Off the beaten track

I walk with my dogs every morning in the woods next to my house in our little town in Denmark. It’s a small wood by Denmark’s standards with about a 5k perimeter, so my dogs and I know it pretty well in all seasons and weathers. When it’s rainy, there are about 3 places on our daily walk where the path gets untenably muddy, so in the Autumn and winter we take a little detour off the beaten track at these places up and around the sludgy bits. In the Spring it becomes dry enough to use the main path again but a funny thing happens at this point. The dogs do not want to. They have got used to taking the detour all through the winter months and they pull like hell on the lead to keep on using it. I have to pull extra hard back every day for about a week before they will voluntarily start to go the ‘new’ way on their own. In a couple of weeks the new way becomes commonplace, and then we go through the whole process of teaching them the detour again in reverse, in Autumn.

The point of this story is not that dogs are thick or even particularly averse to change. They are a bit, but when it comes to changing habit patterns, so are humans. If you’ve ever tried to change even a trivial habit, you might recognise the resistance your inner dog puts up to going another way. If you’ve ever tried to change a really big one: for example to quit smoking or drinking or change dietary habits, you’ll know that it can feel nearly impossible to plough a new furrow. I’m currently trying to reduce the number of carbs I eat to drop a bit of weight and I am very aware of the enormous will power it takes to retrain myself to have water with evening mails rather than a glass of wine or eggs for breakfast without toast. It feels like gross deprivation at first and your brain tries all kinds of tricks, pulling on the lead to get you to go back to the familiar path. It’ll try to kid you that one piece of toast would be just fine, that after the day you had today one glass of wine is well- deserved. It’ll lead you in a trance to the fridge, and before you even realise what you are doing, hook you up with a piece of chocolate.

In the days of vinyl, if a record was scratched it jumped whenever it got to the scratch. I had a pink vinyl version of ‘Cool for cats’ that was scratched in several places. Over time I got used to the jumps and they sounded normal to me. I remember hearing the song years later on CD and thinking that the CD sounded all wrong. The flaws in our old records become normal and comfortable. Our own habits and patterns are comfortable, however flawed.

Our brains are really good at going down well travelled neurological pathways once we’ve forged them. And this is good to know because it’s important to realise that it’s not just you. Change is uncomfortable for everyone, and if you accept that then you can start to support yourself through the discomfort rather than beating yourself up or deluding yourself that at some unspecified time change will be easier and will just happen. They say it takes 30 days to learn a new habit. It certainly always starts out hard and takes a lot of repetition. Try writing with the other hand, learning a new skill like a language or a dance routine. Your body just doesn’t want to do it. It is even harder if you are trying to unlearn a previous habit at the same time. If you’re trying for example to eat differently you are also having to unlearn how to eat the way you did before, and old habits die hard. You resist with all your being and want to elastic-band back to the safety of the comfort zone.

If you press on, however, and keep going through the clunky stage, you begin to experience the wonders of neuro-plasticity. This is the brain’s incredible capacity to rewire itself and create new pathways for change, however old or set in your ways you are. At first any challenge can seem daunting and it’s important to persevere and, like the baby learning to walk, to have an unshakeable belief that you’ll get there in the end. All learning follows the same steps whether it’s developing a new eating habit, learning a new language or driving a car. At first we are in a state of unconscious incompetence. That means we don’t know how much we don’t know. Before my daughter started driving lessons she was pretty gung-ho about it. “What’s the big deal? You just press the accelerator and go, it must be easy, even you can do it mum!” She changed her tune pretty quickly once she realised it was a bit more complicated than that as she kangarooed off down the street on her first lesson. When you first have to co-ordinate a plethora of new bits of behaviour all at once it can seem insurmountable.

If you do keep going, you start, with practice, to become consciously competent. This is the ‘clunky’ phase where you can do it, you can drive, but you need to really think about it step by step. “Engage gear, handbrake off, break off, accelerator on, mirror, signal – go”. It can be frustrating at times, sometimes it works great and other times it all falls apart. Finally when you persist over time you become unconsciously competent. There is a Hawaiian saying that “knowledge is only rumour until it's in the muscle” and at this stage driving is in the muscle. It takes about a month to create a new habit, but once you've created it, you can let it run. Repetition is the key. The mind needs to be exercised like a muscle to train it to do the new thing and then there is a point at which the new habit begins to automate and will run by itself - and you have a shiny new piece of behaviour that you don’t have to work so hard at any more.

If we expect this process to be tough, and in need of a bit of time and effort, we can begin to prepare ourselves for it. We can think of ways that we can support ourselves through the change, just as we would support anyone going through a tough time. Because we’re dealing with our tricksy ritual loving brains it can be tough to expect that you can do it alone. Whenever you want to introduce a change in behaviour, get someone else on board to help and challenge yourself to become accountable to them. if you want to go for a run tomorrow - tell your partner or a friend whose good opinion you value.

In Homer’s Odyssey the hero Ulysses is warned about the beautiful but deadly sirens.These are monsters, in the form of beautiful women with the sweetest of singing voices. Any sailors that pass by are so bewitched by the sound that they are drawn to the island like a magnet.  When they get near, however, their ships smash on rocks as sharp as spears and all are lost. In order to avoid this Ulysses orders his sailors to bind him firmly to the ship’s mast. When he is firmly tied, and his men have the beeswax in their ears, they are able to ignore the sirens and steer the ship safely past the island.

I’ve put this principle of binding myself to the mast to good use with many habits. My much-loved friend and writing partner Rachel and I meet twice a month to support and challenge each other to greater things. We hold deadlines for each other for our creative work and hold hands through the tough times. We offer each other love, praise and development in that order and Thursdays with Rachel are a joy and an inspiration whilst keeping me on the right path.

All of those same principles can be applied to self. You can strap yourself to the mast by making it trickier for yourself to get it wrong rather than get it right. To get myself to go running on a cold morning I lay out my running clothes next to my bed the night before so I actively have to step over them if I’m going to cop out. I’ve found over the years that in the development of good habits it’s important to be sneaky with your brain - rather than take it on in head-on conflict. Think Little Finger rather than Ramsay Bolton in Game of Thrones. If you beat yourself up to get your compliance on a regular basis you’ll fall out with yourself. If you regularly smack a dog you lose relationship and trust and you’ll only have fear and pain as motivation. Same goes for yourself. Instead it’s important to deal with your setbacks as you would with those of a valued friend. When you catch yourself in the act of reaching for the biscuit or finding an excuse to watch tv instead of run or write or meditate, remind yourself with kindness that this is just the way our brains work and acknowledge the difficulty without letting yourself off the hook. “Never mind, it happens to everybody. Let’s try again.” In order to change we have to notice these patterns with kindly awareness, and then gently tug on the lead to put ourselves back on the right path. You have to be gentle like you would be in training a new habit with your dog, but firm too so it knows you’re not going to let it take the piss. Also reward yourself with praise and healthy treats (yes, humans respond to those too), and celebrate your successes however small. And more than anything, keep on keeping on, however tough it gets.

When temptation strikes, it’s also important also to remind yourself why it’s important to you to change. Have some reminders you’ve created for yourself around the house to keep you focused on the big picture. Tracking apps and visual planners are good for this, but it could just as easily be a screensaver, a ‘you’re not hungry, you’re bored” quote on the fridge, or your hand weights sadly looking at you next to the TV. Remind yourself also that very little spiritual, emotional or intellectual growth ever came from sitting in your comfort zone eating chocolate, but whilst embracing the tough, give yourself a bit of a cuddle too and let yourself know that it is bloody hard to change.

There is something very powerful in changing or creating a habit. Even if you don’t have a pressing goal for something you need to change it can be good for your brain health to set yourself the occasional habit changing challenge anyway. Aside from the huge neurological advantages of keeping your synapses firing for health and longevity, there is an often overlooked psychological bonus too. All change is generative. Every time you change something in your life, however small, you are giving yourself the empowering message that you can do it. Change generates more and bigger change. So start small and you will find that it can lead to some astonishing new possibilities opening up for you. Once you realise you can do it, the sky is the limit.