Neuro-Habits

If we hope to make new habits, we need to make sure we’re mimicking the natural process of habit formation, and designing precisely the situations that will lead a habit to form.

You could theoretically perform an action every day but, until it is done consistently and automatically in response to a trigger, it’s not really a habit, it’s just something you’ve managed to force yourself to do repeatedly.

This is the three-part habit loop we briefly explored in the previous chapter. So, there are two crucial things needed for a habit to form:
The behavior needs to be repeated regularly (not necessarily daily, but often) and it needs to be uniform, i.e. done the same way every time.
There needs to be an association between the trigger or specific environment and the resulting behavior.

Habits are repeated, learned behaviors, but they have neurochemical and physiological correlates in the brain.

In other words, our perceptions of pleasure and pain are really what drive the car. And sometimes those perceptions can be flawed. In fact, they are mostly flawed, which explains our tendency to work against our own best interests.

Our perceptions of pleasure and pain are more powerful drivers than the actual things.

The instinct to survive a threatening situation is more immediate than eating your favorite candy bar, for instance.

Every decision we make is based on gaining pleasure or avoiding pain.

The id houses our desires and physical “needs.” It doesn’t have any sense of restraint. It is primal and unfiltered. It goes after whatever it can to meet our body’s urges for happiness and fulfillment.

The pleasure principle is employed by the id, which is how Freud identifies one of the psyche’s three governing entities (the others being the ego and the superego)