Bad Habits Are Autocatalytic
👋 lights from Atomic Habits (Part VII)
The Vietnam studies ran counter to many of our cultural beliefs about bad habits because it challenged the conventional association of unhealthy behaviour as a moral weakness.
If you’re overweight, a smoker, or an addict, you’ve been told your entire life that it is because you lack self-control — maybe even that you’re a bad person.
The idea that a little bit of discipline would solve all our problems is deeply embedded in our culture.
The people with the best self control are typically the ones who need to use it the least.
The way to improve these qualities (perseverance, grit and willpower) is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.
Once a habit has been encoded, the urge to act follows whenever the environment cues reappear.
Bad habits are autocatalytic: the process feeds itself. They foster the feelings they try to numb.
Watching television makes you feel sluggish, so you watch more television because you don’t have the energy to do anything else.
You can break a habit, but you are unlikely to forget it.
