The end of summer seems an appropriate time to come to the end of the Science of Wellbeing newsletter. Through this class, we have learned about the ways in which we tend to incorrectly predict what will make us happy (i.e. money, grades, stuff), how to thwart some of the habits of mind that get in the way of happiness (like the negativity bias and hedonic adaptation), and the ways in which we can actively work with ourselves to increase our wellbeing.
We learned about habits of behavior like kindness, social connection, finding play and flow; we learned about habits of thought, such as fighting our inner critic, developing self-compassion, and increasing gratitude; and we learned about habits of emotion: helping others, feeling our feelings, and managing our fight or flight response. Throughout this exploration, we have seen a ton of different skills that we can pick up and use.
Now at the end, we come back to the beginning. The GI Joe fallacy, which Laurie Santos explained in the first class, states: “knowing is half the battle” but it’s actually not true at all. Knowing is great, but implementation is another thing entirely. Putting some of these skills into practice in your life on a daily basis is not easy. It requires work, conscious dedication, and commitment. I have gone through many of these skills over the years since I first took this course and it is still a work in progress, requiring self-forgiveness and lots of starting over to change the patterns I have chosen.
This last course is dedicated to the power of other people in our environment and the power of our own habits to help us make changes to improve the way we feel, behave, and think:
Laurie starts by talking about the power of enlisting others to help direct your flow into more positive, optimistic behavior by using social benchmarks and social proof. Social benchmarks are people around us who set the tone for our behavior. We are a very social species and whether we like it or not, we tailor our behavior according to what we experience of other important people around us. In one study, researchers chose students in schools who were not necessarily the most popular, but the most connected to all the social groups. They asked those students to take a stand on social media about bullying and found that these individuals created a measurable change in bullying behaviors in their local community.
Social proof utilizes our innate sense of social comparison to “nudge” us into better behavior. It is a method for providing subtle cues that tell us how to act. Laurie presents a study on littering in which folks gave out caramels in wrappers. They painted feet leading to a trash can in order to “nudge” folks into creating the positive behavior of throwing stuff away. It worked like a charm. Nudge campaigns have already shown measurable success for increasing positive nutrition, and, famously, to reduce smoking cigarettes. When it starts to feel like everyone is doing something, it is inevitable that we will want to do that too.
You can take advantage of the power of other people by communicating about your desires and plans to change your habits. By asking friends or family members to help you, or by picking a friend to practice these new habits with, you add accountability for yourself and support for your new habit. It also creates an environment that is ready to accommodate and support your changes.
Some great examples of this are picking a friend to exercise with, or to study with, finding someone you can text when you meditate who will cheer you on, or developing group intentions that can be posted in a place where everyone can read them. These types of behaviors are important for so many reasons. For Laurie, the benefit is that you will increase your ability to implement the strategies she knows will improve your wellbeing. But an additional benefit/challenge is that enlisting others signals our desire and willingness to change. It is vulnerable because we will be exposed if we fail, but it is brave because we will allow others to help us. This is what creates community, and trust. It is also more fun and intrinsically more rewarding to change and grow in concert with others around us.
Laurie’s final skill set is the power of our habit loops. A habit loop consists of a cue, a routine, and a reward. The reward gets linked in our brains to the cue and then BOOM: everytime the cue is present, our brain remembers the reward and wants to get it again.
We humans are full of habit loops. Here is a habit loop related to your phone: the notification is the cue, this cue initiates the routine of picking up and looking at your phone, the reward is some new information you get, or a decrease in anxiety when you see what the notification is. Another habit loop might be your sport of choice. The cue can be the day and time when this sport takes place, the habit loop is the going and participating, and the reward is all the good things that routinely happen there (like seeing friends, the way your body feels when you exercise, the pleasure you get from succeeding or being in flow).
We can use the power of these habit loops in several ways:
1. You can use an existing habit and squeeze in a new behavior at the end. For example: if you already have the habit of brushing your teeth, you can use that loop to piggyback a new behavior onto. Everytime I brush my teeth, I will also take 3 deep belly breaths at the end. Or, to use the above phone example, you can pair the cue of the phone notification with a short positive habit like breathing, mindful grounding, or positive self-talk.
2 You can use something called “temptation bundling” to pair a habit you want to perform with a habit that is already very attractive to you (and restricting access to that attractive habit to when you perform the desired new behavior). An example I loved was a study from when the book series “The Hunger Games” was popular. In this study, participants got an audiobook of “The Hunger Games” for free but the caveat was that they had to keep it at the gym. Not surprisingly, these participants got to the gym a lot more while they were embroiled in the series!
3. You can create a new habit by using the power of your associations to pair new behaviors with cues you encounter already. The example Laurie uses is remembering your keys. You can do that by linking the thought and idea of keys with your usual getting out the door routine. “Everytime I get my backpack, I will think of my keys and put them inside. Backpack keys backpack keys backpack keys.” We pair the two thoughts together enough and they will start to occur together.
4. You can create a new habit loop by using your own mental time line to create a “fresh start” effect. You can use: the start of school, your birthday, New Years, Christmas, Labor Day, you can even use a private pivotal moment for you as a “fresh start” where you say to yourself that you are beginning something new. These moments are creative little stories that can become important parts of the story we tell about our lives. For me: I will always remember the pandemic as when I started a regular exercise, meditation, and journaling routine. The story becomes meaningful because of my memories of the pandemic, and over time it becomes solidified as a habit that is a part of my updated identity.
Finally, here is a handy little tool for creating the mental space needed to prioritize a new habit:
“WOOP! There it is!”
W: Wish. What is your wish? (your goal)
O: Outcome. What would be the outcome of this goal?
O: Obstacles. What are the things that will make getting to your goal harder?
P: Plan. What is your plan for when you encounter these obstacles?
Here we are at the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year! What new habit amongst all that you have learned will you put into practice? What new aspect of change and growth will you pull up for yourself and incorporate into the story of this new school year? Above you will find the tools to do it.
For myself, it is going to be proactive planning by committing to a family calendar (with a friend) and using sound cues from nature (like birds or wind) to cue myself to take 3 deep breaths and ground myself in the experience of the present moment.
Good luck!