The Hi-lighted Route

First of all I have to say that I DON’T do mornings .. or at least I DON’T do mornings well!

In any event I headed off to the gym this morning and shortly found myself travelling south instead of north! I had been busy thinking about a conversation I had had yesterday, and the car was following the road most travelled! Once I realized what was happening, I turned around and headed back, still not taking the most direct route to where I wanted to end up. I was reminded of those words my GPS [Nellie] speaks each time I head out with her: “Take the hi-lighted route” because that is exactly what my mind did, it took the route that was hi-lighted until I intervened and changed it. And even then I didn’t change it to the most direct route but rather to the one that I was more familiar with.

I wanted to go to the gym. And I wanted to get there as quickly as possible because I had a deadline to get the car back home by. But despite both of those things, my mind took over and took me in a different direction. Even when I realized what had happened I still didn’t respond by taking the most direct route.

I wonder how many times a day we let our minds do exactly that. Take control of our actions and our words so that they follow a pattern that we have repeated over and over and over. Are we always fortunate enough to catch those moments and reverse them in time? Perhaps to to head them into a less damaging direction? Or do we even want to? A habit had taken over!

In a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Phillippa Lally, a health psychology researcher at University College and her research team decided to figure out just how long it actually takes to form a habit.

“On average, it takes more than two months before a new behavior becomes automatic -- 66 days to be exact. And how long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely depending on the behavior, the person, and the circumstances. In Lally's study, it took anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for people to form a new habit.”

So to either make or break a habit it takes longer than the oft-quoted 21 days for most people. There s so good news in the study however. ‘…you don't have to be perfect. Making a mistake once or twice has no measurable impact on your long-term habits. This is why you should treat failure like a scientist, give yourself permission to make mistakes, and develop strategies for getting back on track quickly.’

This gives me hope that eventually the new behaviour will become the instinctive and the old behaviour will be no more. Will my hi-lighted route one day be to the gym?? I wonder...

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