Old Habits Die Hard, New Habits are Easy

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Whenever you do something you create a neural pathway for the action.  The more often you do it, the firmer and clearer you make that path.  Old habits are well worn pathways in our brain.  We don’t have to put any effort into finding our habits, in fact the track can be so well worn we can find ourselves all the way to the fridge and back to the couch without even thinking about it.

This neural pathway is there whether we like it or not, ready and waiting for us to use it again effortlessly.  We can’t change it, it will always be there lurking for us.  What we can do is start a new habit.  It only takes doing something twice for the brain to start recognising it as a new pattern of behaviour.  Do something a few times and you are starting to create a new path, after maybe a thousand repetitions the new pattern will be established as a new effortless habit.

Imagine a field of grass traversed by a wide and well worn path.  The path is your current habit, it is easy to see, simple to find and easy to walk on, it takes no effort.  Now imagine that you decide to try a different route across the field.  With a little more attention you can take a new route across the grass.  This route is your new habit.  Trouble is when you come back the following day its unlikely that you can even see any trace of that new path and it takes just as much effort to walk across the grass the next day.  However, if you walk the new path across the grass every day eventually the grass will be worn flat, after a while patches of grass will be worn away and finally a recognisable path will be created.  This is the process of embedding your new habit.  The old path is still there, maybe after all this time its a little worn, may have started to grow some weeds and look a little ragged at the edges.  There will be days when you still take the old path, its not going anywhere, but over time the new path will become the wide and well worn path.