Life can get in the way of what we want to do, and when you work in freight, lots of responsibilities can make things very overwhelming. Many of our lives are different; from accounting to managing to driving, we all have different and varied responsibilities upon us.
Most representatives spend their workday at their desks, with little time to move around. For truck drivers, it’s even harsher. They may have to drive for up to 11 hours in a workday, getting a brief reprieve before going to sleep for the next day. These obligations can cause some things to fall by the wayside, making it feel almost impossible to achieve new goals or just improve our lives
Yet there are some things that are just so easy to fall into, like playing a game we like, snacking on sweets and chips, or staying up to scroll our socials. Why are these so frustratingly easy to do and hard to stop? Why is it harder to make healthier habits? How can we, as freight workers who are sitting most of the time, make new and more meaningful habit changes? We’re here to look into the basics of why we have habits, how to break harmful ones, and nurture ones that keep us healthier!
How Do Habits Happen?
When we wake up and go to do an activity, some feel automatic, while others may feel intentional. For example, driving to work is habitual, while attending a baby shower is only an event. There’s no tie or expectation in your mind that the baby shower needs to go on and on, but going to work is practically ingrained in most of our brains. This relates to the big four forces that drive our habits: Cues, Actions, Outcomes, and Repetition.
As one University of North Carolina article explains, we fall into a cycle of cues, actions, and outcomes over and over again, and the greater the outcome, the stronger the urge to repeat the action. Consider social media. We all know that social media is highly addictive, and it’s not by accident. We always carry our phones for necessity these days and constantly receive notifications on our favorite apps. Those notifications are designed to cue you to keep coming back and give you a small dopamine rush when you check them out.
Using social media itself gives us the reward automatically just by consuming it, like how we consume movies or food. And those notifications aren’t sporadic; they are repeated all throughout the day to keep that habit cycle going. The longer it goes on, the stronger it holds. It’s why we feel agitated when we’re without our phones for a long period of time, because the habits been ingrained into our daily lives, just as much as tying our shoes or brushing our hair.
The same is true for habits that are harder to start. If you are not actively doing an activity, the hardest step is always the first one. This is because the brain doesn’t expect the action to occur, even though you logically understand it will. On top of that, if there is no immediate reward, then it’s harder for your brain to stop its natural routine, like eating less junk food or starting an exercise routine. So with that in mind, what can we do about it?
Breaking Bad Habits
Between breaking habits and creating habits, it can vary on what’s easier for you. Some find it easier to start a new habit, while others feel it’s easier to stop one. We’ll start with stopping. Stopping a habit can seem easy; it’s literally not doing something, but that’s what makes it deceptively harder to do. Stopping something that feels good can be hard to do, especially if it has an addictive quality to it, like nicotine. Hopefully, these tips can help you quit unhealthy habits.
First, it’s good to stop and consider what you do. It doesn’t need to be everything; in fact, trying to change everything all at once will more often hinder you from meaningful lifestyle changes. Pick a small area in your life. Maybe it’s diet, maybe it’s screen time, or maybe it’s buying something you don’t need all the time. Whatever it is, examine how it happens. Maybe you feel the urge to eat candy because a candy jar is nearby, or your phone always goes off whenever a new notification comes in.
This is figuring out the cue that keeps the habit. Once you find the cue, you want to try to eliminate it as much as possible, so that your brain isn’t getting the repetition of continuing the habit. Once you remove the cue, though, that doesn’t mean you should quit cold turkey, as abruptly stopping can cause your brain to crave the habit. Rather, you want to reduce the habit gradually over time.
So, say you want to eat less junk food, and you know you eat it every day, try reducing it in a small but meaningful way. You could only eat junk food within a certain time frame, or cut it out at breakfast. You want to start small so that reducing the action becomes easier over time. You also want to make these goals SMART, that being specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. If you only have a vague idea of what you want, trying to stop the habit will be harder. You want to be able to stop the cycle and track its decline over time, until eventually you stop doing it altogether.
This won’t fully address all the issues you may encounter, and some may require the attention of a professional. If you have issues with things like smoking or drinking, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) offers resources and help for anyone in need. Also consider other resources available, such as the American Trucking Association Wellness Hub, FindTreatment.gov, The St. Christopher Truckers Fund, Healthy Trucking of America, and Mental Health America, among many others. Quitting unhealthy habits can be hard; that’s why having someone, like a friend or family member, around can make it feel a little more bearable.
Starting Healthy Habits
Unlike stopping unhealthy habits, starting healthier ones can be very difficult. Because our brains crave immediate rewards, starting something with delayed rewards can be harder to stick with. Without that reward, it’s harder to do the action again, thus making consistency more of a challenge. As mentioned previously, the hardest step is getting started, as it’s hard to know where to begin. However, the next hardest step is consistency.
As discussed earlier, consistency is key to keeping a habit. Without it, the action won’t become habitual or effective in causing meaningful change. But without the instant reward, the question becomes, how do we make something more consistent?
That is where we shift focus and strategize. Start by understanding what you do and what you want to change, as we do when trying to stop a habit. Observe what you do day to day, see how your schedule is, and write it down so that you can look over what you found. You can use a tool like a weekly schedule to see how your regular week looks, so you can plan new habits and see what fits.
Just like in breaking bad habits, making your goals SMART, observing yourself, and figuring out your patterns is good, but there’s more that needs to be done. When starting something new, find something that you’ll enjoy enough. If you want to exercise more but hate running, then find something that better aligns with your interests. Try out lots of new things and seek out what will keep you engaged and motivated, not just for activities, but for scheduling and discovering new tools. This way, if a habit technique isn’t working for you, then you can try something that better motivates you and keeps you going.
Give Yourself Some Grace
Another good thing to note is not start with too high an expectation. We know not to do this implicitly with things like lifting too heavy a weight or doing backflips, because the consequences are more immediate and are more physically damaging. However, the same is true of exercising for too long or changing your entire diet in a day. Our brain doesn’t expect those things, and the sudden change in routine puts our brain in a more negative state. Instead, you start small and build up over time, like what you’d do when starting to lift weights. This way, your brain can ease into the change without getting burned out.
Another thing is to be flexible and kind to ourselves when we fumble. Sometimes we miss a day of exercise, or an unexpected event stops us from cooking our preplanned meal. That’s okay, life will happen, what matters is to take stock in what happened and keep going. Maybe it was unanticipated and couldn’t be avoided; maybe you weren’t feeling well and needed a treat. Sometimes, if we know our routine will change for a while, it’s good to create a game plan so we can adapt these growing habits and stick to them.
But whatever the case, use it as a learning experience on how to improve and adapt over time. These aren’t supposed to be short-term fixes after all, but long-term lifestyle changes for leading a healthier life. So give yourself some grace, breaking and making habits isn’t easy. It takes time and effort to keep on track. That’s why it’s the journey, not the destination, that ultimately matters.
