Are you struggling to follow a routine? Do you always falter when someone asks,” What’s your skincare regime or diet habits”? Let us analyse and understand how human minds work through the COM-B Model of Behaviour change.
Let’s break this down into simple terms,
“ To incorporate a change in Behaviour, it has to be catalysed by Capability, Opportunity and Motivation”
Capability
Capability is the ability of an individual to do what is required to enact a change. It can be physical or psychological.
For eg: To Open a bank account, one has to have a basic acumen in banking and managing funds. One also has to have the required documentation to open an account.
Opportunity
Opportunities are avenues to access the required resources or practices to enact a particular change. It can be reflective or automatic.
For eg: To cut down costs by having home-cooked meals, one has to have the opportunity to cook a balanced meal by themselves. This can be achieved by watching youtube or using cook-books etc., One has to reflect and incorporate this into their daily lifestyle to enact this change.
Motivation
Motivation is the driving force or the magnet to push someone to achieve a certain change/goal. This can be physical or social.
For eg: If someone is a hypochondriac and wants to lose weight to gain health, one has to be motivated to drag themselves out of bed everyday morning to hit the gym. They can be motivated to look and become fit and also to have an extra conversation starter (gymming) with the peer groups.
How are they related?
Capability and opportunity directly influence behaviour. If we think we are more capable and if we are surrounded by a good number of opportunities we will bludgeon ourselves to work towards that change.
Capability and opportunity also influence the relationship between Motivation and Behaviour. Imagine Capability and Opportunity as a power switch and fruit, they have to be active for Motivation (for eg: a blender) to enact a Behaviour change ( Smoothie).
At any time, Capability and Opportunity directly regulate the relationship between Behaviour and Motivation.
Finally, Behaviour feeds back to all the 3 components creating positive or negative feedbacks.
For eg: Learning how to paint. If one practices to paint frequently, they becomes more capable of doing it which is facilitated by more opportunities. Once they start seeing results( Better strokes, ability to draw straight lines etc.,) one feels even more exhilarated to incorporate that into a habit.
Case study
Let’s take the example of Tara, a student pursuing undergraduate studies. She has been diagnosed with PCOS ( PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome) which drains her energy levels, makes her feel bloated and mired in bed.
The doctor advised her to engage in healthy eating and also exercise for at least 30mins a day. Tara feels frazzled and fatigued all the time since she doesn’t see any results, even though she was doing what she was asked to. Let us analyse the situation using the COM-B model.
Capability- Tara had a sense of breathlessness when she jogged which proved to be a major blip in her fitness journey. Tara is a vegetarian who doesn’t eat eggs, mushrooms, tofu, soya etc., she had meagre diet options.
Opportunity- She was staying in a hostel without a kitchen which made it difficult for her to cook healthy meals. She did not enrol herself in a fitness programme although the accomodation had a gym.
Motivation- She wasn’t surrounded by a huge social circle, she always felt lonely. PCOS was creating major mood swings and pushed her into a delirious state of mind. She refrained from being consistent with her workouts and diet since she expected lightning results.
What can be done?
Using the COM-B model, building the building blocks of behaviour change ( COM) will make to her enact the required behaviour change.
Thus, COM-B model can be modelled to analyse and create any type of Behaviour change. Most of us have already been using this in our day-to-day lives unknowingly.
Useful tips
If you are a person trying to unleash yourself from a state of disarray, here are some useful tips for you:
- Always plan your day. Scribble something in your journal and try to segment your day to achieve the same.
- Try to avoid oily and undercooked food. Prefer steamed vegetables over roasted ones, Itsu over KFC, pasta salad over aglio olio
- Keep your hand-drawn monthly tracker near your bed so that you wake up to it. Just make n (28–31) number of rows for the days of the month and m number of columns . These columns might be Fruits& nuts, Skincare, Reading a book, Workout, Meditation etc., Just draw a tick in the box if you have done it on that day
- 21 day habits never work. Multiply them by 2, 3, 4, 5….
- Read during your transit ( metro/bus rides). If you have travel headaches, which hampers your reading during journey times, skip one episode of Netflix and read 20pages.
Have a great day and let me know if you have some useful ideas in the comments below:)
