How habit perception shapes your mindset – Guest Post by Danny Lee

Habit Perception

A habit, from the standpoint of psychology, is a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling, acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience.¹

Our mindset is heavily shaped by our habits and our perception of them. What I mean by this, is that when we get so used to doing certain things, we use that as a measure for future experience. A good example of this is my own life leading from about 2 and a half years ago to now. To do this I’ll have to go into a little history on me as I’m assuming most of you won’t know me that well.

2014-2015

In 2014 I was:

• Working 20 hours a week, with 2 sleep in shifts, as a support worker
• Working 15 hours a week as a personal trainer; and
• Training for powerlifting competitions

And then in the summer of that year I also thought it would be a good idea to add in 16 hours a week of college too!

As you can see, from the end of 2014 to midway through 2015 I was stretched thin, incredibly thin. I managed all of as well as I could, I think. I occasionally missed a few days of college here and there, but that was better than missing out on paid work, or so I told myself. I was still managing to finish my work on time and I finished top of the class quite comfortably (bit of a subtle brag there).

The problem was that I had no time, barely enough to even sleep sometimes. I remember a couple of times where I would: –

• wake up in work and finish at 8,
• go to college 9-2.30,
• fit one client in, and then,
• go to my other job at 5pm until the next morning, and if I was lucky I’d not have college that morning.

This hectic lifestyle led to me having a migraine at least once or twice a month, and I mean a full blown one where I couldn’t get out of bed or turn the light on without severe pain. Despite the ridiculous headaches and tiredness I still just ploughed right on through.

The Turning Point

It wasn’t until I had my 3rd powerlifting competition in that period that I thought “something needs to change here!” The build up to this competition was horrendous, some weeks I was only managing 2 days of training, and that is woefully low for the kind of intensity you need when trying to peak for powerlifting. The competition itself was terrible – I missed 2 of my 3 squats (technically 3 out of 4, but that’s a different story) and 2 out of 3 of my bench. I came away with only a 2.5kg increase from my previous competition 6 months earlier. It was then I realised that my lifestyle was leading to me not being able to focus or enjoy my favourite hobby. I decided to make some changes as soon as I finished at this competition.

Firstly, I decided to hire a coach in order to become more accountable in my training. I remember my first message being “I’ve qualified for British and do not want to embarrass myself there.” This was a huge weight off my shoulders in the sense that I could just switch off and train, with someone else responsible for my programming.  However, finding the time to train was still challenging. So, me being me, I decided to quit my part time job. That is, the one with the steady income. This was a massive risk, and one which only paid off nearly a year later.

2017

Sitting here writing this now I can say I’m living fairly comfortably as a trainer/coach. I am:-

• working roughly 20 hours of one to one sessions a week;
• doing a couple of group sessions;
• fitting in my own training;
• tending to online clients, and;
• managing to write an article every week or so.

Now this isn’t a massive amount of work but that may just be my perception of it, which is the very point to this article. I’ll find myself finishing a shift in the gym with 7 or 8 clients and think “wow, that was tiring…at least it wasn’t a 13 hour shift followed by a terrible sleep in a work office and then 2 hours of messing in the morning, though!” This is still ridiculous, 7 or 8 clients in a day is still likely to be a 12 hour day or so. Just because you have done more, doesn’t mean that what you are doing is less valuable or meaningful. I have to keep telling myself this.

In a similar way, I spent most of last year side-lined with a pesky back injury and now whenever I train I always compare it to the old, heavier sessions and this is also depressing. It takes a lot to unwind these perceptions that are built by habit and repetition.

Habit builds perception

Anyone who has flicked through a psychology text book will be able to tell you that we are influenced by various factors, namely – biological, sociological and psychological.

How we are as people now is heavily reliant upon our experiences growing up. The people, environment and our own mental health all influence our developing perceptions massively.

I created an environment for myself where it was all work, stress and next to no play. This resulted in a short term problem of having no time and constant migraines but also a long term problem in that I can never feel like I am working hard enough.

As the quote at the beginning says, repetition is vital in building a habit and forming our perceptions. In much the same way that repetition of an exercise increases physical strength, the repetition of a habit can heavily increase the strength of a perception. Whether this be one like my own – setting an unsustainable amount of work as “normal,” so that now when I do try to take it easy I feel lazy and guilty; or even the person who continues to train the same way without results because that’s what they’ve always done and they haven’t gone backwards.

In my first article for Propane Fitness (found here) I wrote about how we need to practice in a purposeful manner in order to achieve an expert status. These influences at a developmental stage in our lives’ will be similar to achieving a 10,000 hour² status on our mindsets. Which leads to –

Breaking the Habit

We need to apply a good deal of logic to these situations and recognise that our perceptions may have been built up by poor choices. We then try to break the habits that facilitate these perceptions. In theory, this seems really straightforward but you will find that even after you have shattered through the habits, your perception of certain situations still lingers. An example of this could –

Had a nice day off there? Think of all that business you could have gotten through in that time, how lazy of you!

You know logically that having a day off is allowed, and indeed necessary, but that thought still creeps in from the previous life you led.

It isn’t easy and definitely takes a lot of purposeful practice, but it can be done. Habits are hard to break, but to not try to break them would be indicative of a lazy mindset. Purposeful practice goes hand in hand with the 10,000 hour rule, and spending this time and effort will go a long way to breaking this habit.

What to do?

You might find yourself developing a habit that you know will snowball into an issue. The best thing you can do here, is identify that this habit is not going to benefit your life. It is only once you accept the disadvantages that you will take it seriously enough to make a change.

If you can trace a bad habit back to its source then you can break it and form better, healthier habits and while this may not bring about happiness or contentment, it certainly helps in laying the foundation towards it.

Summary

As you can tell, I wrote this from an autobiographical point of view. My hope with this is that someone will read it and realise that their views of themselves, their working habits, or their lifestyle have stemmed from an experience or event in their lives.

References

Andrews, B. R. (1903). “Habit”. The American Journal of Psychology. University of Illinois Press. 14 (2): 121–49. doi:10.2307/1412711. ISSN 0002-9556. JSTOR 1412711 – via JSTOR.