Using a habit tracker

Adrienne discusses what we need to do to form good habits here.

"Addiction hijacks the brain"

Marc Lewis writes in Aeon,

...brains change with addiction.

...authorities warn us that addiction ‘hijacks the brain’, replacing the capacity for choice and self-control with an unremitting compulsion to drink or use drugs.

...Most obviously, addiction is characterized by a strong desire to pursue a substance or behavior. The substance or activity temporarily relieves the desire, but a negative emotional state is left in its wake, into which loss, disappointment and anxiety flow once the activity is finished or no longer satisfies – or once the drugs or booze are gone. And so, desire builds once again. In this way, addiction perpetuates the need it was intended to satisfy and, through repetition, the addict learns to satisfy the need by getting more, doing more, thus further consolidating the learning – and the neural patterns underlying it. What fires together wires together. Biology is not a prison, but you can’t flick it on and off with a switch.

Brian taught in a community college in Cape Town, ran a successful business, and generally used his fine mind to good advantage. But the pileup of obligations and a mild attention-deficit problem saw him begin taking various stimulants to stay awake and clear-headed. Within two years, he was smoking crystal meth several times per day. Sleep became sporadic and unpredictable. He could no longer think in straight lines, and fantastical whims soon replaced his customary rationality. His business fell apart, he moved in with his dealer, and his precious relationship with his young daughter turned into a parody of parenting, with him sneaking out to the car every hour or two for another hit. Meth comes on strong and brings with it clarity, optimism and brilliant energy. But Brian’s sleep loss meant that the high was increasingly short-lived. With the first hints of loss, he would grab for his pipe, eager beyond reason for another launch into stratospheric relief.

...Addiction isn’t about rationality or choice; it’s not about character defects or bad parenting, even though childhood adversity is clearly a risk factor. Addiction is about habit formation, brought on through recurring, self-reinforcing feedback loops. And although choice is not obliterated by addiction, it is much harder to break deep habits than shallow ones.

...Not every addict grows through and out of his or her addiction. Some remain enslaved for life, and some die. But the very stuckness of addiction, the redundancy and stupidity of chasing the same narrow goals each day, constitutes a worthy challenge for all that’s creative and optimistic in the human repertoire.

Read more here.

Habits are the spine of our self-control.

Ann Voskamp suggests

The best way to live a good year is to do a reset halfway through the year.

June is the Second January.

Get up early and watch the sun rise. Open a window so you can breathe it all in. Open His Word. Pour a cup of orange juice. Don’t try to face anything until you’ve faced Him.

...To love your life, do nothing with rush or resentment, but do everything as if you love it.

...Let the world go ahead and get loud and large. There are fresh starts in quiet starts. There are small and hidden seeds that are growing into forests, that are growing into the greatest yield.

...It’s never, ever too late to begin again. June can be about new beginnings.

...Our habits unclothe us — they expose our wounds, our insecurities, our idols, our addictions — or our hopes, our dreams, our prayers. Our habits are us.

...Make gratitude your attitude of habit — there’s no other way to make joy your life.

...Habits matter because: Habits are the spine of our self-control.

Read more here.

Habits are more powerful than fears

Seth Godin has another wise post for us today:

To overcome an irrational fear...

replace it with a habit.

If you're afraid to write, write a little, every day. Start with an anonymous blog, start with a sentence. Every day, drip, drip, drip, a habit.

If you're afraid to speak up, speak up a little, every day. Not to the board of directors, but to someone. A little bit, every day.

Habits are more powerful than fears.

The miracle of habit

Roy Baumeister has some ideas about the importance of developing virtuous habits.

Doing what is right requires strenuous effort to resist the alluring temptations of vice.

Or is it? Could virtue become a habit — that is, a relatively effortless, automatic tendency to do what is morally right, with a minimum of inner struggle?

A recent study in which two hundred German citizens wore beepers for a week, and at random intervals reported on their desires at that moment, found that that people with good self-control avoid temptations and problem situations, rather than battling with them. Other research confirmed that self-control works most effectively by means of controlling habits, rather than by using willpower for direct control of one’s actions in the heat of the moment.

Willpower fluctuates, and you can’t count on always having enough.

Instead, if you use willpower to establish virtuous habits, the danger of succumbing to impulse or temptation is reduced.

Can you remember your initial struggles with a bicycle, a surfboard, a computer keyboard and mouse, a tennis racquet? Yet after enough repetitions, one uses those same items efficiently and effectively, with hardly a thought or error. The human mind’s ability to convert difficult action into easy deft habit is remarkable.

People with virtuous habits conserve their willpower for when they really need it.

Indeed, it is questionable whether resisting a strong temptation or impulse can ever become entirely habitual. Virtuous habits are much more successful at avoiding those temptations and impulses than trying to stifle them once they are felt.

It takes both a suitably inclined person and the compromising situation to create the maximum temptation. In such situations, habits may help some, but willpower will almost certainly be required. At that point it may be too late for habits to help much.

One can prevent inner inclinations and weaknesses from blossoming into full-blown cravings and desires by avoiding the external circumstances that trigger them.

By pulling together many small habits, especially for avoiding temptations and problems, one can live a more virtuous life.