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Are you stuck a rut? Do you have habits you’d like to change but you’ve already fallen off of your New Year’s Resolution? Everyone knows that they come back from vacation refreshed and re-energized, but did you know that going on a road trip is one of the best ways you can reset your habits and break out of ruts that aren’t leading you towards your Best Life?

I was listening to writer Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, on an old episode of NPR’s Fresh Air, and it really got me thinking: road trips are unique opportunities to break out of ruts and incorporate new–and better–habits into your daily life.

This post is part of my Road Trip “Mindsetting” Series and will help you understand why we get into ruts in the first place, the best way to break those ruts while on the road, and the most important thing you can do to make sure you don’t fall back into ruts once you get back from your trip. By keeping in mind your ultimate goals for your next road trip, you’re more likely to a have a more successful trip overall.

Why We Get into Ruts

Ruts are basically just habits we fall into that don’t bring us joy. The first thing to understand is that having a habit isn’t necessarily a bad thing; if you’ve developed a strong evening routine, for example, that’s a good habit. Going to the gym a couple times a week is a good habit. In fact, the ability to develop habits has been important to mankind’s survival, because doing something without thought frees up your brain to focus on other things–like not getting chomped by a saber tooth tiger, for example.

The problem is when you have an automatic behavior that don’t support your Best Life, when it wasn’t a habit you consciously chose and pursued. That habit can potentially lead you down an unhealthy or unhappy path without you even being aware of it.

According to Duhigg, ruts (or what scientists call “habit loops) have three parts:

1. The Cue – this is the trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and let a behavior unfold
2. The Routine – the behavior itself (what we normally think of when we’re thinking about “habits”)
3. The Reward – something that happens as a result of the routine that your brain likes, that tells it to remember this pattern for the future

The only way to help break out of ruts and develop good habits is to identify the cues and rewards of your habit loops–and then start changing them.

How Road Trips Can Help You Break Out of Ruts

One of the easiest ways to break these habit loops is to leave the environment in which cue exists. If you eat a cookie at 2pm every day at work, for example, you can break this habit while you’re on the road–both because your cues at work will not exist on the road, and you can set up an environment for success by not having any cookies within arm’s reach.

You can’t just skip town and hope that you’ll come back with a whole new set of healthy habits, though. Before you go on a road trip, identify the habits in your life that you would like to change, and think critically about what their cues and rewards are. If you’re eating a cookie every day, is that a sugar craving, or is it an excuse for you to stand up from your desk and take a break from work? Are your coworkers also eating cookies and triggering your desire to be part of the group?

Once you’ve identified the routines you’d like to change and their cues, think about what habits you’d like to build in their place, using the cues to figure out an appropriate replacement. If your cookie is an excuse to get up from your desk, what if you got up and went for a short walk instead? If you want to be part of a group, can you just have a glass of water while you chat with your coworkers?

Take those conscious habits that you’ve chosen and do them while you’re on your road trip. Focus on how you feel after you do those healthy routines you’d like to incorporate into your life. Make your own satisfaction at having done the routine part of your brain’s reward. If you do this often enough, by the time you come home, you will have broken the Cue-Routine-Reward rut and will have the opportunity to incorporate these new habits into your daily life.

The Ultimate Anti-Rut

The most important thing you can do to avoid ruts–both on a road trip and in your daily life–is to foster mindfulness. If you’re present in the moment and paying attention to your life as it happens, you won’t lapse into mindless habits or ruts. Duhigg says, “You want to teach your brain the right habits by teaching it to crave the right rewards, by changing your behavior to deliver those rewards that you know that you need. But you have to be mindful of that process.”

For me, road trips are the ideal place to practice mindfulness. When we’re on the road, we’re often exploring new environments and landscapes. Each moment on the road trip is unique, so we need to be paying attention to our surroundings so we don’t miss out on anything. The combination of the repetitive, soothing behavior of driving (assuming there’s no traffic) combined with this mindful tuning in to our surroundings presents the perfect opportunity to foster gratitude for our lives and mindfully choose behaviors that support our pursuit of your Best Life.

Practice mindfulness on the road, and you’re more likely to be able to be mindful of joy in your daily life, as well–the ultimate anti-rut.

 

Listen to Charles Duhigg talk about habits on NPR’s Fresh Air: