A friend of mine mentioned that she was having trouble getting in the habit of going to the gym every morning, so I promised an explanation of how I have created so many beneficial habits in my life in the past year.   I thought that the email that I sent her might actually be useful for others who are having the same type of issue.  Not that anybody out there has trouble creating habits that improve their life at all.

My email is below…

My reading of the latest research says that forming a habit comes down to three things (with an optional fourth):

Turning that habit in to a precise behavior (instead of “I want to get in shape”, “I want to go to the gym 3x per week”).
Deciding on an “anchor” for that behavior within your life.  The anchor point determines the behavior that immediately precedes the new behavior: “After I brush my teeth upon waking on M/W/F I will put on my gym clothes and walk to the front door to leave”)
Repeatedly be triggered to perform that behavior at the right anchor point
(Optional) To really make it stick, it helps to create (social) accountability around that behavior

There are a bunch of tools to do this.  If the habit is small, start with BJ Fogg’s latest research project, called “Tiny Habits” (http://tinyhabits.com/).  Joining BJ’s project is the easiest and best way for you to get a really solid understanding of how to form interesting habits in your own life and perform the first two steps.

Once you’re good at doing the first two things for yourself, all you really need to do is the third.  There are a few sites that have popped up to help with that:

Habit Forge: http://habitforge.com/
21Habit:  http://21habit.com/

Note that Habit Forge has built in to it the ability to create “teams”, which provides the fourth step I mentioned earlier.  21Habit uses a financial accountability model, costing you money for every day that you don’t complete your habit.  Each of these strategies is more or less likely to work, depending on the individual.   But neither of these are really needed as much as the first 3 steps.

So, if you want to start going to the gym, here’s what you do.

Decide what the target behavior is.  (I like the one I chose above, but it could be anything: “”)
Decide on the anchor point in your life.  An example could be: “When I get in my car to leave the office, I will drive to the gym and walk in the front door”.  (Notice that your goal doesn’t have to be related to actually working out: if you walk in the front door, you’re likely to, but you may just walk right out again.  This is what BJ Fogg calls “baby steps” – we don’t have to do the entire behavior, just the part of it that is cognitively easy enough to create the habit)
Set a trigger to remind you at that time where you’re going.  Could be one of the services above (that work by email), a calendar reminder, or a sticky note on your steering wheel.  As long as you’re reminded close to the time that you actually leave the office.
If you want to make it even more likely, find something to hold you accountable: it could be a workout buddy or someone else who you want to impress, it could be your entire Facebook friend list, or it could be one of the services above.

Since meeting BJ Fogg last year, I’ve used this same format to implement a whole pile of new habits in my life, from improving my workout routine to changing the way I eat and the way that I floss my teeth.

 

MedicalXpress is reporting on a paper that suggests a facial expression for anxiety:

Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London have, for the first time, identified the facial expression of anxiety. The facial expression for the emotion of anxiety comprises an environmental scanning look that appears to aid risk assessment.

Per the abstract, researchers presented 8 volunteers with emotional scenarios and had them pose facial expressions. Photographs and videos of the posed expressions were shown to 40 participants. The participants were asked to match the emotional scenarios and to provide a label for the expression. 18 separate participants were then asked to match the labels provided by the first group to the photographs of the posed expressions.

A majority of the participants labeled a posed expression for an ambiguous threat (e.g. seeing a predator’s footprints) as anxiety. The posed expression for an unambiguous threat (e.g. actually seeing the predator) was correlated with the label of fear.

According to the study, the facial expression for anxiety included “eye darts” and “head swivels”. Since “eye darts” and “head swivels” aren’t actual movements, I’m hazarding a guess that they meant turning the head and eyes. You can find the original paper here, and see the movie used in the study here.

I’m sure Paul Ekman,David Matsumoto,and Maggie Pazian can find a lot of things to explore further, but I noticed a few items of interest right off the bat:

If you look at the “anxiety expression” in the movie, it includes more than just turning the head and eyes. Notably there is a sucking in of the lower lip (AU 28 1), and the subject appears to lean backward after the scanning (which could be interpreted as a flight response.)
I find it interesting that the facial expression is described in terms of multiple distinct movements, yet the second set of participants were only given still photographs. I’d be curious to see the photographs that were used.
The researchers did not claim this to be a universally recognized expression. Although they did suggest a threat response as a possible source of motivation.

While this is definitely interesting, remember that it is just one study. There needs to be additional research and scientific inquiry before reaching a conclusion.

UPDATE: Humintell has posted some thoughts on the paper.

Fingerprint: F04E8E7D2C2310EE4D445C0B2377D0AA

Notes:

Actions units other than AU 28 are also present ↩

Further reading:

Hotspot and Facial Expression Resources

According to the Epoch Times blind people can “see” emotions.  Ongoing research has discovered that blindsighted  individuals can not only respond to emotional cues on other people’s faces but can also navigate around objects.

These individuals are dubbed “blindsighted” people because their blindness was brought on by some kind of trauma such as a stroke or a head injury.  Their eyes are actually physically functional.  It is their brain’s reception of images that doesn’t function properly.

Beatrice de Gelder, a neuroscientist at Holland’s Tilburg University says, “Blindsighted people feel they are totally blind. ”

Before this study, it was believed a person with normal eyesight synchronized their facial expressions with others through an automatic response to visual cues.  However, this assumption is now in question.

The “blindsighted” participants in the study  imitated the faces that were loaded with emotion even though they could not see them.

de Gelder commented, “…we don’t have a clear view yet about the abilities of the brain.”   The neuroscientist went on to note in an interview that cortical vision tends to overwhelm a person’s perception, but the activity of other background pathways can be detected in blindsighted people.  These mental pathways allow a person to sense emotion rather then see them.

Take a look at de Gelder’s interview in season two of Through the Wormhole, which aired on July 6, 2011 for more intriguing information on the mysteries of existence.