Why Do You Go Back to Your Old Habits, Even When You Desire Change?

Change is good, but some people have a harder time changing than others. Let’s look at New Year’s as the perfect example. Every year, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions. At the top of that list is to get into shape and lose weight. The gyms fill up with new members, and through January, it’s pumping. Then February comes, and it’s a little less packed. By the end of February, you have a few that are hanging around still going strong, but for the majority, it’s back to the couch. Why do we go back to our old habits even if the change we are striving for is what we desire? This is the human brain, my friends, and in this article, we will discuss what is going on in there.

Before we talk about the brain, it is important to recognize that each one of us has our own programming. There are 3 basic needs that we all have regarding our behaviors, habits, and emotions. We need love, safety, and belonging. This all boils down to us needing to be accepted, be in control, or feel secure. In other words, we are being who we need to be, in order to feel loved, safe, and like we belong?  We will be that “person” to have these 3 basic needs met.

I want you to imagine a pole, and around that pole is a big elastic band. Standing on the inside of that band is you. The elastic band is around the pole and your waist, so essentially, you are “tied” to the pole. You start to walk away. You’re walking away toward the change or new habit that you are desiring. You really want this change. As your walking toward it, that elastic gets tighter and tighter around your waist. You can see that change ahead, but the elastic is keeping you from getting there. Eventually, the resistance becomes too much, and you are snapped back to the pole.

This pole is called your pole of beliefs, and it subconsciously controls what you need to do, be, or have to feel loved, safe, and like you belong. No lasting change will stick if you can’t move that pole of beliefs, no matter how much good information and knowledge you have. Now before you shake your head and say, “no, that’s not it,” let’s have a look at these 3 parts of the brain.

Related Article: The 5 Steps to Transformational Habit Change

The Brain

The Brain is an amazing organ that’s part of our nervous system. This is where all this magic happens, so I want to give you a little overview of how this all comes together and works. Don’t worry; I will not break out into an anatomy and physiology lesson. Instead, keep it simple for those not on the anatomy and physiology nerd wagon like me.

Of course, there are more than 3 parts to the brain, but I am going to zero in on these 3;

The brain stem– this is the area that oversees the “physical” actions in your body. Things like your heart rate, your body temperature regulation, your blood sugar maintenance. All the things that are keeping you alive and are automatic. What is also going on here is that the brain stem is constantly taking in information and then categorizing it. An example of the categories is risk and safety.

When it comes to the thinking process, this area of our subconscious may be described as our Ego. Another way that it was presented to me was the term “critter brain.” I kind of like this better than ego because it can really become pesky and busy, kind of like a critter. So, I will refer to this as your “critter brain.”

When we talk about love, safety, and belonging, anything new is considered unfamiliar. To the critter brain, this is risky and unsafe. It definitely does not like change. This part of the brain likes the status quo. It’s comfortable there. It likes patterns and “the familiar” because it feels safe. In other words, if you have survived an experience once to the critter brain, you’re likely to survive it again, and that’s where it likes to stay, even if it’s an experience that you don’t really want. How about that job you’re in? You do not really love what you do, but your critter brain shouts to you, “you’re fine where you are. We know this job, you’ve been doing it for a long time. No need for a change!!”

The limbic system– this is where emotions are of concern. We feel our sense of wellbeing and love in this part of the brain, which will drive us toward or away from an experience based on feelings. This is really where we experience the actual emotion that we have toward something. So, the critter brain senses the change; it deems it unsafe; “We don’t need it!!” In response, the limbic part causes us to feel the fear or the anxiety that surrounds it. Ultimately tells us to stay away from said change or experience.

The Cortex – the third part is the cortex and is the conscious part of our mind. This is the part of the human brain that operates logically. We will justify our behaviors and beliefs here. The cortex likes to make meaning of what we are feeling. It justifies the emotion. So, if fear is the emotion the limbic system sends, based on the critter brain’s warning, then the cortex will find a reason to justify the fear. We can have the experience, and then the cortex will give us the perception, or the meaning that we make from it, based on the information we received. It will develop the reasons for the critter brain to slam on the breaks toward the change.

So, to sum this up, the main driver of the brain stem (critter brain) is typically fear of change. The goal is for survival. The critter brain does not like change. It likes to stay in the “comfort zone,” even if that’s not the best scenario. The main driver of the cortex is love. This part of the brain loves learning and experiencing growth and expansion. The critter brain attempts to change the cortex’s mind by saying, “Hey Cortex, we are just fine the way we are! Quit trying to change!” The limbic system is like the middle child, just trying to keep the peace between the two. It can really put us on an emotional roller coaster.

Habit Change

The goal for lasting habit change is to get a green light in all 3 areas. You won’t have sustainable change if you have a red light in the critter brain and green light in the cortex. Habits are the automated choices or routines that we make daily. They are subconscious mechanisms that really impact our daily life and choices. They may seem like a lot of thought put into it, but really they are just impulsed by urges and cues that we don’t readily recognize. Daily, automatic habits actually allow our brains to work more efficiently, making room and energy for deeper thought processes to occur.

Let’s take the simple task of getting dressed every day. We may think about what we’re going to put on, but we don’t really think about the “getting dressed” action itself. At a young age, you once learned how to get dressed, and at that time, it took thought and practice. Once you got it down, you no longer really thought about the “how-to” part. Your brain now has a habit, and now you have freed up your brain for other processes. You can now do something like study for a test, for example, while getting dressed, or brushing your teeth, brushing your hair, etc.

Why Do You Go Back To Your Old Habits

If you are looking to make big changes, for example, lifestyle changes for a health-related issue, we really need to look at habitual thought patterns and what benefit you’re getting from your poor habits. Even when we want to stop and know the habit is not good for us, we benefit from everything we do habitually. There is some reward to anything we are doing.  Are your habits making you feel loved, safe, or giving you a sense of belonging? Are you attempting to nurture something else that you might be missing in your life?

Let’s use the example of smoking. It is not a secret that smoking is not serving anyone’s health well. But beyond the addictive nature of the tobacco and other additives in cigarettes themselves, there is the mechanism of the action itself. There is a cue to light up that has made it habitual.

To change this, we need to change the action that comes after the cue and find the benefit that it is providing you. Remember, the critter brain likes the status quo. Is it the sense of belonging to a group that might take a “smoke break” at work? Or, is it the love of maybe alone time at certain points of the day? Is it safe to stay where you are because who else would you be if you weren’t a smoker? This is a deeper identity level, but it all comes back to love, safety, and belonging.

Even when it is not serving us, like a bad relationship, we know that it might be dysfunctional, or maybe even dangerous, but people stay there because they feel loved. They feel like they belong. They may even feel safe in an unsafe situation because to be anywhere else is unfamiliar, and there is a sense of fear and danger that comes with that. In our minds, we choose the familiar, which, to us, is safe.

Now, we can have all the information we can get our fingertips on. We have the internet, and you can read about the process of changing a habit, but without getting to the root of why we stay stuck or keep falling back to our old habits, there won’t be any behavior change. We want our habits to become new behaviors that we do instead of what we have to do.