Why Bad Habits are Hard to Break
Ever wonder why it is sooooo hard to permanently stop a behavior that you have identified as “bad”? A new study from MIT suggests that our brain literally gets programmed with the habit and although we can overpower the program with our will, it remains dormant until just the right stimulus comes along to re-ignite it:
“Habitual activity–smoking, eating fatty foods, gambling–changes neural activity patterns in a specific region of the brain when habits are formed. These neural patterns created by habit can be changed or altered. But when a stimulus from the old days returns, the dormant pattern can reassert itself, according to a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, putting an individual in a neural state akin to being on autopilot.”