3. The Golden Rule of Habit Change - Why Transformation Occurs

You can never truly extinguish bad habits. Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine. Almost any behaviour can be transformed if the cue and reward stay the same.

For some habits, however, there is one other ingredient that's necessary: belief.

Alcoholics who practiced the techniques of habit replacement could often stay sober until there was a stressful event in their lives - at which point, a certain number started drinking again, no matter how many new routines they had embraced. However, those alcoholics who believed that some higher power had entered their lives were more likely to make it through the stressful periods with their sobriety intact.

Researchers found that habit replacement worked pretty well for many people until the stresses of life got too high. When things get tense, people go back to their comfort zones and old habits. 

The question is - if habit replacement is so effective, why it seems to fail at such critical moments. They learned that replacement habits only become durable new behaviours when they are accompanied by something else. Without another ingredient, the new habits never fully take hold.

It was belief that made a difference. 

Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change.

Belief was the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into a permanent behaviour. You don't have to believe in God, but you do need the capacity to believe that things will get better.

Even if you give people better habits, it doesn't repair why they started drinking in the first place. Eventually they will have a bad day, and no new routine is going to make everything seem okay. What can make a difference is believing that they can cope with that stress without alcohol. There is something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they're by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief. When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real. This is the power of a group - to teach individuals how to believe.

So, how do habits change?

There is no specific set of steps guaranteed to work for every person. We know that a habit cannot be eradicated - it must instead be replaced. If we keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be inserted. But that's not enough. For a habit to stay changed, people must believe change is possible. And most often, that belief only emerges with the help of a group.

If you want to lose weight, study your habits to determine why you really leave your desk for a snack each day and then find someone else to take a walk with you, to gossip with at their desk rather than in the cafeteria, a group that tracks weight-loss goals together, or someone who also wants to keep a stock of apples rather than chips, nearby.

Your odds of success go up dramatically when you commit to changing as part of a group.