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The power of habits

The "habit loop" in our brains

By Susan LeePublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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woman practicing yoga

I've been racking up some habits lately during the Coronovirus epidemic, one of them being watching and gorging on Netflix -- the movies I've been meaning to watch and the new shows that have recently come out ("Tiny Pretty Things," anyone?). With my mind numb from about three hours of digesting Netflix shows, I sit down in front of my computer today and as I am filled with part-ennui, excitement, uncertainty, tiredness, and ambivalence, I look to 2021 and reflect back upon this past year.

Then an email caught my eye - a book review of the newly released book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg, the New York Times businesswriter. NPR states that, the book "explores the science behind why we do what we do." Our brain apparently forms a "habit loop," which is a three-part process. The first part consists of a "cue, or trigger, that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and let a behavior unfold." (NPR, Fresh Air, "Habits, How They Form and How to Break Them," March 5, 2012).

Duhigg also relates to Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "Then there's the routine, which is the behavior itself," Finally, there is the reward: something that assists your brain to remember the "habit loop" in a point in time. He further states, "In fact, the brain starts working less and less."

Using this logic, I try to recall the good and bad habits in my own Life. As of late, my habit has revolved around some relationships -- toxic ones in particular that I hope to be able to let go and thanks to Duhigg's book, I would like to break in the near future! I can see how in some of my relationships, for example, the "habit loop" in my brain perhaps led to certain situations in my Life to go on longer than they should have probably because I was trying to escape another issue or subject that was plaguing or bothering me. Had I known that this loop exists in my brain, I would have been able to recognize it and make smarter decisions for the future. I didn't realize that sometimes our neurological processes go into an automatic mode and enables us to justify certain things or make it difficult for us to make decisions because we become habituated to whatever is going on in the moment.

The author suggests that the best way to break a habit is by going on vacation or to change the scenery to break up these aforementioned cues and therefore to break the habit (smoking, binge-drinking, bad relationships, etc).

Applying this rationale, perhaps it is not so impossible to break the vicious cycle of misogyny and gender-based discrimination or even racism or other systematic biases that plague our society. How about a PSA (Public Service Announcement) targeted towards males that improve or elevate the images of women beyond being mere sex objects or objects of desire? Or how about a campaign targeted towards certain privileged members of the population that inserts new facts or data about minority members and communities and therefore strive to shatter the ingrained biases and prejudices? I believe that these simple steps would go a long way in challenging the "habit loop" in our brains that help perpetuate stereotypes within people without much thought because due to evolutionary processes, we are "hard-wired" as human beings to "think less and less" as I mentioned above when our minds are on automatic mode.

Just a thought..As I contemplate my own habits heading into the New Year (we are, after all, a collection of our habits), it will be interesting to see how this revelation highlighted by the book The Power of Habit informs my own decision-making and journey of Life in my 40s (gulp).

book review
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About the Creator

Susan Lee

I graduated from Stanford University in 2002 with a BA in International Relations and a minor in Psychology and have a Masters in International Affairs from Georgetown University.

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