People who share their goals with someone are 65% more likely to succeed. Noting your successes helps you see your progress and reinforces your actions. On average, it takes 66 days of performing a new behavior to create a habit. For example, always go to the gym right after you leave work (context) or ask your server for a glass of water every time you order a drink (cue). Performing a habit at a specific time or in the same place can give your brain a contextual reference and help solidify the behavior as a habit. Having a plan for how to address slip-ups and stay on track gives you a set of tools to use as you are learning to integrate the new habit into your life. Understand what changes or sacrifices are required before you start building the new habit. This can a double-edged sword for habits you want to break, so try to avoid building bad habits! Falling asleep without brushing your teeth or skipping coffee one morning might make you feel out of sorts, but neither is likely to cause you to throw away the habit all together. Of course, we occasionally skip even the most automatic of habits, but rarely does that lead to abandoning the habit completely. The automacity of habits is what makes them hard to break and more effective than resolutions.
Once a behavior becomes automatic, it becomes an unconscious action. The basal ganglia, deemed the “reptilian brain” in neuroscientist Paul MacLean’s “ Triune Brain” model, is the oldest part of the brain and is not involved in conscious thought. However, as a behavior becomes automated and a habit forms, the neural signals begin initiating from the basal ganglia. Initially, the neural signals that produce a behavior occur in the prefrontal cortex, the more recently evolved area of the brain that is responsible for higher thinking, such as speech, reason, and temporal organization of behavior. Neuroscience provides an explanation for why habits feel automatic.
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