The beginning of the year is one of the times most likely to make new good resolutions to become better versions of ourselves. According to a theory promulgated by psychologist William James more than a century ago and that remains rooted in the collective imagination, habits can be changed or new ones created in just 21 days. But what is behind this belief? Is it a myth or is it supported by scientific data?
We all have things to improve and it is a great temptation to think that we can achieve it in just three weeks. The incentive of being able to control our impulses in such a short time frame leads many to propose it… But is it enough? We spoke with Ana García Gutiérrez, an experimental psychology researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid, who explains to us how the process of changing habits works and what the tricks are to achieve success. The most rigorous investigations, according to this expert, estimate that if there is an estimated time to achieve it, it would be an average of 66 soles. More than two months.
“Put simply, a habit is a behavior that is maintained repeatedly and that is usually carried out automatically,” explains García. Can you change a habit in just 21 days? “Well, I’ll give you the Galician answer: it depends,” she says, laughing. “It depends on what type of tasks or behaviors that habit is associated with. Also of factors related to the personality of the person who sets these challenges, as well as the context that surrounds the person at that moment, both his personal situation and many other external factors.
“The variability is very great because each human being is different. For example, the need for dopamine is different for each of us, and all of this is also subject to genetic factors. Therefore, there are a lot of scientifically proven variables that tell us that 21 days is no longer a myth that some take advantage of to try to sell their products or services.”
Research from University College London published in the European Journal of Social Psychology states that the time it took participants to reach the goal “ranged between 18 and 254 days,” indicating considerable variation in estimates of how long it takes to reach the goal. people in reaching their limit of automaticity. In conclusion: it can take much longer than they try to make us see. The most relevant research found that automaticity “shot up on average around 66 days after the first daily performance,” as published in the National Library of Medicine.
In this sense, the psychologist consulted by La Vanguardia, who refers to this study as one of the most referenced, clarifies that even after this period it is not advisable to throw the bells in the air. “You can be doing a habit for 66 days, but then the context changes and the habit is dismantled. For example, I can go to India to do yoga for two months. There I will have acquired completely different lifestyle habits from ours. Then you return to your environment, you have to go to work and you can no longer do yoga 7 hours a day. It is impossible because the amount of tasks consumes you, which causes the level of cortisol to increase, our attention to disperse, we become blocked and unable to maintain the objective.”
Why has this idea that habits can be acquired or broken in just 3 weeks been so widespread? The researcher in experimental psychology considers that “it is a publicity stunt. But since we tend to believe almost everything and not verify things on a scientific level”, these ideas resonate. “It could work but it is not proven, it would be a placebo effect,” she adds.
“Our attention system is the best candy bar for anyone who wants to sell us something. There are so many things that can be bought that advertising media are constantly fighting to capture our attention and make their product the winner. That is the reason why this false idea has spread so much: at the sales level they try to convince us of anything with slogans like ‘quit smoking in 21 days’, ‘have a healthy life in 21 days’, do this in 21 days and you will have a perfect body…. It’s great at the level of advertising and at the level of motivation… until you practice it and it doesn’t work, of course.”
It is worth remembering that not so long ago a television format based on this idea achieved great audience success in Spain. The title of the program was precisely ’21 days’. Over the course of each episode, the effects that her immersion in a specific habit or environment had on the presenter were shown: 21 days sleeping on the street; doing high intensity sports; without eating; using drugs; working in the porn industry, etc.
When facing challenges, it is important to be aware of the level of difficulty of achieving it so as not to despair along the way. García explains that “to establish a habit you have to dismantle the previous habit.” Considering exercising is not the same as quitting smoking. “Playing sports provides a boost of dopamine to the brain, while quitting tobacco actually takes away those dopamines that the habit of smoking gives you.” Depending on the habit, then, the reward circuits will be activated in one way or another.
“The easiest thing is what you like to do; If you like smoking a lot, it will take a lot of work to quit; and on the contrary, if you really like sports, it will be very easy for you to get into the habit. Therefore, the easier the habit is, the easier it is to establish it,” says the psychologist. Likewise, the most difficult habits to eliminate are those that produce dopamine. In other words, the fact of abandoning them limits our access to dopamine.
Breaking a habit that has been around for years or that you love to do even though you know it is not good for you can be a daunting task. We always talk about willpower, the reward system… but Ana García reveals a little trick that can help not only make it easier but also achieve two new good habits at the same time.
“There is one very important thing: habits that are easy to implement can be used to be able to carry out others that cost us more work later. If you get up in the morning and like to play sports, you will start the day with that dopaminergic contribution that reduces cortisol, stress, keeps you active and will allow you to face complex challenges throughout the day.” “The fact of being able to use easy habits serves as a tool that catapults you to have that energy and motivation to carry out other habits that are a little more complex.”
Thus, a person who likes to ride a bicycle will find it relatively easy to acquire the routine of using it every day to go to work. After doing so, the level of dopamine (which is the hormone of reward and satisfaction) would increase, the level of cortisol (hormone that causes stress) would decrease and you would feel rewarded. It would be a good time to implement a second habit that is more difficult for you to follow, such as going on a diet, eating healthier, and even quitting smoking.
There are different cognitive processes that are involved in breaking or acquiring a habit: essentially, attention, learning and memory. One of them is being able to keep your long-term, sustained attention on the guy’s end goal. For example: I want to introduce sport into my life to have a healthy life, and in the short term, be able to enjoy myself along the way and settle for very small goals every day.
“The short-term reward is important: we are very focused on achieving the final goal, but if the expectations are very high and the daily reward is very small, in the end we tend to give up (…) that is why it is important to face it with low expectations and Do it based on the belief that this is good for you regardless of whether you achieve it tomorrow, in a week or two months,” advises the psychologist.
The psychologist points out that there are ways to train to acquire new habits: “If we are able to delay the reinforcement, we will be able to keep that long-term goal in our memory for longer.” Therefore, how we have been educated or how we educate our children will also influence the ease or difficulty of each one when facing the challenge of changing habits. “There are children who, as soon as they open their mouths, have the candy: they do not get used to the fact that the rewards can come a little later, so it is easy for them to quickly abandon the challenges they set for themselves in the future,” García exemplifies.
Some experts mention the theory of ‘pulling the carrot away’, which consists of spacing out the incentive little by little. For example, if at the beginning of your goal of eating healthy you give yourself the luxury of eating a sweet at the end of the day, little by little you can do it only 4 days a week instead of every day; and later, as you acquire healthy eating habits, space out that indulgence even more, reserving it only for weekends or special days.
One thing that must be clear is that the commitment is to oneself. Everyone has to follow their own pace, you cannot compare yourself with others, not even with previous versions of yourself. “Thinking that you are going to achieve things in 21 days because someone else has done it can be a very perverse idea. Because if you don’t get it, you can feel very bad, quit and not try again later.”
