Your habits

What is a habit?

You yourself have your own habits, routines or behaviors that you perform regularly. In many cases it happens automatically. A habit is a choice you made consciously at a certain moment such as how much you want to eat, how often you want to drink something, when you go jogging, … Then you stop making that choice and that behavior becomes an automatic.

The theory

Theoretically, a habit is a formula that your brain automatically follows: when you see a signal, you will follow a routine to get a reward.

Each habit has a huge impact on your health, productivity, financial security, and happiness. This can be about the meals you order, what you say to your kids each night, whether you save or spend, how often you exercise, and the way you organize your thoughts and work routines, …

Charles Duhigg, an investigative journalist, looked at the three steps of habits and wrote the book “The Power of Habit. He wrote about a Duke University researcher who discovered in 2006 that more than 40% of the actions you take every day are not actual decisions, but habits.

In the long run, the quality of your life often depends on the quality of your habits. With the same habits, you will get the same results, but with better habits, you will see better results in the long run!

Your brain and habits

Whenever you are repeatedly confronted with a problem, your brain begins to automate the process of solving the problem.

Actually, your habits are just a series of automatic solutions.

The main reason your brain remembers the past is to better predict what will work best in the future. Habits reduce your cognitive load and free up mental capacity. We talked about your cognitive bandwidth (or mental space) in the first part of this workshop. This is co-expanded through habits. This allows you to focus your attention on other tasks. Your brain will try to make every routine a habit. It is an instinct to save you effort and it allows you to stop thinking constantly about basic behaviors like walking, choosing food, … so you can spend your mental energy on other things.

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