The Inside-Out Approach to Changing Habits

Changing habits means deconstructing old patterns that no longer serve us and building new ones that help us meet our needs and move our lives in the direction we want. A wealth of knowledge about habit change is available today – from BJ Fogg's work on tiny habits to the concept of habit stacking and the psychology and neurobiology behind it all.

Exploring the inner labyrinth: a journey towards mindfulness, self-acceptance, and self-worth.

Change from the Inside Out and Outside In

I want to highlight something important from our Path of Freedom curriculum: the idea of change from the inside out and change from the outside in. Both approaches are crucial; aligning them makes us more likely to create lasting change.

Changing Habits Internally

Internal change involves developing greater mindfulness and awareness, cultivating self-acceptance and self-compassion, and nurturing a deeper sense of self-worth. Many of us deal with internal landscapes that are quite self-critical and unfriendly – we beat ourselves up constantly due to the human condition and our particular childhood experiences.

By working on our internal landscape, we can transform it into something fundamentally friendlier. We can actually become our own best friend (which makes a lot of sense when you think about it). We can become more accepting and compassionate toward ourselves.

Many people who find themselves in difficult circumstances or systems have little insight and operate in a negative, impoverished internal landscape. They struggle to find intrinsic rewards or self-agency, believing that all the "good stuff" and power exists outside themselves. Mindfulness practice helps create the ground for transformation.

As we practice mindfulness—which is partly attention training infused with benevolent intention and qualities like openness, curiosity, self-acceptance, and self-compassion—we gradually develop a friendlier and more compassionate internal landscape. Over time, we begin to experience a sense of self-worth that isn't dependent on external circumstances. We learn to reward ourselves internally and recognize our own agency in life. This internal work is something we all continue throughout our lives.

External Change

The external side of change relates to various behavioral models, from basic behavior modification to cognitive behavioral approaches. Early cognitive-behavioral models were somewhat simplistic—"get rid of bad thoughts, add good thoughts, and you'll change." While this is valid, more sophisticated approaches now exist on what we call the "acceptance spectrum" of cognitive behavioral work.

Rather than trying to surgically remove negative thoughts, we create an environment of acceptance and self-compassion where negative patterns naturally begin to subside and positive ones naturally increase. Cognitive behavioral therapy, especially mindfulness-based versions like MBCT (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy), has significant value.

PMI's Path of Freedom program incorporates elements of this—we often describe it as a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence model with elements of mindfulness-based cognitive theory.

In terms of behaviors, the 12-step recovery world emphasizes "taking action." If you're struggling, don't just sit alone trying to think your way to a solution—go to a meeting, put yourself in the chair, and get inside the door. Once you take that action, things shift: you have community and support instead of isolation. The power of taking action is crucial.

Understanding Our Brain's Energy Conservation

It's important to realize that our brains constantly operate to conserve energy. Our brain receives endless data – we're bombarded with information through social media, email, and the broader environment. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

On some level, we receive all the information of the universe, but our brain has evolved to let us perceive only a thin slice of it. Otherwise, smoke would come out of our ears, and we wouldn't be able to function. Different species see different slices of reality—not all are experiencing the same world with the same colors and perceptions. Even within the light spectrum, there are bandwidths we can't see.

Despite its vast capacity, our brain still has limited bandwidth compared to all the data from the phenomenal world coming at us. It's constantly trying to find the easiest route from point A to point B to meet our needs and avoid danger. That's what our brain does all day long: what's the shortest, easiest route to meet basic needs (food, shelter, and higher-level needs) while staying safe?

Setting Ourselves Up for Success

When creating change in our lives or helping others change, we must set ourselves up for success. For example, if we've heard it's best to avoid phones and digital devices for an hour or two before sleep, but we keep our phone charging right next to our bed, how hard will it be to overcome that temptation? If we really want to make this change, we might put the phone and charger downstairs in the kitchen or another distant part of the house.

Simple external changes like this help us succeed. In recovery work, they talk about "hanging with the winners" – being around people in recovery. If you're trying to overcome addiction but hang out on street corners with people still actively using, what's likely to happen? A recovering alcoholic with 20 years of sobriety might be able to work as a bartender. Still, it's probably not a good idea in the first six months (or even years) of recovery.

Similarly, if we value working out and having a gym conveniently on our way home, we're more likely to maintain that habit. But how likely are we to keep up that routine if the gym closes and the nearest one requires a 30-40-minute detour? It might be time to create a home gym. Even then, we must be willing to move from one state to another – from comfort to temporary discomfort. Both internal and external approaches to change are valuable. Any effective change program will incorporate both to create synergy.

Being aware of what our emotional state is is pivotal to understanding why we do what we do.

The Tipping Point

Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the concept of a tipping point – the idea that multiple factors accumulate until we reach a critical threshold for change. This tipping point varies for each of us, but the more factors we can stack in our favor, both internally and externally, the more likely we are to reach it. This moves us from pre-contemplation to contemplation, contemplation to planning, and planning to commitment.

Understanding the Habit Loop

In terms of habit psychology and neurobiology, a simple but powerful concept is the habit loop. Imagine a circle with arrows moving in one direction, consisting of three components:

1. Stimulus (or cue)

2. Behavior

3. Reward

This is the foundation of any habit. The stimulus triggers the behavior, which creates a reward. We like rewards, and they can even become addictive. Our brain might not think about the long-term consequences – only the immediate relief or pleasure.

Consider smoking: a smoker feels slight discomfort or anxiety (the cue), reaches for a cigarette (the behavior), and experiences relief (the reward). For a habitual smoker, the cigarette might be lit before they're even conscious of the action – that's how ingrained the habit becomes.

The fascinating and challenging thing about habit loops is how they function in our neural pathways. You could have a destructive habit – smoking, overeating, excessive drinking, or drug use – that creates enormous suffering in your life: physical pain, hospitalization, relationship breakdown, financial disaster. But at the moment when the cue appears, your brain blocks out all that potential suffering and focuses solely on the immediate loop and reward. All your previous recriminations and promises to change vanish until you're once again experiencing the suffering consequences.

This helps explain why people continue destructive behaviors despite seeing how these actions destroy their lives. When they're caught in the habit loop, their brain doesn't register the larger context—it blocks out barriers and focuses exclusively on the immediately available reward.

Hacking the Habit Loop

One of the most important skills we develop as functional adults is delaying immediate gratification. Without this capacity, we couldn't have gotten through school or maintained productive work. The better we are at delaying immediate gratification, the more we can succeed. When we struggle with strong addictions, we get trapped in mechanical patterns of seeking immediate rewards.

Here's the hack for changing habits: Think of the habit loop as a circuit board with three connection points—stimulus, behavior, and reward. You can remove the middle component (the behavior) and insert a different behavior that will create the same reward or an even better one.

For example, when working on my computer, I sometimes hit a wall where brain fog sets in, and I can't focus. My old habit was to grab a coffee or a sugary snack, which would clear the fog and help me concentrate again. The problem? Over time, too much caffeine led to headaches and other negative effects, not to mention the issues with sugar consumption.

My solution was to keep the same cue (brain fog) and desired reward (mental clarity), but change the behavior. When I feel fog setting in, I step away from my computer, drink a full glass of water, stretch, walk around, and practice deep breathing. Within 30 seconds, the brain fog clears, my concentration returns, and I can continue working. I get the same reward without the negative side effects, plus the additional benefits of hydration, movement, and mindful breathing.

By consistently following this new pattern, I'm rewiring my neural networks, making it more likely I'll follow this healthier path in the future. That's the power of understanding and hacking the habit loop.

This blog post was adapted from Fleet Maull's talk on changing habits as part of our Path of Freedom program.