Bad habits are easy to form.  The reason is because positive reinforcement is the strongest form of training.  When you start a bad habit, your brain gets tiny little rewards that reinforce you doing it.  The rewards are different for each habit.  Biting your nails, for example, creates a release from the current stress or anxiety you may be feeling.  Drugs and alcohol can create emotional numbness or stimulation of pleasure points.  Any bad habit has a number of positive reinforcers behind it if you examine them hard enough.

Now I want you to think of Ivan Pavlov and his dogs.  Pavlov would bring his dogs food and they began to salivate.  Pavlov then started to ring a bell before feedings.  After a while, Pavlov stopped bringing the food and the dogs began to salivate at the sound of the bell.  While this is a very boiled down explanation of what happened, this is classical conditioning.  This type of conditioning is one of many great ways to break a bad habit.

 

Pavlok is designed to help you with that.  Pavlok is a new type of wearable.  While most wearables track what you are doing, they don’t really force you to change that behavior.  Pavlok helps break bad habits by creating discomfort.  There are three types of discomfort: beeps, vibration, and Zaptic feedback (or shock).  Now the device can’t read your mind to help you quit smoking.  This means that you have to manually activate your chosen punishment by pressing the button on the device or by the paired app.  If you truly want to commit to quitting your bad habit, then you must also commit to your consequence.  If you are savvy enough, Pavlok will allow you to pair with other sensors to automate some of your punishment.  The more consistent you are, the more the brain will associate that nasty habit with the negative consequence.  However, because positive reinforcement is stronger, don’t expect this to change overnight.  You are battling years of your bad habit and reinforcement so commitment is key.  Pavlok recommends 5 days (even if you have to force yourself to get consequences).  I personally recommend more in that you have years of damage to undo.

If you want to check it out and maybe keep one of your new year resolutions, visit pavlok.com