Make it unsatisfying

During my first year at the university, I rarely saw my classmates who attended night classes. The main reason I chose to enroll in night classes was that I was coming from another school where I was already familiar with the system. However, everything changed when I entered my second year. I started noticing many new faces, and people frequently asked if I was already in school at night. Many students began showing up, which prompted me to ask some of them why they were attending all of a sudden. They all gave me the same reason: they were unhappy with their grades and wanted to improve their results.

Many students tend to improve their performance during their second year (200 level) because they want to achieve better results after treating the first year (100 level) as a learning phase. Often, people learn from their mistakes, as they wish to avoid experiencing the same pain again. This motivates them to work harder. For instance, individuals who go to the gym to lose weight typically do so because they do not want to face the discomfort and challenges associated with being overweight. The social limitations and potential loss of friendships that often accompany being overweight can also drive some people to commit to a gym routine in the first place.

Our brains are designed to seek out what is satisfying and to avoid what leads to negative experiences. This is why one of the easiest ways to form a habit is to make it enjoyable, while the simplest way to break a habit is to make it unpleasant. People are more likely to repeat activities that bring them satisfaction, and through repetition, these behaviors become automatic. Conversely, when a habit is unsatisfying, it becomes challenging to maintain, and over time, our brains will naturally steer away from such behaviors. For instance, the fear of losing customers motivates business owners to improve their practices, just as the anxiety of poor grades encourages students to strive for better academic performance.

Pain can be a powerful tool for breaking a habit, especially when it is associated with making the habit unsatisfying. One effective technique is to assign a cost to each instance of the bad habit, ensuring that this cost results in a painful experience. This way, it becomes much harder to revert to the bad habit. It is important that the cost you impose is comparable to the rewards you receive from the habit. Many people struggle to create this cost because they fail to find a balance between the reward from the bad habit and the associated cost.

The cost

To effectively break a bad habit, the pain associated with the cost of that habit must outweigh the reward it provides. If the reward from the habit is greater than the cost, you may find it difficult to quit. This technique can be very effective; since humans naturally seek to avoid pain, using this strategy wisely can lead to significant results.

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