The Power Of Habit – Why We Do What We Do

Why do you have bad habits? How can you create good habits? Here’s a quick overview of the science behind the power of habit and how our brains are literally wired to do what we do and why we do what we do…

LOL, that’s a lot of W’s.

Watch the video below, but basically here’s the skinny -

1. Cue
2. Routine
3. Reward

Repeating of this cycle makes your brain develop an actual intense craving for the reward at the end.  So much so, that your brain literally takes that routine and carves a place for it inside your brain and stores it as an instinctual behavior, one your brain doesn’t LET you think about it.  So, now you know why it’s so dang hard to not pick up the back of chips when you walk by the counter and they are sitting there!

But how do you change the bad behavior or create better behavior if it’s now become instinctual?

Watch the video now and read more below:

I use this training to work with my one-on-one coaching and my amazing team.  When you first get into being an entrepreneur the hardest thing we must overcome is ourselves – mentally.  You’ve got to literally get rid of your bad habits of procrastination and time wasting (any others too maybe) and implement and learn brand new patterns of behaviors.  You must create a routine with new positive, business building behaviors.  Period. End of story.

Without this part in place guys – it just simply doesn’t work.

So if you watched the video, the simple explanation is to not just stop everything, but retrain your brain with a variety of new cues/routines/rewards.  Take a hard look at what you’re doing on a daily basis.  What are your actions and routines?  Now… why do you do what you do?  Can you pinpoint where is the cue that triggers the automatic routine of ineffective behavior?

That’s the first step.  Then you can figure out how to tweak the patterns and routines.  But focus on the individual parts of the cycle.  Remember – your brain cannot differentiate between a Good habit or a bad habit.  You have to analyze yourself and pinpoint the cues/routines/rewards that are causing the bad behaviors to take hold.

Recommended reading: “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and the book mentioned in the video “The Power of Habit : Why We Do What We Do” by Charles Duhigg

Both of these books are really great.  In Charles Duhigg’s book, he really goes into the hard science behind it and offers a ton of real life and scientific studies as examples.  For me, it made it a lot easier to grasp the process and how you might be able to better tweak your own habits.  Once you can do that, you’ll be strengthening that willpower muscle – then you get to the fun stuff and can start emulating the habits of highly successful people.  That’s were the other books comes in : )

Wishing you all the BEST : )