Spiralling Upwards: Using Positive Emotions to Build and Sustain Health Habits

People change by feeling good, not by feeling bad.

BJ Fogg

The Habit Loop

Think about the last time you tried to create a new health habit. You might have attempted to start a new diet, fit in more exercise over your week, or get to bed at more regular hours in the evening. Habits are behaviours we perform without much conscious deliberation. They are “context-behaviour associations in memory that develop as people repeatedly experience rewards for a given action in a given context [1]”. Put another way, habits are actions that we automatically perform in certain environments because they are rewarding to us in some way. We pass a vending machine and grab a can of soda. We slump into our couch and watch reruns of our favourite sitcoms. We check our smartphones the last thing before going to bed. Here, the vending machine, couch, and smartphone are cues in our environment that, when we engage in, reward us in some way.

Habits are powerful, automated actions that can be difficult to change – unless you become conscious of the habit process. Author Charles Duhigg shares an experience in his book, The Power of Habit, on how he once had the habit of buying a cookie from his office cafeteria every afternoon. This led to unwanted pounds but also caused him to wonder if his afternoon cookie raid was really driven by hunger. It turns out that his habit was driven more by a feeling of boredom that consistently struck him at about 3 pm; it wasn’t the sugar rush he needed. His habit was much driven by emotion – feelings of boredom, which prompted him to head over to the cafeteria for the cookie. Duhigg recognized something about his habit loop. His trips to the cafeteria were rewarding and repeated because they allowed him the opportunity to socialize with his colleagues. Feeling bored in the afternoon was a cue that motivated a response – the response being to walk to the cafeteria and buy a cookie, in the hopes of running into a co-worker to have a chat with [2]. The habit loop comprises three elements – a cue (time in the afternoon when boredom strikes), a routine (walk to the cafeteria), and a reward (cookie and chat with a colleague). Duhigg realized that he could alleviate his boredom by just socializing, avoiding the cookie altogether.

Identifying the three elements of this simplified habit model – cue, routine, and reward, can help you understand why you fall back into the same patterns of behaviours. It can also help you identify why setting and sustaining health habits can be difficult. The vending machine, couch, and smartphone next to our bed in the earlier example are all environment cues that prompt a routine response – grab a soda, switch on the TV, log on to social media – all automatic responses that, arguably, have less of an optimal effect on your health in the long-run. Forming healthy habits is difficult, but understanding and using positive emotions can help shape your habits for better health.

The Upward Spiral of Lifestyle Change

Positive emotions are powerful motivators of intention and action. Feeling positive emotions supports individuals’ personal growth goals, ultimately leading them to report greater well-being [3]. One way then, to enforce your habits, is to identify which component of the habit loop can be tweaked to allow you to feel positive emotions, making the routine rewarding but importantly as well, a healthy one. In Duhigg’s example, he sought out a colleague to chat with while bypassing the cookie. Swap the fizzy soda with a healthier drink option. Fit in 20 minutes of exercise while you are watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Read an interesting book instead of scrolling your social media feed before bedtime. The initial change is typically going to be the hardest of course, but over time, the positive feelings experienced from healthier habits can foster a commitment to more beneficial routines. Studies show that positive emotions build resilience, helping individuals sustain their sense of self during challenging experiences [4] and enhancing their ability to recover from stressors [5]. Positive emotions help us persist and persevere and pick us up when we need to do difficult things – including starting and sticking to new habits.

Researchers have recently explained how positive emotions motivate positive health behaviours, calling this an ‘upward spiral’ of lifestyle change. Positive emotional experiences beget more positive emotional experiences. The more you enjoy an activity, the more likely you are to repeat it – until it becomes second nature – in essence, a habit to you. When you engage in positive health behaviours, you experience positive feeling states and the intrinsic motivation to persist in the activity [6]. Positive emotions have this effect on our actions because they broaden our thinking and open up new possibilities. Feeling good when engaging in healthy habits builds the necessary resources needed to start and sustain those habits [7]. This ‘broaden-and-build’ effect explains why feeling positive emotions can enforce habits that, over time, benefit our health. Say you try out a fitness class – yoga, for instance, and enjoy your first session. You made new friends, found your instructor to be encouraging, and enjoyed the meditative-like experience accompanying the poses learnt from the class. The positive emotions from this experience then encourage you to be more open to possibilities that further enhance your practice; it broadens your attention toward new poses and builds intentions to commit to future classes [8].

An important feature of the upward spiral of lifestyle change is vantage resources – these are anything that amplifies the positive experiences obtained from engaging in positive health behaviours [9]. In the yoga example, it could simply be the yoga equipment, enjoyable interactions with people at the studio, or the sense of achievement you feel from being able to pull off a more challenging posture. Studies indicate that exercise or any act that requires some form of structured physical exertion more generally, is associated with feeling more positive emotions [10]. All you need to do is get started; the positive emotions accrue and compound over time, spiralling upwards to create and sustain a beneficial health habit.

Use Positive Emotions to Start and Sustain Healthy Habits

Try applying what you now know about your habit loop and positive emotions to start a healthy habit. Or apply it to a less helpful habit you wish to break. Start an upward spiral of good habits. It might take a while to get going; the inertia you feel against that new exercise routine, or a new diet is understandable and normal. But positive emotions can help. Find ways to make your habits rewarding. Adjust, alter, and add positive emotions to a habit so that it becomes a naturally pleasant and beneficial action to engage in. It only takes a small dose of positive emotion to start an upward spiral of a positive habit change – one that will pay dividends for your well-being over time.

References

[1] Mazar, A., & Wood, W. (2018). Defining habit in psychology. The psychology of habit: Theory, mechanisms, change, and contexts, 13-29.

[2] Duhigg, C. (2013). The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do and how to change. Random House.

[3] Seaton, C. L., & Beaumont, S. L. (2015). Pursuing the good life: A short-term follow-up study of the role of positive/negative emotions and ego-resilience in personal goal striving and eudaimonic well-being. Motivation and Emotion, 39, 813-826. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-015-9493-y

[4] Cohn, M. A., Fredrickson, B. L., Brown, S. L., Mikels, J. A., & Conway, A. M. (2009). Happiness unpacked: Positive emotions increase life satisfaction by building resilience. Emotion, 9(3), 361-368. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015952

[5] Ong, A. D., Bergeman, C. S., Bisconti, T. L., & Wallace, K. A. (2006). Psychological resilience, positive emotions, and successful adaptation to stress in later life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(4), 730–749. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.4.730

[6] Van Cappellen, P., Rice, E. L., Catalino, L. I., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2018). Positive affective processes underlie positive health behaviour change. Psychology & Health, 33(1), 77-97. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2017.1320798

[7] Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). Positive emotions broaden and build. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 47, pp. 1-53). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407236-7.00001-2

[8] Fredrickson, B. L., & Joiner, T. (2018). Reflections on positive emotions and upward spirals. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 194-199. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617692106

[9] Van Cappellen, P., Catalino, L. I., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2020). A new micro-intervention to increase the enjoyment and continued practice of meditation. Emotion, 20(8), 1332-1343. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000684

[10] Reed, J., & Buck, S. (2009). The effect of regular aerobic exercise on positive-activated affect: A meta-analysis. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 10(6), 581-594. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2009.05.009

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