 This is a video that I've been meaning to make for a long time because it's one of the main reasons I titled my channel the rewired soul. So in this video, I'm going to teach you the science about developing bad as well as good habits. So stay tuned. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the rewired soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. This is a very important video when it comes to mental health, because when it comes to mental health, depression, anxiety, addiction, no matter what it is, these are all based around different habits that we have. There are habits that we have that make our depression worse. There are habits that we can develop to make it better. Same thing goes with anxiety. There are things that we do to fuel our own anxiety that are based on habits. But there are things that we can change to develop better habits to reduce our anxiety addiction. I don't even need to talk about it that much. But when we develop an addiction purely based around habits. So if you are somebody or even know somebody, and I know you do, don't you lie to me. If you know somebody with a bad habit, please share this video with them, because I'm going to teach you about how the brain works, how these are developed, how to break them, and how to change them. There's a lot to go over. I will not cover all of them in this video, but that's why you're such a loyal subscriber because you're going to stay tuned and see what else I got for you. So the habit loop is what we're talking about today. This is a concept that was first discussed by a great psychologist named B.F. Skinner. If you've been in a psychology class, you've probably heard his name, but he talks about context dependent memory. This was a long time ago, but now there is a new neuroscientist by the name of Dr. Judson Brewer. I've done some videos on him in the past and an interview with him. If you want to check it out, it's when I was brand new. So the videos are a lot different, not nearly as good as they are now, but Dr. Judson Brewer, he's a neuroscientist and he's also really big into meditation too. But like you can believe just about anything he says because of all the scientific evidence he has, as well as the fact that he developed the best, the best program for helping people quit smoking. Okay. And it's all purely based on understanding the habit loop. All right. So in this video, I'm going to discuss mainly the habit loop. In other videos, I'll discuss more about breaking and developing new good habits. All right. So in order to understand the habit loop, let's talk about evolution and how your brain works. And that makes sense once you understand all this stuff. Okay. So this is the habit loop. Okay. The reason why we have this habit loop is because it's helped us survive. So this habit loop is actually something that all species have any living being is completely based on this habit loop. Okay. And it involves a trigger of behavior and a reward. Okay. So let's picture prehistoric man. All right. Prehistoric man, he gets hungry. Boom. Trigger. All right. Now, how's he going to get rid of that hunger? He does a behavior. He finds food and he eats the food. Okay. That is the behavior. Now he gets the reward. He's not hungry anymore. That's the reward. It shoots off a little spritz of dopamine, just a little right there. And what that does is right here, it lays down a memory. Okay. So the reason this happens is so the next time Mr. Caveman has hunger, he knows where to find food to get rid of the hunger. So that's one of the reasons why this habit loop is so ingrained in our minds. Okay. Now, let's talk about something more modern. Okay. If you have a baby, you understand if you used to be a baby, you understand. And if you understand anything about babies, this will make sense. All right. So let's use a baby for the habit loop. Okay. These things. Why did I call babies things? But anyways, these kids, they grow up, they evolve, but they need this habit loop in their brain. So let's think about a baby. The baby is triggered by hunger. The behavior is you guessed it, baby cries. All right. Baby gets fed. That's the reward. Baby's hunger goes away. It lays down a memory in the baby's head. The next time the baby gets hungry, the brain reminds him, Oh, hey, next time you're hungry, just cry, you'll get food. All right. Are you starting to follow me? You starting to understand why this habit loop is so crucial for our survival. We can take this, this understanding of the brain and start to understand our bad habits. Right. And once we understand our bad habits, we can start developing new good habits. So let's use the example of snacking, snacking, eating unhealthy, things like that. All right. So let's say every day you get home from work. Okay. Bam. That is your trigger. You got home. Okay. Now the behavior is that you reach in the fridge and you grab something unhealthy. Maybe it's a soda. Okay. High calorie, fully sugar soda. Right. You take that boom reward. Maybe some sense of satisfaction that lays down a memory. Next day when you get home, your brain says, huh, you had a long day at work. Hey, that soda is going to help you out. You do it again. So remember, right after the reward, it's laying down a memory. So eventually what happens is that you just start to go in an autopilot mode. Same thing happens if every time you sit down to watch TV, you sit down with a bag of chips. Like what you start to realize is is that every time you're sitting down, you're reaching for this bag of chips, even if you aren't hungry. Okay. The reason this happens is that there's two parts of the brain. One is called the nucleus accumbus. The other is called the dorsal striatum. These both live inside of the limbic system, which is our most primitive part of the brain. And it's one of the reasons we survive, but it's meant to make our brain more efficient. So the nucleus accumbus is shooting out dopamine every time you get this reward. But after you repeat this habit loop a certain amount of times that memory then moves into the dorsal striatum, which is a part of the brain that's designed to make you more efficient. Okay. So now whether this reward is good or bad, you keep doing it purely based out of autopilot. All right. Now that we're talking, you can start to see how an addiction develops. So let's use addiction as an example. All right. As a recovering addict, I'll use myself as an example. Okay. Every time I was having anxiety, I would self medicate. So I'd be having anxiety. I would drink the anxiety would go away. That would be my reward. It would lay down a memory. So the next time I got anxious, it would say, Hey, Chris, why don't you try drinking again? Boom. Anxiety goes away. That's my reward. And every time I repeated that loop, it made the memory even stronger. And for addicts and alcoholics, what eventually happens is, is that you're getting even more anxiety. You're no longer getting the reward. And it's just a hot, hot mess. Okay. Same thing happens with your cell phone. You'll start to notice with your cell phone, the habits you have based around your cell phone. Here's a very good one, bad depending on how you look at it. But every time I came to a stoplight, I found myself grabbing for my phone and I was like, Whoa, like that's a habit that I have. It's something that has just become automated. And I had to start breaking that habit. So let's talk about developing good habits works the exact same way. If any of you have heard of cognitive behavioral therapy, it's largely based around this, okay, identify a trigger, identify the behavior that you don't want anymore, swap it out and rewire your brain. Hence the rewired soul, right? I've always just found it fascinating what we can do to our own brains once we understand how it works. So let's say you have a habit of every time you sit down, you, you snack on some chips, right? Well, all you have to do is every time you sit down to watch TV, sit down and snack on carrots instead, something like that, right? What you'll find, seriously, for most people, it's within a matter of days or a week, you'll start to notice that you don't even have the craving for chips anymore. All right, same thing with any other habit. And I don't mean to minimize this and make this sound easy, because the trigger induces a craving. And that is the part that a lot of us don't know how to work through. But I will make more videos on that. And I'm going to spoil it a little bit. It has a lot to do with meditation. Okay. And not like intensive meditation, it's pretty much just mindfulness meditation. So when working on these bad habits, I'll give you a little preview real quick. We need to bring back that habit loop and take a look at it. Okay, what is the habit that I'm trying to break? All right, the first step in this is identifying your triggers, identifying what your triggers are. Is it stress? Is it depression? Is it sadness? Is it loneliness? Is it certain places you go? Like do you go to a certain restaurant and always order something unhealthy? Like what is the trigger? Okay, we got to get down to the root of this thing first. Okay. So now that we've identified the trigger, now we can start looking at the behavior that we want to replace. So the trick to this is if we're looking at the habit loop, we're trying to drive a wedge between the trigger and the behavior. All right. One of my favorite quotes, one of my favorite quotes is by the author Victor Frankel. And he says this, between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Like think about that for a second. Okay. So in between stimulus and response, so in between trigger and behavior, that is where we get to make a choice. But first, we have to step outside of that habit loop and say, well, what is going on here? Right? Now we have the power of choice. Do I want to choose a different option? So if you're somebody who struggles with depression, now that you know that this trigger is going to make you depressed or if we're talking about anxiety, now you get to choose. Okay. Do you choose an unhealthy behavior? Right? Acting out, isolating, yelling at somebody, you know, anything like that, right? We get to choose. Do I want to do that or do I want to do something that's a little bit healthier? Okay. And I'm telling you, once you can start identifying these things, it's a whole lot easier to develop better habits. All right. But anyways, I've had a lot of requests to make a video like this because habits happen all over the place. And I know sometimes we beat ourselves up about them. We don't go to the gym enough. We don't eat healthy enough. We don't save money. All these different things that are a detriment to our mental health. And this is a very important subject. So please, please, please, do me a favor, share this with people you know, who have bad habits that they're trying to kick because I will be putting this in an entire playlist. And I am looking forward to making more videos about how to break that habit loop and work through cravings through a bunch of different techniques. Okay. But anyways, here's what I want you to do down in the comments below. Let's do this. This will give me ideas for future videos to make for this playlist down in the comments below. Tell me about habits that you have that you're trying to break. It'll help me out with video content if you can tell me what the trigger is. All right. But that's my homework assignment for you. And that's all I got for you today. So if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you are new here, I'm always making videos to help you out with your mental health. So make sure that you click that subscribe button. All right. And if you got time, you can click or tap on one of those thumbnails right there. Check out some other content on my channel. Okay. Thank you so much for watching. Start identifying your bad habits. And I'll see you next time.