Every habit you cannot break is feeding one of six hungers every human has. Here’s how to find out which one.

A friend told me she had read four books on boundaries.

Four. Colour coded highlights. She could quote whole chapters at me over coffee. And on Sunday she said yes to a thing she did not want to do. Fourth Sunday in a row.

We could have talked about scripts. How to say no politely, how to hold your ground when someone pushes back. She had all of that already, sitting in a Notes app, beautifully organised and never once opened at the moment it was needed.

So I asked her something else. “What does saying yes give you?”

Long pause. Then, a bit sheepishly: “It means I’m still one of them.”

She was not failing at boundaries. She was feeding something, and paying for it with her free time

The bit we skip

When someone keeps doing a thing they say they hate, we assume something is missing. Willpower, usually. Or information. So off they go to find more information, which is a very satisfying way to feel like you are working on yourself while nothing changes.

Here is the part we skip. Habits are tiring. They cost energy, time, sometimes friendships. Nothing in you keeps running an expensive habit out of sentimentality.

If a behaviour has survived years of you knowing better, it is doing something useful.

So the question shifts. Not “why can’t I stop this.” More like “what is this giving me, and why is it so hard to get anywhere else.”

Six hungers

There is a learning I use in my coaching and even for myself, six needs that turn up in every human being regardless of where they were born or what they believe. Certainty, variety, significance, love and connection, growth, contribution.

• Certainty is the ground under your feet. Knowing what tomorrow looks like, knowing where the money is coming from, knowing the people at the door.
• Variety is the opposite pull. Something new, something to keep you awake, a bit of unpredictability so life doesn’t flatten out.
• Significance is mattering. Being someone. Having your name mean something in a room.
• Love and connection is being close to people, and being properly known by at least a few of them.
• Growth is becoming more than you were.
• Contribution is the sense that your existence makes an actual difference to somebody else.

The first four will happen whether you like it or not. Growth and contribution are the two you have to choose on purpose, which is why so many people who have everything on paper feel oddly empty.

None of these are weaknesses. Wanting solid ground is not a character defect. Wanting to matter is not vanity. They are the conditions of being a person.

Why some habits will not shift

A habit that feeds one hunger is a small thing. Annoying, easy enough to change, not very interesting.

A habit that feeds four hungers at once is a different animal. That is the one you have quit eleven times.

Think of the person who starts something new every few months. New sport, new side project, new diet, all of it abandoned somewhere around week seven. From the outside that looks like flakiness.

Look at what it feeds. Growth, because starting genuinely feels like becoming. Variety, because week one of anything is the best week. Significance, because everyone tells you how impressive it is that you have taken up open water swimming. And certainty, the sneaky one, because if you never get to the hard middle bit you never find out whether you were good enough.

Four hungers, all fed, every time they start again.

Nobody is going to grit their teeth through that. Every attempt to “just be more consistent” loses, because consistency feeds one hunger badly and starting fresh feeds four beautifully.

Or think of the person whose life is a rolling disaster. Something is always going wrong and it is always genuinely dramatic and they are always somewhere near the middle of it. That looks like chaos. Inside it there is variety, significance, connection whenever people rally around, and a strange sort of certainty, because at least you know what next month looks like. Next month looks like this month.

Now go back to my friend and her four books. Saying yes gave her connection, a settled sense of her place, and the status of being the person everyone can count on. Three hungers fed, every single time she agreed to something she resented.

Her boundaries were never weak. They just never stood a chance against what saying yes was giving her.

Taking it away leaves a gap

This is where most change attempts come apart.

You remove the behaviour and the hunger is still sitting there, wide awake, looking around for something else. Then you call it a failure when it goes back to the only thing that has ever reliably worked. It is not weakness. Hunger does not care about your intentions.

You cannot talk a hunger out of being hungry.

What you can change is what you reach for.

Mattering can come from being the one who answers messages at eleven at night, permanently needed and permanently knackered. Or from being the one who brings other people on so well that three of them get somewhere this year. Same hunger. Two very different lives.

Connection can come from never disappointing anybody. Or from having a few relationships sturdy enough to survive you saying no.

The hunger is not negotiable. What you feed it with absolutely is.

The one I keep catching myself in

Fair’s fair, I should put mine on the table.

I used to check the numbers. A post goes up, I know roughly when it will have moved, and I find myself a reason to look. On the bus, which is fine. At the dinner table, which is not.

I tried to stop this more times than I want to admit in writing. Phone in the other room. Notifications off. The whole setup. It lasts a wee while

So I ran the six on it, properly, the way I am about to ask you to.

Significance came in at a nine. A number going up feels like proof the thing landed, and I would love to tell you I am above that. Certainty scored higher than I expected, because not knowing how something did sits worse with me than a poor result does. And a bit of variety, because refreshing is a small hit of something happening in an otherwise ordinary evening.

Three hungers, fed in about ten seconds, from my pocket, without me having to talk to anyone.

No wonder the phone in the other room never held. Nothing else in my evening was feeding me that fast.

What helps a bit now is sending the piece to one person whose view I actually care about and asking what they made of it. Slower. Feeds the same thing far better than a number ever has. I still check. Just WAY WAY less, and usually not at the table.

Something to try this week

Start with the plain version of the behaviour. Not the story about it, the thing itself. “I say yes to things I don’t want to do.” “I check my phone before I’ve properly woken up.” “I start things and stop at week seven.”

Then go through the six hungers and give each one a score out of ten for what this habit gives you. Be honest, particularly about the ones that make you wince a bit. This is for you and nobody else

Anything scoring eight or above is the reason it keeps coming back. Whatever you replace it with has to feed that just as well, or it will not hold. A reminder on your phone and a good intention will not feed significance. Nothing ever has.

So build the new thing first, then let the old one go. Give it a fortnight. If you drift back, the new thing is not feeding you enough, so change the new thing rather than deciding you are hopeless.

And here is the question I would ask before any of the others.

What would I lose if this stopped tomorrow?

Not “why do I do this.”

The part I actually want you to keep

Most cultures worked this out long before anyone made a framework of it. We have words for these hungers because they matter. Mana is not a flaw. Whanaungatanga is not a flaw. Wanting to know where you stand is not something to be fixed out of you.

That habit you are embarrassed about kept something alive in you back when you had nothing better available. It deserves a nod on the way out rather than a telling off.

Then find it something better, because it has been doing the job on its own for long enough.

Have a go this week. Pick the habit you have tried to break more than twice. Score the six. See what turns up.

I would love to know which hunger has been running the show without asking you first.

Till next week

Stay awesome

Prajesh