There’s been a popular myth in the self-improvement field: “If you work on a habit for long enough, eventually it will become automatic and you never have to worry about again.” Another variation is “Stop a bad habit for long enough and you won’t have to deal with it again in the future.”

The assumption is that once the habit is automated it will be like that for life, without having to put any more effort in to maintain it.

I believed in that myth for years, in fact, I built my coaching business around it — help others to build better life habits.

But if you have done any work on habit building you know that assumption it’s not true. Whether it’s smoking, eating unhealthy food, drugs, alcohol — if you quit sooner or later the bad habit comes back. Maybe it’s after a traumatic event like losing a loved one, or it’s after a long trip where you change your environment for a while, but eventually, it always comes back.

So if the bad habit always comes back, why even bother working on habits at all? What’s the point?

Well, habit building has its place. If you put some effort in and purposefully stop a bad behavior for 30 or so days, it does get easier to keep going. The trouble comes if we stop there and believe the problem is solved. If we do that, we’ve missed a critical piece about why bad habits always come back: the underlying need that the habit was fulfilling.

Why Do Bad Habits Usually Come Back?

Bad habits can start for lots of reasons. Most often, it’s because of the environment around us. But after we realize it’s not a healthy behavior we can decide to quit.

And then we do.

And then it comes back. Why?

Virtually all bad habits come back for the same reason — we have an underlying need that is not filled in a healthy way. For example, we don’t have a healthy social life and we feel bored. We have an underlying need for excitement and variety that isn’t being filled in a healthy way.

As a result, we develop bad habits like eating junky food, binge watching TV shows, or browsing YouTube excessively. We develop all these bad habits to mask the boredom and temporarily fill the underlying need for excitement and variety.

The need is not something on an intellectual level, we already know the habit is harmful. The need is on the emotional level.

Most solutions for changing habits these days focus on the intellectual and habit levels, not on the need level. So if we need to fix our internet addiction, we’re told to install Freedom.to and limit our internet access only to certain hours. Or go on a healthy food retreat for a few weeks and change our eating habits. Sure, that will help us stop the bad habits for a while, but it doesn’t change the fact that the underlying need is still not fulfilled.

Sooner or later, when the pain from the unfilled need is bad enough, the negative behavior will come back, or we’ll simply replace it with another one. That’s why when smokers stop smoking they start binge eating instead.

We can abandon habits, but we can’t abandon needs.

Needs vs. Habits

Our needs are hard-wired, and unlike habits, we can’t choose to “quit”. We can’t decide that we don’t need human affection anymore and be fulfilled sitting at our computer all day. We can’t decide that we don’t want to grow anymore and we’ll be happy where we’re at. Growth is hard-wired into us.

In fact, if you look at any bad habit in your life that you can’t seem to break for good, you will always find an underlying need that needs fulfilling.

So instead of looking only at how to break a bad habit, let’s look at how to fill an underlying need in a healthy way.

Fulfill The Underlying Need

Say you want to stop binge eating fast food. What does fast food give you? Pleasure? Excitement? A way to connect with other people around you? A way to disconnect from the stress? What needs will be unsatisfied if you suddenly stopped eating fast food?

If you recognize some of those underlying needs, what are some healthy ways to fulfill them? Would it be socializing more? Changing your job for a less stressful one?

What if you want to wake up early but you can’t seem to make the habit stick? What if you always slept through half the day and ended up wasting your time on the internet until late at night?

What needs are getting filled by staying in bed for hours in the morning? Are you afraid to face the stress of the day and sleeping in is a way to deal with it? Are you lacking some personal “me time” and making up for it by staying up late on the internet?

What could you do to get more “me time” in a healthy way? How can you use the morning time productively to fulfill that need?

A practical technique when you want to quit a bad habit is to find a healthy substitute habit. Something better to do which will fill the emptiness left from quitting the bad behavior. If we don’t come up with a substitute habit deliberately, we will do it unconsciously. That hole will get filled no matter what, it’s up to you whether you want to do it consciously or not.

Basic Human Needs

Sometimes it’s helpful to start with looking at the unfulfilled needs first instead of our bad habits. The bad habits are just the superficial level. They’re the mechanisms that we use to fulfill our needs. But if you look at the needs first you go one level higher. You will be able to see the bigger picture, instead of looking at the small details.

There’s a great model that I’ve learned from Tony Robins that has helped me a lot to look at the bigger picture—the 6 fundamental human needs:

1. Certainty — The need to be reasonably safe, secure and stable. If you’re not sure you’ll be able to survive in the next few days or weeks, you won’t care about healthy long-term habits.
2. Variety — The need for change, excitement, novelty. If we get stuck in the same old pattern for too long, this need will remain unfulfilled.
3. Significance — The need for achievement and importance. We want to feel like we matter to other people.
4. Connection & Love — The need for human affection and friendship.
5. Growth — The need to become better, faster, stronger, more intelligent.
6. Spirituality — The need to feel like our life has purpose and meaning.

You can learn more about these needs in Tony’s brilliant TED talk.

If any of these fundamental needs are not met in a healthy way, you will inevitably develop some bad habits that overcompensate for it.

The Rat Park Experiment

The famous rat park experiment is a great example of how bad habits and addiction are influenced by our underlying needs.

The experiment was created by Bruce Alexander and tried to prove that simply using drugs didn’t make you addicted. The addiction was greatly influenced by other environmental factors.

He split the rats into two groups. In the first group, the rats were completely isolated in empty cages, no contact with other rats and nothing else to do. For the second group, Alexander built a beautiful “rat park” with plenty of food, toys to play with, and other rats to have sex with. Essentially a rat heaven.

Both groups had two dispensers to drink from — one with pure water and one with heroin water.

The isolated rats in the first group that had nothing else to do quickly got addicted to the heroin and consumed 20 times more of it than the group in the rat park.

The rat park group preferred the pure water. They already had their basic needs met. They didn’t need to compensate with drugs.

The most interesting results came when Alexander started moving some of the isolated rats in the rat park. Even though they were taking heroin for a long time, the isolated rats started preferring the pure water too. After some withdrawal symptoms, they stopped the bad habit automatically.

Much like our friends the rats we get influenced a lot by our environment. We behave similarly when our needs aren’t met and we look for unhealthy ways to meet them.

Unlike the rats however, we are in control of our environment. We can choose to live in the isolated cages and stay with our addiction, or we can choose to build a “rat park” around us.

If you have a bad habit that you’re struggling to quit, try doing it a different way. Instead of getting the newest app or habit breaking technique, try changing your environment. You will find that fulfilling the underlying need in a healthy way will often take care of the bad habit automatically.

Do you often run out of motivation when trying to build new habits like meditation, exercise, or quitting sugar? Maybe you do alright for a week or two but then it gets harder and harder and you begin to cheat more often until eventually, you quit completely.

For some habits though, you’ve probably had the opposite experience – sure it was hard in the beginning but eventually, you got the hang of it and maintaining it wasn’t that hard.

So what’s the difference in both cases? Why is it sometimes so difficult to get over that “hump” to where the habit becomes easier and eventually automatic?

The Hump

What’s the hump? It’s the point where working on the habit turns from a struggle to a more pleasant activity. Usually, that moment comes when we start seeing positive results from the habit.

When we first start, it usually feels easy for a couple of days. We have just set the new goal and we’re feeling motivated. We can see the better future and how we’re going to achieve it.

But after a few days, it starts to get a little harder. The amount of effort we have to put in increases significantly.

Practically that might mean that we don’t feel like going to the gym, we’re not in the mood for meditation, or we start to get cravings for junky foods. The more time we keep working on it the harder it becomes and the less motivation we have to continue. This is “the hump” that we have to overcome with each new habit that we’re building.

Overcoming that initial resistance feels like trying to climb a very steep mountain. We keep climbing but we can’t see the peak yet. We’re on the side of the mountain so we don’t have a good view of our progress. We keep grinding but it doesn’t feel like we’re moving at all.

That’s one of the hardest periods to overcome. That’s where most people give up – before they even see any results.

Getting to the Results

What happens if we don’t give up though? What if we keep pushing through the resistance and keep climbing the mountain?

We eventually get to see a positive result from our effort. For example, you glance in the mirror and you notice for the first time that you have more muscle definition. You put on a pair of pants and you feel that they’re looser than before. You are in the middle of an argument but instead of blowing up and getting mad, you stop your default reaction and mindfully resolve the conflict.

That first moment of seeing the results of our labor is critical. It’s like climbing a mountain for weeks and suddenly catching a glimpse of the peak. This is usually the moment where we feel a huge rush of motivation and we want to keep going. This is the moment when the resistance starts to drop, instead of continuing to build up.

Motivation

Another way of looking at “the hump” is through our motivation levels.

When we first start, naturally we’re pumped and the motivation is very high. But the longer we keep going without seeing any positive results, the more the motivation starts to wane.

Most of the time we don’t have enough natural motivation to get to the point where we see results. Then we quit and feel disappointed in ourselves.

In a few months, we get some initial motivation to try again, but that runs out pretty quickly too and it turns into the same pattern.

I was in a similar cycle for a lot of years trying to build some muscle mass (I’m naturally a skinny guy). I always started with a lot of motivation, going to the gym every day and trying to improve my diet. I did really well for a month or so but that wasn’t enough time to see any results and eventually lost the motivation and stopped going to the gym.

Then a year or so later I would get the same impulse to go and improve my body again, and the cycle would repeat.

Only last year, when I decided to really push myself and find accountability to help me on the way, did I manage to get to the “results point”. I still remember the first time I saw a noticeable improvement in the mirror. And that moment from seeing the result and feeling like I’m in control is still keeping me going today.

Here’s the important part: it’s not about knowing it intellectually, it’s about FEELING it experientially.

Everybody knows that if you lift weights, eventually your muscles will grow and you will get stronger. If you have a good diet you will lose fat. If you practice meditation you will be more mindful. But knowing it intellectually does nothing for your motivation. The motivation comes only when you see and feel the manifested result.

Feeling in Control

The moment where we see actual results is also the moment when we realize that what we’re doing is actually working.

When we start doing a new habit like a new diet, new type of meditation, or exercise we believe that is going to get us to the goal we want. But there is no way to know for sure if that path is going to take us to our goal.

Maybe we follow a diet a 100% and it does nothing for us. Maybe the type of meditation just ends up being a waste of time. Maybe we follow the wrong exercise plan and we end up injured.

Until we see a real positive result in our life that uncertainty is always going to be there, and it’s going to increase. The constant doubt keeps coming in the form of questions like, “Why am I doing this in the first place? Am I doing it right? Is this the right strategy? What if there was an easier way?”

All of that changes when we feel and see the positive results. At that point instead of taking shots in the dark, we know that the strategy we’re using is bringing us measurable results. We know it’s working. And we know if we keep doing it, it’s going to keep working. That’s when we start feeling in control of our goals.

The feeling of control is what keeps us motivated to continue. Can you FEEL the difference between walking on a path that you KNOW is going to take you to your goal, versus one that might take you there?

Getting Over the Hump

So what can we do to boost our motivation so it lasts long enough until we start feeling the positive results? How can we keep going through the resistance for long enough to get over the hump and start feeling in control?

Get a Mentor

One of the most important things is to get a realistic view of how long it usually takes to get to the “results point”. In most cases, we vastly underestimate what it takes. We don’t see all the potential challenges along the way and we assume that the path will be smooth.

Getting a mentor who has already experienced some of the results is a great way to start. That’s much easier than it sounds. Say you’re trying to build more muscle – you don’t have to talk to Mr. Olympia to get some feedback. Just talk to a guy who looks a bit more ripped than you do. Even if he’s a terrible teacher, he will have a better idea of how long it will take you and what the path looks like because he’s already been there.

Don’t limit yourself to just one mentor – the more feedback you get from different sources the more accurate your “map” will be.

Notice the Secondary Positive Results

Often we focus only on the big outcome that we want, like lose 30 pounds, and that becomes our only measure. So we exercise every day and eat a healthy diet for a few weeks but the scale isn’t budging and we feel terrible about it.

But what about all the other small results that come from improving the diet? Even if you didn’t lose any weight, did you notice anything else improving?

Maybe your energy levels increased. Maybe your skin looks more clear. Maybe you don’t feel sleepy in the afternoon anymore. All of these are smaller results that can help us stay motivated and keep up the good habit until we start seeing the “main results.”

Feeling even a little bit of motivation from each secondary result will help to go through the resistance longer. Maybe even long enough to get to the big result that you want.

Keep adjusting your strategy

As we said, most things that we try won’t work. We always start by trying a bunch of strategies and action steps, but we have no guarantee that they’ll produce the desired results.

If you’ve picked the wrong strategy, no matter for how long you keep extending the motivation and look for the “results point”, it’s not going to happen.

That’s why we have to constantly adjust and tweak our strategy to get to the goal. If something doesn’t work, try approaching it from a different angle.

In my muscle gaining example, I was missing a critical piece – getting enough calories. In order for your muscles to grow, you need to supply them with enough raw materials. So as long as I was missing that piece I was never going to reach the “results point”.

Only after experimenting a lot with different diets and eating schedules I started seeing positive results.

No matter what the goal or habit you’re working on is, you can be sure that there is a path to get you there. Just like climbing any mountain, you can be sure that there is a way to get to the top.

We just have to keep looking for the right path and keep working through the resistance until we catch a glimpse of the peak.