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(Continued from here, and here. Maybe less continued, and more delivering on from those posts)
Before I could make the decision to cut my trip short, I had to answer the question — ‘have I achieved what I wanted?’ To answer that, we have to first look at Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit.
This book had a powerful effect on my brother and me — we are both big fans of the book. In the book, Duhigg writes about the habit loop (as per the photograph above). Each habit has three parts; a cue, a routine, and a reward. A cue triggers a behaviour from which we get a reward — at least when we first start. This reward creates a dopamine spike when we engage in the behaviour, however, over time, as the habit gets ingrained, the spike is created at the point of the cue – in anticipation of the reward. Thats how a habit is created.
A cue can be divided into 5 categories; location, time, emotional state, people, and the act preceding the cue. So to change a habit, one must identify the category of the cue. Then one needs to change the routine that is triggered to get the same reward. Importantly, there will be pain points in this process and one needs to have a plan to deal with them. This is not an easy process, but one that works. (Detailed cheat sheet at the end of this post.)
My brother, Garry, had a better plan. He decided a few months ago to reboot his habits by building new ones. In order to do so, he went to Pai in Thailand for a month long Muay Thai camp. And in one go, instead of having to change the routines that are triggered by the cues, he just left the cues back home. It was an opportunity to build new cues, to trigger new routines for rewards of his choosing.
And it was mostly successful. When he came back to Melbourne, he was able to bring back with him a set of new habits. There are still cues that he has come back to, but mostly he has been able to stick to the new habits. Even when he slips back to an old cue and routine, its not as ingrained so that is easier to not repeat that habit.
That brings me back to the question – ‘have I achieved what I wanted?’
What I wanted from my experience at the Ayurvedic retreat was to put myself in an environment without all my cues as well as where I cannot access my usual rewards. I could do the Thailand thing like Garry, but I was not sure that I could trust myself not to pursue my usual rewards. So I decided to put myself in a position where that was not an option. And the retreat was exactly such a place – without both my cues and my rewards. A place where I could do a hard reset of my habits.
And it was an experience much harder than I thought it was going to be. I have written about some of it already (here, here, and here). But its one thing about it being hard to ignore cues, or not have access to rewards, its another thing to start to fray mentally.
I just really began to hate the place (and it was not the fault of the place itself). The feelings I was having were now the focus rather than the hard reset. I was getting emotionally and psychologically invested in heavy negative feelings, rather than what my objective was. I started obsessing about my old rewards as a way of dealing with negative feelings. So I was right where I did not want to be – in a negative headspace and compulsively thinking of my old rewards.
Based on that, I figured its best to call it a day. I needed to focus on the what I had achieved in terms of moving towards a hard reset, and let go of everything else. Once I made that decision and had an end date, most of the negative feelings dissipated and I managed to get my focus back to the objective I wanted. I actually got back on track.
Now that I am in Singapore, I am still away from my cues, but the old rewards are within reach. The challenge is to continue and build upon the hard reset and avoid the old rewards, while building new habits. Thats the mantra for the next two-ish weeks. Wish me luck.
ps: Sorry for the long post, and thanks for reading all the way through.
Power of Habit Cheat Sheet