Neuro-Habits

In fact, many psychologists have noted that those who develop addictions often have low dopamine levels to start with, and may be so strongly attracted to drugs, alcohol, food, overspending, gambling or sex to bolster chronically flagging dopamine levels

Rewards can be small—the feeling that things are right in the world, a sense of order or stability, a feeling of completeness and familiarity.

Rewards can be small—the feeling that things are right in the world, a sense of order or stability, a feeling of completeness and familiarity.

neuroplastic brain is one that can change. It’s the reason you were able to develop bad habits in the first place; but it’s also the reason you’ll be able to break them and form new, more beneficial habits.

, to build habits, we need to create the environment that triggers those 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.