The subconscious mind plays a significant role in forming habits by acting as a powerful driving force behind our repeated behaviors. Habits are automatic patterns of behavior that we develop through repetition and reinforcement. While conscious decisions and intentions initiate the habit formation process, it is the subconscious mind that takes over and executes the behavior without requiring constant effort or attention. Through a process known as automaticity, the subconscious mind stores and retrieves habitual actions, making them effortless and efficient.
Here’s how the subconscious mind influences habit formation and how you can work with the subconscious to get what you want out of life:
1. Habit Formation:
When we repeat a behavior consistently over time, the subconscious mind recognizes the pattern and automates it to conserve cognitive resources. The subconscious mind creates neural connections and pathways associated with the behavior, making it easier to execute the habit without conscious deliberation.
What You Can do to Change:
Identification of the habits that are hindering you and the identification of habits that will better serve you is the first step of change. You can start by writing down your goals, and then writing a list for both what habits you have that hinder progression towards your goal, and a list of habits that you can identify that will get you closer to your goal. An example would be, the outcome you want is to be physically fit, the habits you have preventing is you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, but a habit that is helping you is that you go to the gym 6 days a week. Remember, this stage is just identifying. You need to know where you are to make any significant changes in your life.
2. Cue-Response Association:
Habits often develop through cue-response associations. A cue acts as a trigger that signals the subconscious mind to initiate a particular behavior. For example, a cue can be a specific time of day, a location, an emotional state, or even another action. The subconscious mind links the cue with the corresponding behavior, creating a strong association between the two.
What You Can do to Change:
This goes hand in hand with recognizing the habits that are hindering you. Once you identify the habits that are holding you back, you can then start recognizing the cues, or triggers, that ignite the habitual behavior. For instance, if smoking is the behavior you identified keeping you from being physically fit, you may identify the cues that trigger the response in you to light up a cigarette. This could be anything from waking up in the morning, eating a meal, feeling nervous, the list can go on and on. If you can identify your cues or triggers, then you can consciously replace the behavior with another behavior. This is much easier said than done, but with time, practice, patience, and the implementation of this principle, then you will be on your way to working with your subconscious to achieve the life you desire.
3. Reinforcement:
The subconscious mind will both seek pleasure and avoid pain. Positive reinforcement, such as experiencing pleasure, satisfaction, or relief after performing a habit, strengthens the neural pathways associated with that habit. The subconscious mind seeks to repeat behaviors that result in positive outcomes, making the habit more ingrained. The subconscious mind will do whatever it can to avoid pain, so if the reward causes too much pain, then the reward will be discounted, and the subconscious mind will attempt to avoid the pain by modifying the habitual behavior.
What You Can do to Change:
Once you have identified your negative habits you can amplify the pleasure and art of avoiding pain consciously instead of unconsciously letting your subconscious work for you. For example, if you are trying to lose weight, you will likely have some triggers that resonate with pleasure, such as a sugar addiction, eating ice cream is the pleasure-seeking behavior and you are rewarded by eating it because you get a hit of the feel-good hormone, dopamine.
Here you would then be able to reorganize and eat strawberries when you crave ice cream. Strawberries are sweet, and natures made sugar. You could consciously talk yourself up about the sweetness of strawberries and then talk about the health benefits of strawberries, after some time, you will be able to change the dopamine receptor to shift from sugar to health benefits of what you eat. Same goes with pain, we resist behaviors that are painful. Sticking with wanting to lose weight as an example, you may fail at dieting because the hunger pangs caused from caloric restriction is far more painful than the thought of a slimmer body in the future. You could then try intermittent fasting and focus on the pain of feeling full within your eating window and psych yourself up for the feeling of fasting and enjoying the extra focus you get to experience.
4. Habit Loops:
Habits operate within a loop that involves a cue, the behavior itself, and a reward. This loop, known as the habit loop or the cue-routine-reward cycle, becomes deeply ingrained in the subconscious mind. Over time, the loop becomes automatic, and the behavior is executed without conscious thought.
What You Can do to Change:
Create new loops. This will take a conscious effort to change the loop, but once you have successfully created a new loop and reinforced it long enough, the new behavior will be second nature. Start by choosing a habit you want to change. You have identified the habits surrounding this goal that you already possess that both help and hinder your attainment of your goal. You have identified rewards as well as the pains of your goal. This is the step of putting it all together in a conscious way until your subconscious accepts it as a habit loop and the habit becomes second nature.
5. Beliefs and Self-Identity
The subconscious mind plays a role in shaping our beliefs and self-identity, which in turn influence our habits. Our beliefs about ourselves and what we are capable of can impact the habits we develop. The subconscious mind aligns our behaviors with our self-identity and reinforces habits that are consistent with our beliefs.
What You Can do to Change:
Start imagining yourself as you want to be. If you are overweight and want to be thin, for example, start imagining yourself as thin. More than just what you might look and feel like, think about what thin people do, or those with bodies you would like to have yourself. What do they eat? What do they do during the day? Start paying attention to and adapting the behaviors and with time, you will become what you imagine yourself to be.
6. Habit Modification:
Modifying existing habits or creating new ones involves working with the subconscious mind. By consciously introducing new cues, behaviors, and rewards, we can reshape the subconscious associations and reprogram our habits. Consistent repetition of the new behavior helps establish new neural pathways, replacing old habit patterns.
What You Can do to Change:
Be patient with yourself! It took a lifetime of ingraining behaviors and habits into your subconscious mind, allow yourself time to reprogram your mind. With effort, time, and practice you will be able to rewire the habit loops in your subconscious mind to live a life with new habit loops that you placed consciously to adapt the behaviors and habits of the person you want to be.
Understanding the role of the subconscious mind in habit formation allows us to approach habit change and development more effectively. By consciously engaging with the subconscious mind, we can intentionally shape our habits, reinforce positive behaviors, and break free from unwanted or unhealthy habits. Techniques such as mindfulness, visualization, positive self-talk, and habit tracking can be utilized to work in alignment with the subconscious mind during the process of habit formation and modification.