The Power Of Habit

When you woke up this morning, what did you do first?

Leap under the shower, check email, or pick up a donut from the kitchen counter?Have you brushed your teeth before bathing or after?Which way did you drive to work?When you returned home, did you wear sneakers and go for a run, or put yourself in a drink glass and sat down for dinner in front of the TV?

William James wrote in 1892,

"Our whole life, as long as it is in a certain shape, is a pool of habits."

Elections made every day may lead us to deliberate decisions, but they are Not.They are habits.And although every habit has no meaning in itself, over time, what we order,save or spend , how often we exercise, and the way we routine our thoughts and workIt has a huge impact on our health, productivity, financial security and happiness.A researcher paper from Duke University, published in 2006, found that 40 percent of the actions people take were not actually decisions, but habits.Like countless others from Aristotle to Oprah, James spent much of his life understanding why habits occur.But in just two decades, scientists and marketers have begun to truly understand how habits work — and even more importantly — how they change.At some point in time, we all decided consciously how much to eat or how to focus when we reached the office, how often to drink and when to go for a run.Then we stopped making choices, and the behavior became comfortable.This is a natural result of our neurology.And by understanding how it happens, you can recreate the patterns that you like.

The Habit Trap: How Habits Work

The building that houses the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also houses laboratories that can see dollhouse editions of surgical theaters to those who look around.It has small scalpels, drills, little hairs smaller than a quarter inch, with robotic arms.The operating tables are also small, such as those made for children's size surgeons.Inside these laboratories, the unconscious mind bite the skulls, and inside them implant tiny sensors that record small changes inside their brains.These laboratories have become the epicenter of the noiseless revolution in habit-forming science, and the experiments in them explain how we develop the practices necessary for daily life.Laboratory mice shed light on the complexities that run in our brains when we do something as simple as brushing teeth or removing a car while driving a car back.Towards the center of the skull is a tissue ball of the size of a golf ball similar to that of which you can find in the ends of fish, reptiles, or mammals.It is an oval cell-mass, basal ganglia that scientists did not understand well for years, except for the suspicion that it has a role in diseases such as Parkinson's.In the early 1990s, MIT researchers began to think that basal ganglia could also be important for habits.He targeted that creatures with injured basal gaglia are having problems remembering to run through the labyrinth and open food containers.They decided to experiment using new micro-technologies that allowed them to observe the microscopic details that are running in the brains of mice while performing dozens of routines.Finally, each creature was placed in a T-shaped maze with chocolate placed at one end.The structure of the maze was designed in such a way that the location of the rat was behind a partition that opened when a loud click was made.At first, when he heard the sound of clicks and saw the partitions vanishing, it would usually move back and forth in the central corridor, sniffing the corners and nailing the walls.It seemed that he was getting the aroma of chocolate but he could not understand how to find it.When it reached the top of the T, it would turn away from the chocolate, turn right, and then sometimes, without any direct cause, would stop and go left.In the end, most creatures received a reward.But there was no discernible pattern in their disorientation.It seemed that every mouse was leisurely walking around without thinking.Nevertheless, examining the ends of mice told a different story.As each creature wandered from the labyrinth, its brain — and especially its basal ganglia — was acting hastily.Every time a rat sniffed the air or scratched the wall, its brain exploded with activity, as if it was analyzing every smell, sight and sound.During its entire disorientation, the rat was processing information.Scientists repeated this experiment repeatedly, observing how the activity of its brain changed while walking the same path hundreds of times.The mice stopped smelling and taking a wrong turn.Gradually a series of changes emerged.Instead, they began to move faster, even faster, through the labyrinth.And something unexpected happened in their minds: As each rat learned to find a way out of the labyrinth, its mental activity diminished.As the path became more and more comfortable, every rat started thinking less and less.It used to be, as many times before, when the rat sought a path in forgetfulness, its brain would have to work its full power to understand new information.But after walking on the same path for a few days, the rat was no longer required to pop the wall or sniff the air, and so the brain activity related to coughing and sniffing ceased.There was no need to choose the direction to turn it, so the decision-making centers of the mind became calm.The rat had run out of the labyrinth to such an extent that it had no need to think.But mental observations indicated that the adoption depended on the basal ganglia.As the rat increased its running speed, it seemed that this tiny, neurological structure had come to dominate and the brain was at least functioning.At the center of memorizing and working on patterns was the basal gaglia.In other words, when the rest of the brain went to sleep, the basal gaglia would store habits.

Simple checking routine

This process –.

– in which the brain transforms a chain of activities into a spontaneous routine is known as “chucking,” and has its roots in how habits are formed.Conduct chunks — if not hundreds —– there are dozens upon which we depend daily.Some of these are simple: Before applying it in the mouth, you easily put toothpaste on the brush.Something similar, such as wearing clothes or making lunches for children, is more complex.Scientists say that habits emerge because the brain constantly finds ways to avoid effort.If left to ourselves, then the brain will try to adapt almost any routine to habits, because habits allow our brains to wander more often.The tendency to avoid effort is very beneficial.An efficient mind allows us to stop constantly thinking about basic practices like walking, and choosing what to eat, so that we can devote mental energy to inventing spears, irrigation systems and finally airplanes or video games.This process occurring in our minds is a three-stop loop.The first is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into a spontaneous mode and which habit to use.Then this is routine, which can be a physical, mental or emotional one.Finally, there is a reward (reward), which helps your brain to understand which loop is worth remembering for the future.Over time, this noose - q, routine, reward;Q, routine, reward - becomes more comfortable.Cue and reward are interwoven until a powerful sense of anticipation and longing (craving) emerges.Finally, a habit is born.Habits are not the law of any Creator.Habits can be ignored, changed, or reversed.But the reason for which the invention of habitual traps is so important is that it removes the veil from a basic truth: when a habit emerges, the brain completely stops participating in decision making

There is life beyond thinking and there is thinking beyond the life