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Are you a create of old habits that you can’t change. As we get older, we develop habits, or ways of doing things we can’t easily change.  These habits involve everything from the way we eat, to our daily morning ritual.  My old habits include, every morning waking up, drinking a diet coke, and turning on the computer.

A New York Times article went over exactly what old habits mean what they mean and some tips for taking control of them. The article found here explains a few ways you can get into new habits.

Why habits are a good thing
Up to 90 percent of our day can be spent in old habits and routine.  We brush our teeth without thinking, we create our habitual breakfast and even drive without thinking.  We practice the same activity so many times that we can repeat the habit over and over without much thought.

Habits Can Be Bad Too!
We might have habit of thinking poorly.  We might have the habit of completing activities without using our entire effort.  Maybe we have bad eating habits and tend to eat the wrong things.  We might have habits of laziness and often leave our apartments dirty rather than developing habits of cleaning up messes as they happen.

I often find myself repeating the same mistakes over and over.  I’ll promise myself to start running everyday, but that promise becomes quickly broken.  I’ll promise to start cleaning my messes as they happen, but before I know it, my room is trashed.

The Science Behind Old Habits
Researchers at MIT found that “Important neural activity patterns in a specific region of the brain change when habits are formed, change again when habits are broken, but quickly re-emerge when something rekindles an extinguished habit — routines that originally took great effort to learn.”

The performed a study on mice, trying to teach them habits in a maze.  By the end of the study they discovered that “If a learned pattern remains in the brain after the behavior is extinguished, maybe that’s why it’s so difficult to change a habit.”

Basically, we learn habits, and even if we stop them, they often still remain in our brain.

Changing Old Habits, the Struggle
After you’ve discovered just what those bad habits are, write them down.   When you notice that you are about to repeat that bad habit, I often tell myself “This is habit I want to change and I will not do it again.”  Strive to break that habit, even though it will be hard, just keeping telling yourself no.

It’s easy to blame other people, but with hard work, you can do it!