There are really just two kinds of behavioral change: starting things and stopping things. And whether you’re trying to establish a good habit or quit a bad habit, your success will depend on the reason – the motivation – behind your effort. Get the why right, and you’ll figure out the how.
With that in mind, here are two golden rules for changing your habits.
1. Reward Motivates Action
Our brains are wired to take action in the hope of gaining some reward.1 Imagine one of our hunter-gather ancestors considering hiking over the ridge into the next valley. Why would they do it? Because they believed food could be found there. The promise of reward motivates action.
So when you’re trying to start a new habit, think of all the benefits of performing the behavior. Focus on what you have to gain from doing the work, and you’ll be more motivated to take action.
For example, if you’re trying to exercise more regularly, think of how good you’ll feel after a tough workout, envision the self-esteem boost you’ll get from looking fitter, and read up on all the ways exercise is good for your brain. (For that, I recommend Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey.)
You should not, however, think about the harm that may come if you don’t exercise. While failing to exercise may lead to heart disease, threats like this aren’t very good at motivating you to take action. And that brings us to rule number two.
2. Pain and Fear Motivate Inaction
Pain triggers avoidance and fear leads to inaction.1 What was our ancestors’ response to the threat of leopards hunting them in the night? To stay put, and to stay quiet.
So if there’s a behavior you’d like to stop doing – a bad habit you’d like to quit – you should think of all the ways that behavior is harmful. Focus on the costs of your bad habit, and you’ll be less motivated to do it.
For example, if you’d like to quit using social media, think of how you often find content that makes you upset, add up all the hours of your life it’s wasting, and learn about how immoral (or at least amoral) companies like Facebook (sorry, Meta) are. By highlighting all the harms, you’ll be more inclined to avoidance.
Combining the Rules
One of the best ways to make a major change in your life is to replace a bad habit with a good one, and in doing so, you’d be wise to apply both of these golden rules.
Perhaps you’d like to watch less television at night and spend that time reading. Well, think both about how late-night screentime is harming your sleep2 and how much you enjoy reading fantasy novels. (I highly recommend the Mistborn trilogy.)
Whatever you’re trying to change, remember that the desire to feel good motivates us to take action, and the desire to avoid harm motivates inaction. Follow those two rules of habit change, and your odds of success will be much higher.
1 Sharot Tali. The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others. Henry Holt and Co., 2017.
2 Walker, Matthew. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Scribner, 2018.