Name: How to Trick Your Brain Into Breaking Bad Habits
Uploaded: 2021-10-26T17:50:35.000Z
Duration: 4 min 53 s
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Biting your nails, endlessly scrolling on your phone, constantly being late.

But did you know there’s a secret weapon in your brain to help you end bad habits and

Habits are the things we do everyday without thinking about them.

-And what we found is that about 43% of the time, people are repeating the behaviors they've

And they're thinking about something other than what they're doing.

From taking a shower to making your bed in the morning, we have hundreds of habits that

Because we can do them without thinking, habits free up our brains to do other things.

It’s a mental shortcut we’ve evolved to make us more efficient.

One strategy for breaking a bad habit is to make it harder to do.

Psychologists call this increasing friction.

Like 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.

-These things don't stop you from using your phone if you have to have it, but they just

make it a little bit more difficult to do so.

-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.

Rewards cause your brain to release dopamine, a feel-good chemical that helps you remember

Let’s say you walk by the coffee shop everyday on your way to work,

for a cuppa joe and also lightening your bank account.

You can avoid this habit by changing the environmental cue.

-If we can make these small modifications  in our environment

to make the behaviors we want a  little easier to repeat, and the

a little bit harder to repeat, then we can really gain control of our behavior

-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

The first time you do an action, brain activity in the prefrontal cortex

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,

-So that part of our brain works somewhat differently from our conscious thinking self.

And that's why it's possible to have both a commitment to lose weight and be healthy,

and then a habit to overeat at dinner and snack constantly.

These primitive areas use up less energy because a bunch of related actions get grouped together,

Think about when you first learned to drive a car.

You have to buckle your seatbelt, turn the key in the ignition, check the mirrors, put

the car in drive, and press the gas pedal.

But over time, you no longer have to think about all these separate tasks.

They all get chunked into a single unit of memory, which gets triggered by one environmental

That’s why it’s so easy to focus on something else when you’re driving. You can think

about where you’re going and what’s for dinner, all while paying attention to the

It can feel like we’re all hardwired, but here’s the secret.

When you consciously repeat new behaviors, you firm up the connections between the cue, behavior,

and reward and strengthen those neural pathways in your brain.

It’s called self-directed neuroplasticity, and you can use it to effectively rewire your

For example, if you want to adopt a new behavior, tie it to an existing cue!

Find something you already do, like brushing your teeth in the morning, and tie a new habit

Or want to make exercise a habit, but find the treadmill so boring?

Watch a guilty pleasure like bad reality TV while you run.

This way, you’re more likely to do it on the reg.

How we form habits is fascinating, but have you ever thought about how we form memories

and what happens when they start to fade?

Check out Maren’s video on how electricity is being used to improve memory.

Got a bad habit you’re trying to break or a new one you're trying to form?

Make sure to subscribe and thanks for watching.

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How to Trick Your Brain Into Breaking Bad Habits

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