Alexis Fernandez-Preiksa

And just by counting how many times you're doing it, the act of counting is waking your conscious mind up being like, I'm aware.

I'm aware of it.

I'm doing it.

And I'm going to note it down.

I don't have to do anything else, but become aware.

And the reason that works for many people, again, not everyone, we're talking about overall populations, is because you're bringing this conscious awareness into it and you're able to

Again, like look at this goal-directed inhibition.

Then we've got mindfulness or awareness.

And again, it's consciously identifying the cue that's going to bring on that activity before that activity happens.

Like again, with the smoking after dinner, you are now, okay, I'm having dinner now.

I'm aware that I'm about to slip into this habit or I'm sitting down at my desk about to start work.

I'm aware that the first thing I do before I start is to start scrolling on my phone while I'm waiting for like –

you know, to sign into my email or while I'm waiting for whatever it is.

Okay.

So it's this compulsion that we do and it's this mindfulness awareness that it's really, really important.

Now let's talk about environment again with breaking a habit.

So environmental disruption is also really, really helpful because again, we're getting less of these cues that we're familiar with that are prepping us to fall into that same routine.

Habits are very highly context dependent.

Like I spoke about, there are going to be some that are really strong that you're going to do no matter what, normally the things that you like doing, but then there's going to be ones that you do because it's kind of associated with all these other things that you do.

When you change the environment, depending on what the habit is that we're talking about, but when you change the environment, it often does break this association between cue and routine.