Do you know your habits?

Habit has always been something that many people love and hate. Sometimes it makes you back from the brink, sometimes it makes you go forward bravely, and sometimes it leads you to a point of no return. However, although you know that a bad habit has seriously affected your life, you often can't help but stick to it.

For example, you have a bad habit of eating a few chocolate bean cookies every day, and then this habit makes you gain 8 pounds. Your friend said something that made you uneasy about your weight, so you kept forcing yourself to stop eating cookies, but after a few days, you felt so tired that you even posted a post-it note on your computer saying that you would never eat cookies again. But every day you still go to the coffee shop to buy cookies when this post-it note doesn't exist, and then start eating when chatting with the coffee shop owner.

I feel good when I eat it, but I feel uncomfortable after eating it. You swear to yourself that tomorrow you will use all your willpower to resist the temptation of cookies, and tomorrow is another day. But the next day, the habit remained the same. ...

What makes it so difficult to change bad habits? In order to solve the mystery of habit, today, intensive reading will introduce the American writer Charles? The power of habit.

two

What is a habit?

Before reading this book intensively, I only have a general understanding of habits. I think that a behavior that people rely on in their daily lives or a recurring action that they have developed for a long time is called habits. But how are habits formed? How good is it? How to use people's habits to do product marketing? I believe readers are as confused as intensive readers. Fortunately, after reading the book The Power of Habit with Douban score of 8.0, you will find the answers to all the above questions after intensive reading. The question "What is a habit" can be summarized as follows:

Habits cannot be eliminated, but they can be replaced. As long as we master the "habit cycle", learn to observe the hints and rewards in life, and find the correct habit behavior that can achieve a sense of accomplishment, no matter individuals, enterprises or social groups, we can change deep-rooted habits. Learning to use "the power of habit" can change life and career.

This book is divided into three parts, which discuss how the habits of individuals, organizations and society are formed. The author starts with specific cases, starts with examples, asks questions, interspersed with various psychological studies, answers questions with the conclusions of scientific research, and finally returns to the examples put forward at the beginning to tell the story completely. The book is clear and fascinating, and it is a good book full of dry goods.

Below, according to the logic of everyone's cognition and understanding, intensive reading will share the essence of the book with you.

three

Why is it so difficult to get rid of bad habits?

To understand this problem, we must first understand the term "habitual cycle". What is a habitual cycle? MIT researchers use the following experiment to explain it:

The researchers put the mouse in a T-maze and put a piece of chocolate at the other end. There is a partition in front of the maze. When the partition is opened, there will be a loud click. When mice hear this sound, they will go into the maze and smell everywhere until they find chocolate. When this experiment is repeated, the behavior of mice crossing the maze becomes more and more skilled. At this time, their thinking activities began to weaken and their routes became more and more automatic. This is how the habit of mice is formed, and this process will be repeated. This process is called habit cycle. After that, the researchers coated the chocolate with poison or electrified the floor next to the chocolate. When the mouse goes to receive the prize, it will get sick or get an electric shock because of eating poisonous chocolate. At the beginning of the experiment, after eating poisonous chocolate or getting an electric shock, the mouse knew that food and maze were dangerous and hid far away.

But unexpectedly, when it sees the prompt again and hears the click, it will still walk into the maze without hesitation, eat the food, even vomit or jump up after eating the food, and it will still not give up.

It is difficult to change the habit of mice, because it has been embedded in the structure of the brain, and the brain will turn this series of behaviors into automatic routines. Our daily life often benefits from this behavior, for example, before you put your toothbrush in your mouth, you will habitually put toothpaste on it.

four

What is the golden rule of changing habits?

Knowing the habit cycle, we can use this basic method to create our own habits. For example, if you want to exercise more, choose a hint (such as going to the gym every time you wake up) and find a reward (such as a milkshake after each exercise). Think about milkshake, maybe you will feel euphoric, so you can expect something in return. In the end, this desire will make you want to go to the gym more every day.

In the book, the author lists a case about an alcoholic who found a clinic to help him quit drinking when he realized that his drug addiction brought all kinds of serious consequences to his life. Although he controlled his drug addiction, it was not long before the sudden pressure of life made him relapse, and all his efforts fell short. However, in another study by scientists, it is found that although habits cannot be eliminated, they can be replaced.

This study is about a female smoker. At first, she just ran to distract her from wanting to smoke. Over time, she not only successfully quit smoking, but also developed a good habit of running and exercising. After studying her brain, it is found that the neural model formed by the old habit of smoking in the brain has been completely replaced by the new model. Although researchers can still see the neural activity triggered by previous behaviors, these nerve impulses have become insignificant in the face of a large number of new pulses.

That is to say, when she saw the smoke, the area in her brain related to desire and smoking was still active, and the impulse to smoke was still there, but there were new activities in this area, which made her restrain her behavior. This part of brain activity becomes more and more obvious with the increasing number of successful self-discipline of this lady. Old habits are gradually replaced by new ones.

Therefore, to change habits, we must keep hints in the habit cycle, provide rewards in the old habit cycle, but insert new habits and behaviors. This is the golden rule. For example, in the cookie box at the beginning of this article, your usual behavior is to get up from your desk, go to a coffee shop, buy chocolate bean cookies, and then eat them while chatting with your friends. To replace this habit, you have to find out what are the hints and rewards in this habitual behavior.

If you find the meaning, devote yourself to a short rest before your next job, and the reward is only to temporarily distract yourself by eating cookies. Then, when you change this habit, you can try chatting with colleagues or taking a walk in the corridor instead of "eating cookies".

five

What should I pay attention to when changing my habits?

In addition to understanding the golden rule of habit cycle and habit change, intensive reading jun thinks that changing habits needs to pay attention to two points, which is also his experience after reading the second part of this book-organization and behavior habits.

① the cultivation and "use" of willpower

Willpower is an exhaustible resource. If we use the blood trough of fighting games as an analogy, when we get up, we are full of blood, which will gradually consume during the day and reach the lowest or even zero at night. If you don't work so hard during the day, you will have stronger willpower at night and it will be easier to "control yourself"; And if you are too tired to work and study during the day, you just want to spread it on the sofa at night.

But willpower is also a kind of ability, which can be improved through training. The willpower exercised through fitness exercise can also be used to study and work for a long time and eat less junk food. Starbucks managers can train employees' willpower, guide employees to adjust their emotions and manage self-discipline, so that employees can, as always, provide customers with a higher level of catering services at the last minute of an 8-hour shift.

(2) With the help of organizations or groups.

The institutions mentioned here can be understood as enterprises, schools, hospitals and so on. Some departments of NASA have established an organizational convention that when an unmanned rocket explodes during take-off, department leaders will still praise it. Finally, in every encouraging task control, something valuable comes out of the generation, which forms the organizational habit. This is to encourage engineers to take risks by artificially establishing organizational practices, thus improving the organizational status quo.

For individuals, this is also an effective auxiliary way to change or create habits. When you practice in a group, it is easier to practice your habits consciously. The same is true of the "Reading Together" activity recently launched by the Intensive Reading Friends Association. Under the influence of the habit of group organization, members who join the reading club gradually develop the habit of reading a book regularly and taking notes.

six

How to get used to "mind reading"?

This book not only expounds the formation process of habits, but also introduces the ways in which some institutions or enterprises use habits. For example, the operators of supermarkets or shopping malls will ask people to decipher consumers' shopping habits in order to persuade them to spend more money. Through a series of clues, they can easily predict what happened at the customer's home:

Does anyone buy towels, sheets, silverware, pans and frozen food? Then they haven't just moved into their new house, so it's possible that Lao Yan has split up.

What if the customer's cart is stuffed with mosquito repellent spray, children's underwear, flashlight, a pile of batteries, a simple life magazine and a bottle of white wine? This means that the summer camp is about to start, and my mother can't wait.

……

Through these data, businesses can also determine which families have children and which families are single; Which consumers love outdoor sports and which consumers prefer to enjoy love novels with ice cream. Once the parents of the newborn have bought something in their store once, they will become frequent visitors here in the next few years. In other words, finding out those pregnant customers can bring considerable income to the store.

As long as marketers can understand the specific shopping habits of consumers, they can guide consumers to buy any goods.

This is the power of habit.

Finally, intensive reading reminds everyone that this book does not provide a way to change bad habits once and for all, but provides readers with a framework of understanding, allowing us to see the mechanism of habits and guide us how to try to change habits. It tells us that change may not be easy, but with time and effort, almost all habits can be changed.

Your problem? The answer is here? Wechat official account intensive reading Jun.