Reprogramming Your Habits
Creating new habits works much the same way for us as it did for the rats in the MIT experiment—we develop new cues, routines, and rewards. But changing existing habits is different. That’s important to understand because the challenge when it comes to staying healthy is often to overcome bad habits that have existed for years.
The key to changing habits is to keep the same cues and rewards while replacing the routine with something new. The best example of this is smoking cessation. Smoking is much more than a habit—it’s a chemical addiction. But the habits that surround cigarette smokers make overcoming the dependence on nicotine even harder. Routines like smoke breaks, lighting up, and even buying cigarettes all ...
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