You get up, you wash up, you follow a certain trek to work... Many times we feel trapped by daily routines and want to escape them, but are they a trap or do they make things easier for us? "Habit is a force that shapes everybody’s life in a very ordinary, basic way: the way we wake up in the morning… the way we go to work,”Claire Carlisle, a philosopher at King’s College London (United Kingdom), claimed.

The expert gave a seminar at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society on Habits and Practices, which the Mind-Brain Group organized.  There, she emphasized that these terms differentiate actions that are reinforced by repetition.

On the one hand, there are practices, among them playing sports, playing the piano or driving. “[Here,] what we want is to change ourselves in someway. So I want to become a better musician, or I want to run faster, or to play tennis better so actually the thing that I want is the result and I decide to repeat the particular actions that will get me to that result,” she notes. In this way, individual action is difficult and we persist because we want to develop a practice to master a skill.

On the other hand, there are habits. “We accidentally fall into, for example smoking. We don’t actually want to repeat the action, we just want to do the action,” she specifies, but adds that by wanting that single action— even if it is isolated—ends up creating a habit, in this case a harmful one.

"So habits are necessarily like a pose to choice, but there are kinds of patterns of choosing that can end up undermining the capacity to choose which is a bit paradoxical, but it’s a thing that we all experience,” Carlisle notes.

Escaping habits

Does this mean that we cannot escape habit? In the case of drinkers or smokers, she points out that “you’ve chosen the particular actions, you haven’t chosen explicitly to become a smoker, a drug addict or alcoholic, but you’ve chosen to try these things…You have kind of a surrendered responsibility.” More difficult is the case of people who acquire a habit that is taught: "Thinking about the case of someone who has been taught by others to acquire a habit, the question of responsibility becomes more difficult, even though they have not chosen the habit; it is always possible to change a habit, even if it’s difficult.”

To break habits that have become addictions, it is important to pay attention and be aware of the sensations and feelings that the habit produces. "Understanding them better can weaken their strength," she adds.

In addition, Carlisle provides three suggestions. The first is to develop a practice: speak insistently to the action, even if it is not what the body asks of us, "If you want to quit smoking you have to insist, saying 'no' every time you feel like smoking," she recommends. Secondly, she proposes performing other actions when the addiction appears, such as taking a walk. And finally, she recommends avoiding certain environments in which a desire related to addiction may arise until it has been overcome— for example, shopping centers if one is a compulsive buyer.

Technology addictions

The philosopher confirms that the possibility of changing a habit always exists, but emphasizes that it is not easy in all cases: "They are very often reinforced, even always, by an environment, by society." For example, she points to the use of the internet and mobile phones; it is very difficult to ignore these technologies when they are part of society, work and leisure. "If a whole culture is embodying some habits, where do you go? How do you get away from that?" she asks.

Finally, she insists that we do not have to get rid of every habit because they are not necessarily negative: “I think it is probably obvious that habits can be enslaving… but it also true that habits liberates us and frees us." Thus, she reminds us that once we master a skill, the task can be performed without thinking and, in this way, the mind is freed up for other things.