How to Trick Your Brain Into Breaking Bad Habits

Did you make a New Year's Resolution this year? Research shows that most people stop keeping up with these goals by February. Luckily, there are science-backed ways to break bad habits and form new healthy ones!
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One strategy for breaking a bad habit is to make it harder to do. Psychologists call this increasing friction. If you’re constantly checking your phone, turn it over so you can’t see the screen, or put it in another room where it takes effort to get.
At the center of every habit is a neurological pattern with 3 parts. First there’s a cue, or trigger, that tells your brain to go into auto-mode. Then there's the behavior, which is what we normally think of as the habit. The third step is the reward. Rewards cause your brain to release dopamine, a feel-good chemical that helps you remember the habit in the future. Let’s say you walk by the coffee shop everyday on your way to work.. triggering another craving for a cuppa joe and also lightening your bank account. You can avoid this habit by changing the environmental cue. Take a new route instead.
But what makes a habit so easy to form in the first place? Functional MRI scans let researchers look into how brains respond to habitual and conscious tasks. The first time you do an action, brain activity in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus lights up. This is where a lot of decision-making and planning happens. But when tasks get repeated, activity moves into more rudimentary areas of the brain, like the putamen and the basal ganglia. These primitive areas use up less energy because a bunch of related actions get grouped together, an idea known as “chunking.” This turns the behavior into a habit.
#seeker #science #elements #badhabits #howto #advice
Read More:
Can Brain Science Help Us Break Bad Habits?
www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
In the modern era, habits have become a significant area of scientific inquiry. Psychologists have explored the genesis of habitual behavior and its impact on health and happiness. William James, echoing Aristotle, wrote, “All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits,-practical, emotional, and intellectual . . . bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny.”
Distinctive brain pattern helps habits form
news.mit.edu/2018/distinctive...
MIT neuroscientists have now found that certain neurons in the brain are responsible for marking the beginning and end of these chunked units of behavior. These neurons, located in a brain region highly involved in habit formation, fire at the outset of a learned routine, go quiet while it is carried out, then fire again once the routine has ended.
What Does It Really Take to Build a New Habit?
hbr.org/2021/02/what-does-it-...
“There’s no such thing as 21 days to start a new habit,” Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, told me. “The amount of time it takes will vary from person to person.” Developing a pleasurable habit, like eating chocolate for breakfast, for instance, may take a day, while trying to exercise at 5 pm each evening may take much longer.
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[@Ghostrider-ul7xn]

I definitely do not want to have "breaking bad" habits.

[@shatterthemirror8563]

The habits that never go away no matter how hard you try.

[@artorhemhsnaved]

I also read it the same way for the first time 😂

[@OmDahake]

The takeaway: *Just Do It* And then reward yourself in a non harmful way (Not sponsored by Nike)

[@dailydoseofmedicinee]

The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person👍

[@thesure1]

laters

[@Elmithian]

I enjoyed eating pizza almost daily (a bad habit), watching someone else eating pizza and enjoy it is only going to make me want one. Not cure me of the need. I had to do lot of regulating to lower down the amount to once a week again.

[@perplexingperceptions8888]

That doesn't work, it just makes you more eager to do the bad habit.

[@Ctrl_Alt_Elite]

This only works if the bad tendencies have a visually negative outcome

[@sicfxmusic]

No. Wrong. Doesn't happen. Pure fabrication.

[@stefangherman8408]

If you learn on a manual car, you need to remember to press clutch pedal and switch into first gear or reverse while holding the brake (depending of your car position), then release the clutch and the brake.

[@viniciush.6540]

Also you have to pay attention to the steepness of the terrain ahead, velocity of the car and change to a gear that will have the torque needed to cross it

[@JorgeSanchez-kr3eb]

This all happens automatically after 2-3 weeks of driving manual

[@crateer]

Do you actually think driving manual is har lmao

[@viniciush.6540]

@@crateer i dont think it was meant as "hard" just more complex than driving auto

[@CaptainJack2048]

This is all valid and useful, but there's a key element that needs to be addressed as well. In order to effect a change in habitual behavior, a person must clearly accept responsibility for the undesired behavior, and that the power to adopt new habits lies within ourselves. A (sadly) large number of people think that habits are caused by outside forces ("my metabolism makes me eat, it's not my fault", or "buy our product and you'll look like this ripped model in 30 days!"). Flipping the mental switch to "I am responsible and I have control" is necessary for this change. It's also a great step toward improved mental health.

[@AnnoyingOnion]

agree

[@mariebourgot4949]

Yes but also no. It doesn't have to be so black and white. You're talking like humans have the control over their physiology/biology out of sheer will. There are plenty of things that we don't control/choose. It's a mix of both.

[@protojockel2736]

Well, I'm sure you want to break "bad habits", I'm not sure if you want to trick your brain into "Breaking Bad" habits.

[@saitokun5304]

This is psychology 101 and it's an insult to the future generation that we don't teach this in school. Especially if your a *parent* and you don't understand this whole internet business and are worried about how it will affect *your children* you will want to fight for these subjects in your kids school. They will give your kids the tools they need to more safely navigate the internet and life in general. So that your kids don't end up in some extreme social circles or are prayed on by people with bad intentions or abused by predatory marketing. Philosophy, psychology and debate in schools. This is not something that will happen unless many people ask for it. Many people with wealthy and power abuse the low level of these subjects and they will fight us to keep things from changing.

[@SoundsSilver]

I agree but will add that even outside the internet context these skills need to be taught and aren’t. Kids wind up with false friends who steer them toward disaster, and even small cues contribute to this. Oddly, mature advice delivered badly can have the effect of inoculating a child against said advice, making it even harder to guide them. Children need much more support than is widely assumed.

[@kuweit]

Step 1: Start a drug empire by manufacturing methamphetamines

[@wholegrainvideos]

This was the video I needed. Should tag this motivational ! 🙂

[@edgaralvarezrojas63]

As always, very interesting.

[@matbroomfield]

That's why I store snck food out of sight in another room. Connected to my desk by a pulley system. With hourly flashing reminders.

[@lynnepitcher7380]

😆

[@capsith]

I find it interesting how habbits are similar to biases.

[@venroksam3436]

Awesome 👍!

[@tauvikrajawalichanel9133]

Great information 👌

[@AditiNath1234]

Great information❤

[@j.l.spraggins8589]

Excellent info. Would love to see more like this. Thank you.

[@vinodbharti5366]

Hii I can help you to boost your memory power

[@KeeFrHikes]

Very similar to concepts I learned reading James Clear’s “Atomic Habits”. Effective and life-changing.

[@nikhilgupta5733]

How dare you talk about breaking habits with that contagious smile!!

[@physhishek3162]

If there is a opinion, facts will be found to support it

[@GhANeC]

She’s actually pretty lively and lovely

[@Ibanezkoolman]

Yes!!

[@alparslankorkmaz2964]

Nice video.

[@harshitraj6751]

I want to tell you that you are the best . I watched your every video . And I am your big fan i learn lot from you . Love from deep heart 💓

[@V3ritas1989]

Interesting, let me tell you how I quit smoking. I found that when I ate a hot "fisherman's friend" before smoking, the smoke would taste bad. And so I remembered biology class and conditioning. So I set a few simple rules. 1. Don't forbid myself to smoke. 2. When I want to smoke, just eat one of these bonbons first and continue working or whatever I did for a few minutes, then go for a smoke. After just 1.5 months, I just stopped wanting to go for a smoke. I just ate the bonbons. Even though I still had a full pack with me. I think a few weeks later I really needed a smoke, but I stuck to the rules and had a few smokes. Probably nicotine withdrawal or something. Since then I never smoked again. Threw out the half-empty pack half a year later or so which was also around the time where I stopped buying these bonbons as well. It's been 8 years. I now get very angry when I smell people smoking next to me though.

[@ChainsawManTn]

thnx loo ❤❤

[@Aditya-tx3zc]

Most useful video

[@vir822]

Regardless of what science says I am not waking up early to go to work

[@vinodbharti5366]

Hii I can help you to boost your memory power

[@desmond-hawkins]

I tried to break my worst habit with a personal challenge in November, and didn't even last 2 days. There was even a catchy acronym for it and apparently lots of other people who claimed to do it as well, but I certainly didn't manage.

[@sooperman05]

Can you tell us the “catchy acronym” I understand if this is too personal. But I’m just dying to know lol

[@RedHotMother]

@@sooperman05 this! We won’t tell! 🤐

[@elhistoriero1227]

Oh, I've been instinctively doing some of those things particularly leaving my phone in another room.

[@harshvardhannaik1959]

Breking bad My brain : dope! lets watch the video

[@AryanSingh-he5pw]

I have a bad habit of not watching such kind of informative videos.

[@ChineduOpara]

I clicked this video hoping for a crash course on *cooking blue meth* on the D.L.

[@DaBlondDude]

Charles Duhigg wrote a brilliant book on this "The power of habit"

[@puneetsharma1248]

Don't you think a few proclivities stem from one's nature and his or her general environment? So by attempting to give up a said bad habit by making it harder you could trigger depression and or a thought to attempt at finding it's alternative. Which might end up changing a person's entire behaviour and outlook towards people who still indulge in the same bad habits the said person has given up using this technique.

[@GOLDCOASTROLLOUT]

Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh My bad habits lead to you Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh My bad habits lead to you 😏

[@ONDANOTA]

her eyes are literally dying due to bright light

[@funnylifestyle8174]

There's nothing like a "secret weapon" 🤷‍♂🤦‍♀😠😒

[@rickseiden1]

"If you have a habit of stopping at the coffee shop on the way to work every day, and you want to break that habit, change your route to work." Except that the way you go to work every day is itself a habit. So no in order to break the habit of buying coffee every day you have to break the habit of taking the same route to work every day.

[@GhANeC]

Yo dawg…

[@drstone7014]

I tried to nofap just see what would happen ..what learned is I couldn't and when I strategies way skip or avoid thought that trigger and what to do in response it's as if theres someone else strategizing ways to get me to do it. .

[@manjunathgangadhargangadha4364]

Be concious and be your own scanner. Learn yoga, it is so simple. Habit is one small thing in life, but life itself small when you know it is your making.

[@SickOfDemocracy]

I had a very bad habit of biting my nails then it evolved to biting my flesh (on the tip of my fingers), then it spread to my palm, it became so bad that i starts eating them too, both the nails and the flesh. To the point that i started biting down into the deeper skin that it would bleed. I realized i had to stop, before i start biting deeper into my blood vessels or something. So i did. Never gone back to it. The fact that it started from something small like biting nails was quite scary. Don't bite your nails guys.

[@RedHotMother]

Lol 😂

[@shreyassarmalkar3565]

Atomic habits... Suggestion for who was watching this video.... Honestly great book i ever read🙂

[@asadbekaxmedov171]

Read it, heavily suggest it as well

[@nunyabiznez666]

I have some bad habits/addictions I would very much like to stop 😞 Kinda hard with opiates and alcohol 😓

[@RedHotMother]

Naloxone is your stand-in friend. You’ll get there. Takes time, lots of hardships and gobs of money…. But eventually, you’ll know what you have to do. Wishing you well and best of luck going forward. The best part is you will not believe how much of your time is magically freed up!!! You’ll get a new hobby that you’re likely passionate about I bet.

[@dragonborn5309]

I'm unsubscribing from this channel to break my binging habits. Ty seeker for such a helpful video🥳

[@Zetraxes]

Turning around the phone is your answer...

[@apolybrium]

So to stop biting my nails I'll just place my hand in another room? Seems legit

[@filmfan4]

If the materialist says you are your brain, how can YOU rewire your brain using self-directed neuroplasticity?

[@nasrollahsirban6585]

Nice movies

[@user-hb1dn9or7p]

😊

[@iWillWakeYouUp]

That title is one way of increasing search engine optimization.

[@ampphotos]

Is there anyway for me to know where that image came from in the thumbnail???

[@stevemonkey6666]

I read the title of this video as How to Trick Your Brain into "Breaking Bad" Habits. And wondering why you are getting into pop culture....😐

[@simonsaysism]

I watched this hoping for advice to give my sister about her nail-biting habit, but it's hard to come up with anything useful. She can't put her fingers in another room..

[@kathyb1020]

I stopped my nail biting by taking care of my nails instead of biting them. Maybe buy her nail polish or fancy nail files.

[@KaZmuda]

Mel Robbins "The High 5 Habit" :>

[@swspriggs]

The U.S government went to war with me over my bad habit and that hasnt seemed to make me stop so i guess im screwed... haha

[@vinodbharti5366]

Hii I can help you to boost your memory power

[@goldenstandard187]

❤

[@GearsGirlsGuitars]

Also read atomic habits lol

[@vinodbharti5366]

Hii I can help you to boost your memory power

[@Cola-42]

You need to watch Breaking Bad habits.

[@omeritachiquita]

👏👏👍

[@brynwhitehead1731]

Define “Bad”.

[@lucascassemiro]

When I saw the title. I thought it was a video teaching how to like the series Breaking Bad when you are actually not that much into it.

[@drkrypton4410]

well that would be cool if i got habits from "breaking Bad".

[@cncsmarty]

Smile abuse

[@syedanaushabinzakirkhan20p50]

Atomic habits: a summary.

[@r.m.cortez8178]

So instead of walking and spending money on coffee, Take an Uber which takes out that walk but still costs something for the Uber anyways.

[@MrMollytov]

endlessly watching youtube..

[@user-qm9nk8yn9l]

Это жизнь

[@CNJA-LABEL]

i remember when u guys were called D news im the OG

[@TaylorFalk21]

My habit is commenting on videos

[@oceandrop7666]

Discipline, simple solution. Make a plan, and hold yourself accountable. Every successful person has done this, just go ahead and ask them. No on just wandered to the top of Mt Everest.

[@mariebourgot4949]

Yes, easy as that. You should say that to every person who have mental health problem. "Use discipline, make a plan, and hold yourself accountable"! And BAM it works.

[@Ashoka_piola]

I came here for the heisenberg habits

[@marwantawachi9051]

That first 1 won’t help me. Flipping over something that I’m interested in, so i see it’s back side won’t divert my focus. In fact, my focus may intensify under such conditions. If you don’t believe me, ask my girlfriend

[@mtheory526]

I find it fascinating that this bad habit video is focused on women. I only saw 4 or 5 men in this video and they were no doing anything as "bad habits" that I could see. So now I'm planning to open a clinic just for women and their bad habits. Compete with positive feedback like shock therapy and lobotomy to the slapping of hands. I'll make billions!

[@JK-Visions]

Ok but how to stop nail biting.

[@noneofur300]

💊👍

[@shatterthemirror8563]

"The que is a trigger." No wonder people keep getting triggered when I mention Q.

[@GoingtoHecq]

Why is biting nails seen as a bad habit? It's harmless to everyone.

[@christiankohler4313]

Was biting my nails whean i started this video ;(

[@discgolftrainnut]

56 years of smoking.

[@ababababaababbba]

JESSE

[@EverythingAlana]

If you’re going against what you want to do then are you really doing what you want to do? 🤔

[@kylesampson4016]

Wow this was incredible. I am creating a Philosophy framework including a kind of meditation that rewire the brain regions with philosophies on how they should operate and have been struggling with the motivation/focus section so thanks guys ❤❤❤❤❤ I have to say, I've been a fan for since you had a million other names, and there's been times I was becoming bored with your channel but this was seriously great. Keep it up

[@schleifenquantengravitation]

Walter White ?

[@anypercentdeathless]

Great video. Now, maybe find a narrator without that repetitive whine at the end of every sentence.

[@ZanKraken]

but habits arent easy

[@oneboxer8329]

Breaking bad 3wc sum ase

[@xerx_is_bored]

discipline.

[@arsenal0095]

Just do 5 min meditation and see how you react.

[@sicfxmusic]

I watch too much KZbin 😅

[@caribbeanman3379]

Looking at the title of this video and I'm puzzled. Why on earth would I want to trick my brain so that I develop the habit of cooking and selling Meth?

[@fereyfazil2298]

my beast habit is this that when seeing you, my hand try streching long to take you a hugging.

[@drstone7014]

We actually do multi task millions of times an day . We can walk and talk using hand gestures and Cary Stuff a few bags at the same time. . As for gender . The question is not who multi task more who multi task better

[@ghostguy7]

I don't trust anything this channel says after it ignored the crypto mining problem in relation to the chip shortage. How obvious could it be that there are crypto bros on staff? That's intentionally misleading.

[@xerx_is_bored]

so early omg

[@bishopoftroy]

Generic making-sure-to-post-something-to-please-the-algorithm no help videos.