Bad habit

A bad habit can ruin lives. You understand that and really want to get rid of it, but ... you do not go. Want to know why?
And because your brain knows many clever ways to keep you in the power of your habits.

1. Your brain thinks you are "future" a completely different personYou know that tomorrow at exactly 8:00 you will pass an important exam. And yet, for an hour at night, and you are still in the aimless wandering the back streets internet. Mind you, of course, understand that it's time to go to sleep and that tomorrow your vigil will sideways, but on a subconscious level, "Tomorrow's version" of himself appears to you a different person. One tomorrow, and will deal with the consequences, and now looks even some action. In one scientific study found that when we think about ourselves and about others activated a completely different part of our gray matter. This is quite understandable - the brain assigns different shares his beloved and everything, because, first of all, think about your own needs. The strange thing is that some people, when thinking about his future intensified those areas that have been reserved for "outsiders."
Well, as you now to motivate yourself to give up and rolls off to the gym? You can convince yourself plenty of that soon you will not zastegnetsya no pair of pants, but because your brain refuses to associate himself with the fat man of tomorrow, we will manipulate your subconscious mind, to once again enjoy the fragrant pastries.

2. For the formation of a stable "good" habits takes about ten weeksLet's say you have one or two bad habits from which you should get rid of. You decide to start with in order to get a few good, because, as you know, is the surest way to overcome addiction - it supplant it with another addiction. You buy a subscription to the local gym, and plan to train three times a week and win, finally, a passion for cake. Or the beer. Or even to something.
How do you think, how much time you have to force yourself as training becomes part of your life? And as soon as the exercise will be fun?
According to one study, the formation of habit takes about 66 days. During this time, a conscious effort to go and forced automatism. So if you decide to make friends with a treadmill, keep in mind that only two months later, it has evolved from torture in usual activities.
During these two months, various obstacles and slingshot will stand in your way constantly. You catch a cold, you have to stay at work ... That's all. The end of a good habit and return to the old "bad" joy - because the latter are long-established and integrated into your life.
This is not because your brain wants you to evil - he just likes to performance, and bad habits are always effective. And the results he achieves this: turn your life into a set of repetitive actions that can be done on autopilot, to develop experience-based set of rules that would live life, spending a minimum of energy. All.
So if you want to break the usual course of your life, you have to be very tight. Two months.

3. Willpower - the limited resourceIf you are still determined to, for example, run every morning and tuned in to a long struggle with himself, it is our duty to warn you: the biggest danger on your way to perfection not represent various circumstances beyond the control of you, and ... lack of motivation. That is, if you, say, run every morning and can already boast some success, at some time, you can decide that you deserve a break.
It turns out that the more often and the longer they resist his desires, the less power will they have left to resist the subsequent request. In psychology, it is called "exhaustion of will."
During the experiment, researchers asked one group of students to remember a two-digit number, and the other - seven-digit. Then offered to participants from both groups choose between cake and fruit salad. Amazingly, the students who memorized the seven-digit number, chosen cakes twice as often. That is, in order to significantly reduce the strength of will, and the white flag is enough to remember some five extra digits.
The researchers then conducted another experiment in which approached the same problem from the other side: the volunteers were shown two dishes - one with a freshly made cookies, and the other - with radishes. Half of the participants were instructed to take a pre-cookies, the other half - to take the radish. After that, all were asked to solve a complex geometric puzzle. Those that took radishes, threw the job in eight minutes, and those who got cookies, struggled with the puzzle as much as 19 minutes.
Despite the fact that the task did not require any physical effort, the rejection of delicious cookies robbed members of the forces that could be spent on the job.

 4. The brain uses your progress as an excuse to make yourself some slackFor one recent study, researchers gathered a group of dieters and has achieved notable success people. Volunteers were divided into two groups. Some have praise for the success in achieving their ideal, the other did not say anything special.
After that, both groups were offered a choice between an apple and a chocolate bar as a thank-you gift for participating in the study. 85 percent of those who are praised, chose chocolate, in the second group chose chocolate only 58 per cent. Those who sing the praises of, and decided that they are entitled once reward yourself for success, while others meekly munching apples.
In other words, the realization of success - the first step to failure.
If the "celebration" is limited to only one bar of chocolate, this would not be much trouble. But ... ask any man crawled out of whatever it was based, and he confirmed that "once" almost always turns into a flood of small lesions, and you do not have time to look around, on your success is not a trace remains.
As we said, the brain prefers the old, familiar, and therefore less energy-intensive way of existence, even if it it may not live up to forty.
But sometimes ...

5. You mirites with a bad habit to protect yourself from a big failureThere is a special type of people who always whine. On their road to success is always some insuperable barrier - no so different. After talking with someone long enough, you know - he does not want to achieve something, just keep inventing itself more and more obstacles - and, apparently, on purpose.
This phenomenon psychologists call "masochistic personality disorder." Scientists explain this behavior as follows: subconsciously "agrees" to failure, which can be relatively easy to survive, because he fears the other, a very painful one. That is, makes a kind of a deal.
For example, a single guy rather absolutely refuses to communicate with the girls and will endure ridicule than any beauty will reject it as botany / mattress / pimply nerd.
And then - very easy to see how this grows another bad habit. Suppose, office work for you is complicated by the fact that you hate to wear ties or get up in the morning. In that case, you have a very good motivation to cherish in themselves these weaknesses because they protect you from the shame to be incompetent and fail in their professional activities. So you go fiddle about, but with the illusion of his professional genius, which is always something to show, but the way. Thumbsucker is the guardian of your self-esteem.
And while your conscious "I" hated himself for his weakness, the subconscious "I" secretly sabotaging your every attempt to deal with them, because he was your self to anything, indulgence - that was his only goal.