Then I read Charles Duhigg’s best-selling book The Power of Habit, which really opened my eyes. I recommend that you read it yourself if your interest in this subject goes deeper than what I’m able to cover here. Duhigg’s core idea is the role of the three-step “habit loop.” The first step is a cue, some “trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use,” according to Duhigg. Step two is the routine, “which can be physical or mental or emotional.” Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is “worth remembering for the future.” Repetition reinforces this loop until over time it becomes automatic. This anticipation and craving is the key to what animal trainers call operant conditioning, which is a method of training that uses positive reinforcement. For example, dog trainers use a sound (typically a clicker) to reinforce behavior by pairing that sound with a more desirable reward (typically food) until the dog will perform the desired behavior when it merely hears the click. In humans, Duhigg says, rewards can be just about anything, ranging “from food or drugs that cause physical sensations, to emotional payoffs, such as the feelings of pride that accompany praise or self-congratulation.”Habits put your brain on “automatic pilot.” In neuroscientific terms, the basal ganglia takes over from your cortex, so that you can execute activities without even thinking about them.
Reading Duhigg’s book taught me that if you really want to change, the best thing you can do is choose which habits to acquire and which to get rid of and then go about doing that. To help you, I recommend that you write down your three most harmful habits. Do that right now. Now pick one of those habits and be committed to breaking it. Can you do that? That would be extraordinarily impactful. If you break all three, you will radically improve the trajectory of your life. Or you can pick habits that you want to acquire and then acquire them.
The most valuable habit I’ve acquired is using pain to trigger quality reflections. If you can acquire this habit yourself, you will learn what causes your pain and what you can do about it, and it will have an enormous impact on your effectiveness.
Train your “lower-level you” with kindness and persistence to build the right habits. I used to think that the upper-level you needed to fight with the lower-level you to gain control, but over time I’ve learned that it is more effective to train that subconscious, emotional you the same way you would teach a child to behave the way you would like him or her to behave, with loving kindness and persistence so that the right habits are acquired.
Understand the differences between right-brained and left-brained thinking. Just as your brain has its conscious upper part and its subconscious lower part, it also has two halves called hemispheres. You might have heard it said that some people are more left-brained while others are more right-brained. That’s not just a saying, Caltech professor Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering it. In a nutshell:
The left hemisphere reasons sequentially, analyzes details, and excels at linear analysis. “Left-brained” or “linear” thinkers who are analytically strong are often called “bright.”
The right hemisphere thinks across categories, recognizes themes, and synthesizes the big picture. “Right-brained” or “lateral” thinkers with more street smarts are often called “smart.”
Most people tend to get more of their instructions from one side than the other and they have trouble understanding people who get theirs from the opposite side. Our experience has been that left-brained folks tend to see right-brained folks as “spacey” or “abstract,” while right-brained thinkers tend to find left-brained thinkers “literal” or “narrow.” I have seen wonderful results occur when people know where their own and others’ inclinations lie, realize that both ways of thinking are invaluable, and assign responsibilities accordingly.
Understand how much the brain can and cannot change. This brings us to an important question: Can we change? We can all learn new facts and skills, but can we also learn to change how we are inclined to think? The answer is a qualified yes.