The Power Of Habit

Part one – The habits of individuals
Chapter 1: The habit loop – how habits work

The habit loop: The process with our brain is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Cue – routine – reward

Over time, this loop becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become intertwined until a powerful sense of anticipation and craving emerges. Eventually, a habit is born.

When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit – unless you find new routines – the pattern will unfold automatically.

Habits never really disappear. They are encoded into the structures of our brain.

If we learn to create new neurological routines that overpower those behaviors – if we take control of the habit loop – we can force those bad tendencies into the background. And once someone creates a new pattern, studies have demonstrated, going for a jog or ignoring the doughnuts becomes as automatic as any other habit.

Habits, as much as memory and reason, are at the root of how we behave. We might not remember the experiences that create our habits, but once they are lodged within our brains the influence how we act – often without our realization.

Example: McDonalds and kids. When the kids are starving and you are driving home after a long day it makes sense to stop by McDonalds – it’s inexpensive and taste good. One meal of processed food can’t be that bad, right? But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once in a month pattern slowly becomes once in a week, and then twice a week.

As the cues and rewards creates a habit – until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. There are a number of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behavior – every McDonalds looks the same, the employees says the same things, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines.

The fries are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. Everything for the habit loop.

Chapter 2: The craving brain – how to create new habits
Craving is what makes cues and rewards work. The craving is what powers the habit loop.

1. Find a simple and obvious cue
2. Clearly define the rewards

Habits create neurological cravings. As we associate cues with certain rewards, a subconscious craving emerges in our brain that starts the habit loop spinning.

How to create a new habit: put together a cue, a routine and a reward, and then cultivate a craving that drives the loop.

A cue and a reward on their own aren’t enough for a new habit to last. Only when your brain starts expecting the reward – craving the endorphins or sense of accomplishment – will it become automatic to lace up your jogging shoes each morning. The cue, in addition to triggering a routine, must also trigger a craving for the reward to come.

Toothpaste example: Claude Hopkins wasn’t selling beautiful teeth. He was selling a sensation. Once people craved that cool tingeling – once they equated it with cleanliness – brushing became a habit. While everyone brushes their teeth, fewer than 10% of Americans apply sunscreen every day. Why? Because there is no craving that has made sunscreen into a daily habit.

Craving is what drives habits. And figuring out how to spark a caving makes creating a new habit easier.

title : the power of habbit
author : charles duhigg
no.of page :368
published : 28 february,2012