Neuroscience
Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Habits shape our daily lives in how we perform routine actions, accomplish tasks and make decisions. Many habits are created unconsciously, and they are typically carried out automatically -- how we brush our teeth or do the laundry or make our bed (or not). Habits help us all to do the many things we need and want to do daily. Because we can carry out a habit without having to think about it, it frees up our thought processes to work on other things. Awareness of the power of habits matters. The best way to change an existing habit is to create new ones to replace it, and/or connect a new habit with an existing one (such every time I brush my teeth, I think of one thing I’m grateful for).
Class Resources
Power of Habits
Pulitzer Prize winning writer Charles Duhigg combines informational facts from research, anecdotes from real events, and personal experience with insightful observations to explain why human behaviors are compelled by habit.
Hidden Brain: Gratitude
Shankar Venadtam examines how many of us struggle with self-control and assume willpower is the key to achieving our goals. But there’s a simple and often overlooked mental habit that can improve our health and well-being — the practice and habit of gratitude.
Why Resolutions Fail
Insights from Maria Konnikova, of the New Yorker
The Science of Neuroscience
Habits into Action
From Psychology Today. Think habits are hard to create or change? It’s a lot easier if you use the research from the science of habits.
The Science Behind Habits
This video explores how the brain forms habits, and how creating good habits can positively influence all aspects of your life.