit formation into three steps:
A cue or trigger prompts an “automatic” behavioral response
The individual performs the routine or behavior
The individual is rewarded
As long as the trigger occurs, we are faced with a conscious or subconscious decision to either accept or reject the prompted behavior. When the loop is repeated enough times — how much time is hotly contested among neuroscientists, whose theories range from 21 to 66 days — the behavior is habituated. That makes both negative and positive responses much more difficult to ignore.
Being inside with few satisfying options was a powerful cue for many of us. So by that reasoning, being back in the newly reopened world should remove many triggers and help weaken those pandemic-created habit loops.
But it will still take a conscious effort on your part. Our physical surroundings and the people we surround ourselves with influence our behavior in profound ways. For example, if excess drinking became an issue for you during the pandemic, it’s best to stay away from post-work happy hours when they become available. Instead, take advantage of non-drinking activities you can now do, like sports or other group events.
Some additional habit-replacement tips
Strategizing a plan to break a negative behavior pattern and writing it down is an effective way to start. When you put your SMART or FAST goals in writing and share them with someone else, it increases your sense of accountability and improves the likelihood a new activity will stick.
If you happened to accumulate some less than helpful work habits while working remotely, enlist the help of a colleague to break your cycle. And if you feel you need professional help getting back on track, don’t hesitate to reach out. Many workplaces have ramped up their benefits over the course of the pandemic, and you may have additional resources available.
Above all, be patient with yourself. It took a year of chaos and uncertainty to cement those unwanted habits, and to replace them with healthier behavior patterns could take a while. And even the habit-change experts can’t say exactly how long that will be.
Carrington Legal Search is celebrating 20 years in business: we were in the trenches with our clients during 9/11 and 2008. We partner with our clients to identify leaders and mission-critical talent to shore up and grow companies even during the most challenging times. We are here for you! To make our nationwide network work for you, get in touch at 512-627-7467 or email carrie@carringtonlegal.com.