How to build a new habit easily ?

Andrew Huberman Revealed the SECRET to Master Any Habit

He is a renowned neuroscientist and professor at the Stanford University

He is also the founder of the Huberman lab podcast

His podcast has more than 4.8 million subscribers

• It is a top performer globally, frequently ranking in the top 5 of all podcasts​

• It often claims the #1 spot in Science, Education, and Health & Fitness categories, demonstrating its impact​

He has broken down the secret to master any new habit:

When trying to form a new habit, it can take anywhere from 21 to 254 days.

Whenever you try to do something new like breaking a bad habit, for example:

• give up smoking

• overeating

• procrastination

Or trying to build a new habit like:

• start working out

• getting up early

• Practice meditation

You feel a sense of discomfort.

This discomfort that you experience is Limbic Friction.

A measure of resistance you feel when trying to change your behaviour

You can break this mental discomfort by practicing a specific mental visualization technique.

He says, humans have two types of memories:

• Episodic memory [ Remembering incidents ]

• Procedural memory [ the detailed process of those incidents ]

You can build a robust habit system by practising two types of mental rehearsal techniques

First, you need to exercise the procedural memory before building a new habit.

Visualize yourself doing the act in detail mentally before practicing it.

If you want to start making that morning coffee for your spouse, visualize yourself in detail:

• Removing the cup

• Warming the water

• Mixing the coffee, setting up the tray

• Try to mentally feel the aroma of the bean

• Whatever else you can imagine

Visualizing something makes the brain experience the act as if it were actually done.

Performing the act post the mental rehearsal, you will feel less friction as your brain will find the act familiar.

But this is something you might have heard or read plenty of times in the past.

Here is where Huberman shared his secret sauce [2nd technique ] to make this really impactful

There is something called bracketing memory events.

These are event markers that happen before and after the event,

i.e., in this case, the habit you are trying to build.

Practice these in your mind too:

Let's take the coffee-making habit as an example and see what could be the bracketing events you will rehearse in your mind.

Events before making the coffee:

• Visualize waking up from the bed

• wearing your slippers and washing your face

• thinking you might feel a bit lazy, but yet a sense of excitement to make that coffee for your spouse

Bracketing the events after making the coffee:

• Your spouse's happy face on having that amazing coffee

• you both sitting together and enjoying some time

By practicing these bracketing event markers, the habit formation gets deep and can get permanent.

No matter how late you sleep, you will brush your teeth the next morning,

but that same late night will be an excuse to not get in your zone 2 cardio

Bracketing events can really be a game changer

TLDR:

• Habit formation is tough due to limbic friction.

• A measure of the discomfort you feel when trying to change your behavior.

• New habit formation can take between 21 - 254 days.

• You can form habits by practicing specific mental visualization techniques.

• Mentally practice doing the particular event in detail before actually doing it.

• Also visualize the before and after events of that particular habit.

• This helps you in making the habit potentially permanent.