Ever find yourself reaching for the snacks, scrolling mindlessly, or pouring a glass of wine before your brain’s even caught up? You’re not broken—you’re just human. In this 3-part series, I’m diving into the science and psychology of habits: what they are, how we form them, and (most importantly) how we can actually change them. Whether you’re trying to quit something that’s dragging you down or build better routines, this series is for you.
Are you struggling with bad habits which you feel are holding you back in life?
In this short series of articles I want to share my own simple technique for ditching bad habits, in the hope it’ll be as useful for others as it has been for me.
But first, let’s look at what habits are and why we have them.
Our brains are problem-solving machines. From our very first breath to our last, they’re working overtime to help us make sense of this messy, beautiful world.
The thing is, all of that hard work comes with a cost.
Neuroscientists estimate our brains use between 20–30% of our body’s energy—even while we’re sleeping! That’s a lot of juice.
So far, so good. But the problem is, while the evolution of technology has gone at quite a pace, our brains haven’t changed much since our ancestors lived in caves and hunted woolly mammoths for food.
Our brains don’t know, then, that there are such modern conveniences as Deliveroo, McDonalds and a hundred takeaway establishments within easy reach for most of us.
They see their job as conserving energy, as much as they can.
This is why habits exist—both the helpful ones and the ones we wish we could shake.
I read recently that the average human adult makes 35,000 decisions in a day. I did get stuck in a bad traffic jam a few weeks ago, and I felt as if I used the day’s quota up all on that one car journey, trying to evade the worst of it, but I digress!
Habits save us from decision fatigue. They’re mental shortcuts—automatic responses to recurring situations. Efficient, but not always helpful.
The next problem is that we’re people, moving through space time. We age, we change, we grow and we evolve. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Habits which we’ve formed in the past can sometimes become ones which do not serve us, any more.
Take social drinking, as a particularly hot topic. We do it as teenagers to relax, fit in, talk to people we fancy, and make friends. It’s fine when we’re young. We can poison our bodies with alcohol and then feel absolutely fine the next day. But by the time we’re in our 30s and beyond, the hangovers can get worse and worse, and we decide we want to stop.
Simple, right? Just decide to stop doing something and, like flicking a switch, just do it!
Uh, no. If it was, then a heck of a lot of self-help gurus would be out of a job.
But WHY is it so hard?
This is down to another function of our wonderful brains. When we repeat a habit, again an again and again, the areas of our brain which’re responsible for that sequence of events, get wired together. This is known as Hebb’s Law:
Neurons that fire together, wire together
Like a shortcut worn into the grass across a field, those mental pathways become automatic—trigger, response, reward. Lather, rinse, repeat.
One more thing that makes habits hard to break? Our brains are wired for the now, not the later. This makes it hard for our prehistoric brains to think about the consequences of our actions.
When our ancestors lived in caves, they weren’t worrying about their weight, their retirement or their pensions. They were wondering where their next meal might come from, and trying to keep in with the rest of the clan, so that they were protected from the cold and starvation.
So it’s no wonder that telling ourselves, “I need to stop ordering takeaways or I’ll be dead by 40,” doesn’t exactly light a fire under us.
So, if all of this is true (spoiler alert, it is), then how on earth do we kick our bad habits, in order to make space for new, healthier (or more suitable for the us of today) ones?
In Part 2, we’ll get into the nitty-gritty of how habits form—spoiler: it’s not about willpower, it’s about wiring. If this resonated with you, hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss the next one. ❤️
🚀 Next up: the mechanics of habit formation—and why your brain is not the enemy.