The First Step to Breaking a Bad Habit

The CRAVE Cycle: The Cue Stage

When it comes to habits, the cue is the first step down the path of a habit. The cue signals to the brain to begin a behavior. A cue predicts some kind of reward like food, water, or sex. In today’s society, cues will also predict money, status, power, and relationships. Your brain is constantly scanning for cues all around you. 

The CRAVE Cycle is a powerful habit model that has been adapted from common habit frameworks to include how to deal with highly stimulating habits.

This is the first blog post in the CRAVE cycle series by Mito Coaching.

Cues fall into three (3) primary categories:

Environmental: Your environment is a strong predictor of the behaviors you will act on. For example, imagine you are in a food court. You are much more likely to buy food than buy a sweater. Or you sit on your couch facing the TV, you’re more likely to turn it on than read a book. Our environment influences our behaviors significantly by providing the cues that lead us down a path of behavior that predicts reward. 

Relational: At one point or another you have been influenced by your friends to try something new or do something you know is not quite right. Relationships can influence you to try your first alcoholic beverage, go rafting, or eat healthy. The people around you have an oversized influence on who you become. Data from the Framingham Heart Study showed that if one of your friends becomes obese, you have a 57% chance of also becoming obese. And it doesn’t stop there. If a friend of a friend becomes obese, you have a 32% chance of becoming obese. So not only do the people around you influence who you are but the people around them also do. 

Internal: You are an emotional being, and those emotions will influence your behavior. Our brains have been designed to pursue reward and avoid pain. When you feel a painful emotion like let down, sadness, or boredom you will search for ways to alleviate it. Have you ever been so bored that you get up, go to your pantry, and start shoving handfuls of chocolate chips into your face until the edges of your mouth are coated in milk chocolate? That is the result of your internal cue asking you to do something. 

Positive internal cues will also predict behaviors that can be good or bad. Happiness can lead you to a night of binge drinking or a blissful walk in the park. Excitement can lead you to a sexual encounter with a stranger or a fun filled evening with your family. Your internal cues offer a stimulus that predicts a behavior that you have been consistently doing for days, months, or years. 

Overlapping Cues

Cues can exist by themselves as primarily environmental, relational, or internal. In the earlier stages of a habit they will exist as a single cue category and as you become more ingrained in the habit, more categories will begin to participate. Each overlapping cue category offers its own challenges and opportunities.

Peer Pressure: You’ve definitely experienced peer pressure before. Peer pressure occurs at the overlap of environmental and relational cues. Your friends or people around you are doing something and that something is a tangible element in the room. This is seen in the office as a dress code or can be the all too familiar “Oh come on, it’s just one drink”. Even when you have no internal drive to wear a suit or have a drink, these cues can be a potent combination that can lead to participation in the behavior. 

Addictive: This overlap is the most powerful overlap, particularly for non-productive behaviors. When something is in your immediate environment and has strong internal cues for the behavior it can become very addictive. This is seen with alcoholics, drug users, and porn users. When a non-productive behavior reaches this overlap, there is also shame mixed in with this behavior. Making it an incredibly potent combination. 

On the flip side, positive behaviors that can be nurtured so that no one can influence your commitment is how high level athletes and successful entrepreneurs operate. Setting up your environment for success and having the internal drive to commit makes for a very strong and immovable combo. 

Mindset: Combining Relational and Internal cues offers you an opportunity to develop the right mindset for a habit. You and the people around you are driven to do something without tangible elements in the room for the behavior. This is a very potent section of the cue overlap because it is much simpler to create your environment than to establish these two cues. When you have the appropriate mindset for a habit, the habit has basically been formed. The mindset overlap is often the starting point of business. Where you and your colleagues have established an idea but now require action to see it through. All that is required is the environment and the habit zone is reached. 

The Habit Zone: When all three categories of cues overlap your behavior falls in the habit zone. This means that you have all the tools to make the habit stick, for good or for bad. The Habit Zone is when the behavior is immediately available, the people around you are doing it, and you have an internal drive to do it. This is the purest form of habit. All signs lead to the behavior whether positive or negative. Even if you had the strongest will on the planet, you would not be able to stop a behavior with all these cues, without help. Your goal should be to get positive behaviors into this zone and negative behaviors away from this zone.

“We are all the time following the influences which will presently be our rulers, we are making our own destiny. We are choosing our habits…. In time these acquire a power over us.”

-Herman Wayland

Easy ways to Start Good Habits

Creating the right influences for a habit you are trying to form is vital. When you look at a habit, you want to look at it through the lens of the 3 categories of cues. 

Make the habit noticeable: Changing your environment can be a very powerful way to make a habit more likely to happen. If you want to read more, put your book on the coffee or bedside table. You will see the book when you are relaxing then you will be more likely to read. If you want to eat more healthy food, cut up vegetables and have them prepared for when you feel like snacking. Have your running shoes at the door the night before a morning workout. Small environmental cues can lead to large behavior changes. 

Find people doing your preferred habit: The people around you have such a strong influence on who you become. Finding people who are already doing what you want to do can have a very strong influence on who you become. Want to get fit? Join a workout group. Want to learn to code? Find coders to share knowledge with. Once you are immersed in a community it becomes much easier to participate in your desired behavior. 

Pay attention to internal triggers: Start by paying attention to your emotions and internal responses to different stimuli. Once you notice patterns, you can start to leverage these cues for positive behaviors. When you start to feel excited, you might respond by pacing or shaking your leg. You can attach a positive behavior to your excitement. Like once you notice the excitement, you take 3 deep breaths to center yourself and focus on what got you excited. 

Breaking Bad Habits before they Start

Make the habit invisible: When changing a habit, you want to make the cues disappear. When you become less likely to notice something, you will not have as many urges to do it. Move your TV into the closet after each time you watch. Move the unhealthy snacks to the basement on a difficult to reach shelf. If your TV and junk food are hidden, you can enter your living room and open your pantry without an urge to watch or snack. This means less willpower is necessary to avoid the behavior. 

Spend less time around people doing the behavior: Do your friends like to go to the bar every night? Are your friends spending countless hours playing video games? Do your coworkers complain and make drama at work? When the people around you do things, you will follow along. Whether it’s your buddies drinking, playing video games, or a coworker gossiping about others in the office. If someone you know participates in negative behaviors, try to spend less time around them. 

Manipulate internal cues: Sounds a bit sinister but your internal cues can be changed to predict a different habit than it currently predicts. Take boredom for example. When you feel bored, you probably reach for your phone. There’s lots of high stimulation, low effort activities on there. If you’re trying to be more healthy, each time boredom arises, you can shift the cue toward a different behavior. Each time you reach for your phone, do 10 pushups before you get on your phone. After a few weeks, your boredom cue will start to predict working out instead of scrolling on your phone. It can even get to the point that you are excited to do push ups.

Using Small Wins to Create Habits

Cues are the first step to either developing good habits or continuing with bad habits. Your habits shape and mold the person you will become. When you look at your life you can ask yourself a simple question “What cues exist that drive my behavior?” 

You will start to notice small things that drive your routines. The couch directly faces the TV, so everytime you sit down, you watch TV. There’s a book on your bedside table, so when you lie in bed you read. Your social media apps are on the front page of your phone, making it very simple to click on them even when you open your phone to call your mom. You become a product of your environment and how it is set-up. 

When you are building a habit you want it to be time bound, simple and specific, and have it lead to a larger goal. For a gym or healthy cooking habit you would say:

To support this habit you could put your gym shoes near the door. You could expand the habit to include putting on gym clothes as soon as the alarm rings. Every small cue you notice either brings you closer to habits you want or farther away. If you choose to put on pajamas instead of workout clothes when you wake up, you’re probably not going to the gym.

Supporting Your Habit Growth

With Mito Coaching you will be able to understand the cues and triggers of your habit. Our expert coaches have neurochemical expertise combining with the art of coaching to deliver seamless results. Whether you're trying to change something simple like watching less TV, all the way to mild behavioral addictions like social media and porn use. Our professional coaches offer a safe space to share your experiences and what with you to find the perfect way to change your habits. Reach out today to get started!