Eric Edmeades explains why habits stick around and introduces four personality-based strategies to break them. Pioneers need novelty, Collaborators need public commitment, Builders need step-by-step plans, and Analysts need a compelling data point or story. A smoker quit after his daughter asked if he could walk her down the aisle.
Chapters
We've all tried to stop some habit or behavior at some point and struggled with it, haven't we? And I want you to know something about that. It's not your fault. There's a really cool piece of coding in the brain that makes habits really tough to break. You've heard the expression, right? Good habits, hard to make, easy to break. Bad habits, easy to make, hard to break. Well, I'm going to explain to you a little bit why they're hard to break, and then I'm going to show you exactly how you can change everything from now on. Here's one of the reasons that habits are hard to break. For most of human history, habit acquisition was really important to survival. We needed to learn how to do new things and we needed to learn how to do them unconsciously. We needed to be able to focus on sharpening this tool, digging up these root vegetables. We needed to focus on eating while paying attention to the larger environment around us. So we needed automatic behaviors or little internal apps to run these behaviors for us. Now, the challenge is that for most of history, if you had a habit or behavior that was, say, not so good, then, well, life would teach you that pretty quickly and the behavior would stop. These days, there are many habits that, well, the consequences are way off in the future. And so, we don't get the immediate feedback that might help us to stop it. You can smoke for 20 years before, you know, the cancer starts. You can eat badly for a very long time before the real challenges take place. You can be a little rough with your family, your husband or wife, for many, many years before, well, devastation happens. So the consequences are often far removed from the behavior now, and that makes it really difficult to break this old code. The old code said, if I did something on Monday and I'm still alive on Tuesday, that something must have been good because that's how it used to be. Then if I was alive on Wednesday and I did that same thing on Monday and Tuesday, wow, that must be a survival behavior. And so the longer you did something, the deeper it went in and the stronger the feeling of survival came with that behavior. Now, the challenge is we have a number of behaviors that, well, we do over and over again. And the longer we do them, the more our body feels that they're part of our survival strategy. And so when you try to stop them using brute force, your body rebels and says, "No, this keeps me alive. I'm not stopping this." And the pattern restarts. So we have to take a totally different approach. And then on top of that, here's what makes it really difficult. Sometimes people can do it. Every now and again, somebody does. They stop scrolling, they stop smoking, they stop shouting at their kids. They actually stop. So we try to do what they did, but then that doesn't always work. And every time we try to stop something, some pattern or behavior, and we fail, we hurt our self-esteem a little more. We make the battle a little harder. And I want to share a distinction that might just change everything for you right now. There are 4 distinct STOP patterns, 4 distinct STOP personalities. And if you attempt to use the wrong one, well, it fails and damages your self-esteem. So for example, one of the STOP personalities is called the Pioneer. And the Pioneer is largely driven by novelty. And so if I, as a pioneer, attempt to stop using analysis, using data, I'm not gonna get very far. I might get a few hours, maybe I'll get in a few days, but then the pattern will come back and my self-esteem will take a dive. And so I'm gonna walk you through the 4 profiles now, and I'd love to hear from you in the comments where you think you live. Now, you are probably influenced by all 4 of the STOP style profiles, but one of them is likely quite strong, quite primary for you. Which one is it? So the first one, as I mentioned, is the pioneer. And the pioneer is largely driven by novelty. The pioneer likes new things, likes to start things, doesn't always finish them very well, but has a tendency toward the new. And so any behavior that they want to change, well, bringing novelty into the conversation will make things better. And then we have the collaborator. The collaborator is generally a fairly social person, often extroverted, and for them behaviors are better stopped and started in collaboration or with team. That is to say, when they do it together or when they make public commitments that kind of help to lock them in, those things can really begin to support them and help them to determine a new direction. And then you've got the Builder. The Builder really likes step-by-step processes, but you can imagine how irritating that might be for the Pioneer. It's a different strategy. And so for the Builder, Looking at the behavior step by step and then building a step-by-step way of getting through it and getting to a new behavior will be more effective than cold turkey. And then we have the analyst. The analyst is all about data. Get the right data point and sometimes the behavior can just dissolve. The right data point can make it happen. And in this case, I'll give you an example. I talked to a friend of mine once who quit smoking in a moment without ever having cravings or hesitation ever again. And in his case, he was definitely an Analyst, and he also had a strong Collaborator side to him. And what happened was his little girl came up to him when she was about 9 years old and said, "Daddy, will you be able to walk me down the aisle for my wedding?" And he said, "Of course, honey. Of course I will." And she said, "Not if you keep smoking." And in that moment, he was able to let it go. Now, it's not that easy every time for every person, but when you understand your STOP/START profile, it begins to become easier. It starts to become more strategic. It starts to come from understanding instead of brute force. And so I suggest you check out stopstyleprofile.com. You can get the profile right now for free, and you could even come and check out Stop It Sunday, where I do live coaching sessions with people to help them determine their STOP style profile and how to use it to develop solid strategies for behavior change. Hey, my question for you is, What do you want to stop? What is it that you want to stop? I know what people are searching for. They're searching for how to stop scrolling, how to stop overeating, how to stop sleeping in, how to stop staying up too late, how to stop shouting at their husband or wife or raising their voice with their kids. There are many things that people would like to stop, and here's what's crazy. Sometimes they don't even know they want to stop it because it has become such a deep part of their identity and their internal survival strategy that it doesn't feel like a behavior. It just feels like them. Them. So take a look, think about it. What behaviors would you love to stop if you knew you could? Which STOP style profile do you think you have? And maybe I can help you find out at stopstyleprofile.com or at stopitsummit.com.
