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Making new habits

Happier Holidays with Club Soda Paying attention to what Making new habits

All of us are creatures of habit, and for good reason. Our human brains have lots to do, and so they like taking shortcuts. Habits are how our brains conserve energy.

Habits are automatic patterns of behaviour that are largely unconscious. But as you pay attention to your drinking habits, you can begin to see that every one of them has the same simple anatomy: a trigger, a routine and a payoff. Here’s an example:

  • Trigger: Walking into your kitchen at the end of the day
  • Routine: Pouring a glass of wine
  • Payoff: Marking the end of the day and feeling relaxed.

It’s much the same around celebrating and generating a sense of occasion, and this links back to what we covered before about rituals and traditions. We choose particular kinds of drinks to celebrate because we have internalised how things have always been done. If we shift the example above slightly, our trigger might be that sumptuous breakfast you always have on Christmas morning, where you always have a glass of champagne to mark the specialness of the day and get the festivities going.

Of course we may well know it’s that glass of champagne at 9am that opens the floodgates, the one that sets us up for an exhausting day, caught between expectations (our own or those of others) of consistent drinking to ‘keep the celebration going’, whilst somehow managing to stay in control, not get too pissed, not ruin a lunch that’s been weeks in the planning, and not run out of the energy it take to keep it all together until bedtime. That doesn’t sound like anyone’s idea of fun, but quite possibly something that resonates for all of us

The good news is that once you’ve deconstructed the anatomy of a habit, you can easily change it. You’ll still want to have that sumptuous breakfast, and you’ll still want to mark the occasion with pizazz and celebrate. So concentrate on the routine in the middle.

The real payoff here isn’t the alcohol. It’s the feeling that comes along with it. The payoff will change depending on the specific drink. But once you understand what that drink gave you, beyond the alcohol, you can work out how to change your routine to achieve the same payoff.

Sometimes you can change the routine just by swapping an alcoholic drink for a non-alcoholic one. Other times, the routine will be something completely different. But always focus on the payoff. What will help you attain it?

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