Creating a Green Habit in Four Easy Steps

This post is for the Green Moms Carnival on Green Resolutions hosted this month by Non-Toxic Kids.

Resolutions are great, aren’t they? Simply making a resolution causes us to positively glow with virtuousness, secure in the knowledge that our lives will shortly be better.

That sense of purpose is a terrific motivator. It gets us reducing, reusing and recycling, building our compost piles and taking the bus. And yet how many resolutions are made and never kept? It reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld when Jerry tries to pick up his rental car and they don’t have a car for him. He gets into an argument with the agent as to the meaning of a reservation:

Jerry: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?

Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.

Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.

Agent: I know why we have reservations.

Jerry: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.

Agent: Let me, uh, speak with my supervisor.

Resolutions, like reservations, require holding in order to be useful, and we all know that the holding can be the hardest part. If a behavior doesn’t develop into a habit, it’s quickly lost.

Recently, I had the terrific experience of creating a new green habit: instead of driving to work, I walk, or on rare occasion take the bus. This habit gives me great joy on an ongoing basis, but it took time to develop. I’m happy to share my process with you and I hope to hear about your many green habits as well!

In his book Habit, Neale Martin describes our two minds: the executive brain and the dinosaur brain. The executive brain is the one that makes conscious decisions; the dinosaur brain is the one that operates on autopilot – and which is responsible for 95% of our day-to-day behavior. Our executive brain makes the resolutions; our dinosaur brains keep them.

Context

If we want our green resolutions to be meaningful, we have to understand how to transition them from our conscious brains to our dinosaur brains: in short, how to make them into habits. According to Martin, the first step towards forming habits is context: making sure that the new behavior we’re trying to create fits nicely within our existing mental map of the world.

The first few times I went on long walks were a “big deal”. I took walks on weekends with friends, on trails in the hills, planning them in advance and giving myself a big pat on the back when I was done. When I first walked to work, I thought I was a real heroine! But now I barely notice the trip. In order for me to walk as a means of transportation, I had to change its mental context: from a major exercise activity to a normal way of getting around.

Training

Because the dinosaur brain learns through repetition, one of the most important steps in forming a habit is repeating the behavior. A lot. Enough times for the dinosaur brain to be able to handle things without further instruction.

In my case, it took several months of walking before it became second nature. Now I crave it, and I feel uncomfortable if for some reason I have to take the car.

Reinforcement

Reinforcement is, according to Martin, “anything that makes a behavior more likely to occur”. Reinforcement can be positive (we play a game to win a medal) or negative (we turn off the alarm in the morning to make that annoying sound stop).

For me, sunny days were positive reinforcement, but at first I’d revert to the car the moment a cloud appeared. So I consciously created an additional, negative reinforcement: I cancelled my parking space in the local garage. This meant that anytime I wanted to take the car, I had to consciously think about where I was going to park and how much it would cost me.

Cue

A cue is a way to trigger behavior; cues accelerate the creation of habits. Unfortunately, many of the habits we’re trying to overcome have their own cues. For example, I have a cue that says when I have a meeting with a particular client on the other side of town, I take the car. Now I’m looking for ways to compensate for that cue: a better understanding of the bus system, perhaps.

If you’re looking to save water by taking shorter showers, try playing music (that you can hear from the shower), and telling yourself that when a certain song comes on, you get out of the shower. You can create little rhymes for yourself (“leaving home, to go roam, take the bus, it’s no fuss!”) or connect seemingly unconnected things (“every time I run the dishwasher, I take out the compost”).

Context, training, reinforcement and cues: four steps to creating – and keeping – your green resolutions. After months and months, I hit a tipping point that told me my walking habit had been successfully created: it had officially become more troublesome to take the car than to leave it behind.
I’d love to hear about your green resolutions, and your tips and tricks for making habits of them, in the comments below.

Comments

[AmberS]

This is really helpful. I think so many of us have great intentions, but we fall down on the implementation. I know that I've successfully created some habits, but I didn't understand HOW to do it, so I am not in the best position to repeat it. Thanks so much for the insight!

[Erin aka Conscious Shopper]

This is a very helpful article for me since I'm trying to get my family using the car less. It's hard to get out of the habit of hopping into the car whenever we have someplace to go, but you've given me some great tips to get us going in the right direction.

[Kaila Colbin]

Thank you so much, Amber and Erin! I'm glad you found it useful. Please keep me posted on how you go with your own resolutions! :-)

[Katy]

Great ideas for how to make our green resolutions and actions memorable. The book habit looks interesting in this light and as a teacher.

Thanks!

Katy
http://www.non-toxickids.net

[Diane macEachern]

I've also read research saying that you need to do something for three weeks in order for it to become a habit. It's the repetition over time that helps new behavior patterns take hold. Thanks for the info on this book - I'm going to read more.

[Peter McGowan]

Way interesting. Two months ago I started biking to work, what made me do it?, my motorbike was broken, it was hard to park the car, we shifted to an office 10 mins walk closer to my home!
Its the hassle parking the car that drove me to bike but my dinosuar brain has taken over and I rarely take the car to work, it is so much easier to bike, even in the rain.

[Sommer]

I like the idea of setting cues and reinforcment - two things that I think could really help me in the upcoming year.