Bad habits have been implicated as the
sole cause of many broken dreams, lost opportunities and wasted time. Community
aware of the problem, but said that changing habits will improve your life is a
rather simple approach because it is easier said than done. However, it is true
that bad habits can be changed as long as we understand what they are and how
they started in the first place. Aware of what your bad habits and how you
develop them will be your first step.
How habits are formed
Habit is the result of skills acquired
and past experience. They are often associated with a particular emotion or
event useful, although it is not uncommon to see unhealthy habits and disrupt
both physical and mental health. Habits are formed early, but they learned the
behavior, rather than innate characteristics. Certain actions become habits
because they repeatedly over an extended period of time. When they are firmly
established as a pattern of behavior, these actions become easier and easier to
perform. This is when they become habits.
Why is it difficult to break bad habits
Change is difficult, one way or another
and it is mainly a habit. They are so hard to break that often, most people
give up and surrender Not only that, some bad habits are so embedded that some
people find them entertaining. When this happens, people prefer not to change
their habits because they offer a sense of familiarity. Changing them makes
some people feel uncomfortable, as if they leave their comfort zones trusted.
In addition, changing the habits of making some people think it will change the
character and personality, even if it will not.
Habits in your brain
According to MIT (yes, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology), if you find it hard to break old habits, blame your
neurons. This is because once the habit is set, certain changes in the pattern
of neural activity in the brain occurs. This change is in accordance with
certain habits, like coffee smoking, gambling or drinking in the morning.
This pattern can be strengthened by the
continued practice of the practice and will be stored in a brain region called
the basal ganglia. This is the same area that contribute to procedural learning
and the formation of certain habits, including addiction.
Once the patterns have been stored in the
brain, does not fade or disappear, even if someone has managed to break the
habit. If it finds an object or event associated with the habit, will act as a
stimulus and the pattern can reappear. This may explain why a reformed smoker
will feel a certain pleasure or the urge to smoke when he saw an ashtray or
lighter.
Old vs. new
Pattern formation in the brain and the
emotional attachment associated with a particular habit of making a habit of
the older more difficult to solve than the new ones. Because old habits are
firmly entrenched that it has become almost automatic, always confusing to try
to break them and continue other tasks as if nothing happened.
Consider for example, action to fill the
coffee with coffee every morning at 7. If you do this practice every day for
years, can throw you off a bit if you happen to sleep in a hotel room and wake
up without your kitchen. You will have the feeling that you forgot to do
something or just something that is not true.
You deal with this, of course, but only if
you know that everything will be back to normal. You only start to worry when
there is no more chance for you to do the same habit again. As an extreme
example, obsessive compulsives would feel very uncomfortable and annoying if
they can not perform certain actions that they are so used to doing.
Changing bad habits
As you can see, it can be quite a
challenge to change bad habits, but just because it's hard not mean it can not
be done. By knowing its nature, how it formed and what it does for you, you will
be able to see the habit, especially the poor, from different perspectives. As
you can understand how you break it down and build it into your system, you
will be able to break the pattern and overcome the habit.
A bad habit will always be with you, are
stored in your brain. But if you really want to improve your life and implement
positive change, aiming to break them in stages. If you can afford to shed them
and find a comfort level without them, then you will know the bad habits have
been broken.
