How do you put together a plan to change habits and behaviors? We clearly are not very good at changing our evil ways or we would all keep our New Year’s resolutions and progressively become more angelic with each passing year.
The science of behavior change has taken two basic approaches.
Now that neuroscientists are getting a better idea of how the brain encodes habits and how they are reinforced through repetition it is clear why the second approach is more effective. In the simplest of terms, saying “Don’t eat that donut!” only reinforces and strengthens the existing “eat the donut” neural network. What you need to do is to establish a strong alternative neural network – say, “eat raisins and almonds” – to compete with the donut network. If you consistently strengthen the raisin network and weaken the donut network you will eventually be able to make the healthier behavior your own.
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