Habits, Routines and the environment we create

The power and influence of habits and routines should not be underestimated. Understanding the influence of our habits and how to control them through routine is a powerful self-improvement strategy.

Like it or not we are all a product of what we do. Sure we inherit our genetic code from our parents, grandparents, etc which has a huge influence but within our own genetic code there is a large scope for variations through genetic expression or suppression. This process is known as epigenetics and I won’t delve into this subject in any greater detail for the purposes of this post (maybe later..), it’s just important to appreciate that who we are is influenced by what we do. The current ‘you’ is trying to adapt, using the genetic code available, as best it can to the environment you are in. And by ‘environment’ I mean all that you surround yourselves with, do and take in. I.e. your diet, activity levels, physical environment, etc.

Now if you take a minute to think about that I think you’ll agree that’s a powerful concept.

So if your environment consists of a desk, a computer screen, sugary drinks, sweets and junk food, then your body is going to adapt as best it can to suit this environment. You may not necessarily appreciate the results! Your muscular skeletal system, originally intended for upright movement will weaken and deform, your body will adapt as best it can to deal with all the excess carbohydrates being consumed, the only real method it has is storage, so store it will, and a touch of diabetes will help with this! Think of the people in Disney’s Wall-E (a very insightful movie if you haven’t seen it!).

Now this is an extreme example of a poor environment but our environment is essentially what we do most of the time. This is why when considering diet, your effective diet is what you eat most of the time. If you eat an appropriate diet 80% of the time you will see the results, the fact that you have an ice-cream/cake/bowl of pasta/etc once a week shouldn’t have a significant effect (this is the principle behind ‘cheat’ days, sins, etc that dieters will often refer too).

So applying our evolutionary lens it can be said that in order to achieve our optimum genetic expression we should match our environment to the environment we evolved in. Admittedly this is going to be almost impossible in the current world we have created for ourselves but we can and should try to align our environments to better suit our genetic expectations using evolutionary principles as a guideline. And this idea forms the basis of this blog and the whole primal/paleo/ancestral movement.

So I’ve got somewhat side-tracked as I wanted to talk about Habits and Routines but there is a point (I promise!). we are creature of habits and our habits will to an extent define our environments. Whether the habit is smoking, morning stretches, late night TV, drinking bone broth, etc all, if habitual, will have an epigenetic effect (some positive and some negative in these examples). As we have all probably experienced habits are hard to break and I would also suggest hard to make. So if we want to improve our environment we should be trying to encourage positive habits and discourage negative habits and this is where routines come in…

Whilst in life variety is generally a good thing and I would encourage variety in all things (diet, movement, etc) as I believe the reason we have been so successful as a species is our ability to thrive in an environment full of variety, routines also have their place. Daily routines will have always had a place in human societies to ensure the required activities are completed to ensure our ongoing survival. And I believe we have evolved to require/appreciate a certain amount of routine in our life. Any parent should be aware of the effect of a sensible night time routine and the positive effects it has on children, well guess what we all still have this need but it’s easy to forget in todays fast paced dynamic environment. Routines are the mechanism by which habits are formed. Its not possible to decide one day that you are going to adopt a new habit that day, habits have to be formed over time. However if you decided that you wanted to encourage a particular habit then you could decide to incorporate it into a routine, and, in the fullness of time, this routine would become habit. Equally if you have identified a negative habit with some thought and planning you could adopt a routine to, over time, break this habit. 

Examples

1. Sam struggles to get to sleep at night and ends up watching late night TV and snacking. She acknowledges that both these habits are not healthful and decides she wants to break them. By introduce a night time routine that involves turning the TV off after nine pm and getting into bed and reading a book with dimmed lighting from 10pm she finds she is able to fall asleep with greater ease and now she is not sat up watching trash TV she also has no need for the night time snacks. She soon finds herself waking in the mornings with far more energy and feels far more alive throughout the entire day than she had for a long time.
2. Jim has woken up every morning for the last 3 years with a stiff back, he knows he would benefit from improving his flexibility and doing regular mobility exercises but never seems to have the time or energy. Jim decides to do something about this and changes his morning routine, instead of spending 10 minutes catching up on social media as soon as he wakes up he now does a quick 10 minutes yoga in the morning getting changed and heading out the door It was relatively easy to slot change his routine and his yoga routine soon becomes a habit. Jim now wakes up pain free and for the first time in 10 years is able to touch his toes!

I am developing routines that I believe will promote positive habits and results and incorporating them into my life. I will detail these on the Routines page of this blog for your information. You may want to consider incorporating some of these into your life. I would encourage you to assess your current routines and habits and think about what sort of environment they are creating. Then decide what you want to try and change and redesign your routines to encourage the habits you want and eliminate the habits you don’t want. Make this assessment and re-design of routines a continuous process that is always being revisited and reviewed and you will optimise the environment around you and encourage a better ‘you’ to be expressed.