Hey smart people, Joe here. What if I told you that the reason you had
minty-fresh breath this morning was because 100 years ago an advertiser named Claude C.
Hopkins was having trouble selling a brand of toothpaste? He needed to convince people that brushing
their teeth should be a daily routine, and back then, it wasn’t for most people. In the end he was able to get half the American
public to pick up a new behavior and repeat it every single day, and pay money for his
toothpaste. How did he do it? By tapping into neuroscience and decoding
the awesome power of habits. [OPEN] Habits. We’ve all got ‘em. You can probably think of a few of your own. I always seem to tap my feet when I’m trying
to sit still. And I find myself biting my nails whenever
I’m focused on reading or watching a movie. I don’t consciously think about doing these
things. That’s because I’ve done them so often
that they’ve become a habit. We know habits as things we do automatically;
tasks we do subconsciously, like walking or high fiving. And there’s a ton of things that technically
count as habits, and they can be good or bad. So why do we form habits? And how do we learn new ones, or un-learn
old ones? If you've ever taken the same path to school
or work, then you likely have that pathway burned into your brain. You can probably walk it without really paying
attention. Habits are built in a similar way. New neural pathways are formed when you repeat
a behavior. And the more a brain circuit fires, the easier
it becomes for our brain to do whatever that circuit controls, without conscious thought. Think back to how you learned to ride a bike. At first, riding a bike is tough. You’ve got to learn how to pedal and balance
and turn all at the same time. You have to consciously think about each action. This happens in an area of your brain called
the prefrontal cortex, the part associated with complex thought. But eventually, after you ride enough, you
no longer have to consciously think about each individual action. Riding a bike has become a habit, and now
it’s controlled by different parts of your brain. One area involved in habitual behavior is
the striatum, which actually releases chemicals that inhibit the complex thinking part of
your brain for that task. This is your brain being efficient. By turning down your brain’s thinking requirements
for bike riding, it’s free to think other things, like ‘how exactly do igloos keep
you warm?” Let’s go back to Claude Hopkins and his
toothpaste scheme. Claude realized habits have three key ingredients. A cue, a behavior, and a reward. A cue is something that triggers a behavior,
like how the alarm clock triggers you punching the snooze button, and this is followed by
the reward - 9 sweet extra minutes of sleeping in. Claude got people thinking about that slimy
film on your teeth in the morning, thanks to bacteria that colonize your mouth overnight. The sticky film is the cue that triggers brushing
behavior. What was the reward? Claude convinced people this film would make
their smile look ugly and a prettier smile was the reward for brushing. Claude understood that with the right cue
and the right reward, you could entice people to do just about whatever behavior you wanted. But what he didn’t know was that rewarding
a behavior can actually create a craving, and this is what makes habits so strong. Scientists now know that special neurons in
the brain can fire and give us chemical rewards. But what’s weird is that once a habit and
a reward are tied together in our brain, those reward neurons start firing even before you
do the behavior. This is what causes craving, and it’s why
you want popcorn when you go to the movies, why you pick up your bad habits when you see
other people doing them, and why habits are so hard to break. Claude knew a prettier smile would be a reward
that would make people brush, but he didn’t anticipate that over time people would subconsciously
start craving the minty tingle that Pepsodent left in their mouths. People’s brains actually started to crave
toothbrushing. So how can you train yourself to pick up a
new habit, like eating an apple a day. And if you’ve got a bad habit, can you break
it, or are you stuck with it forever? Scientists used to think that our brains didn’t
change all that much once we reached adulthood, like concrete once it’s solidified. But it turns out your brain is much more like
clay - it’s a super flexible organ. The chemistry of your brain is constantly
changing as you go about your day, in response to everything from learning to moving to hunger. These chemical releases are short lived, but
over time, if the same behaviors are repeated, the physical structure of the brain is actually
changed. You create new neural pathways. And because the neural network has changed,
so does the way the information flows. When a behavior is repeated often enough,
a habit is formed. There’s a famous idea that a new skill is
learned by putting in 10,000 hours of work, but it’s not that simple. The amount of time differs hugely between
tasks and between people. What’s for sure is that when it comes to
making a habit, whether it’s learning guitar or meditation, there’s simply no substitute
for repetition. The reason bad habits are so hard to break
is because you have literally woven new neural networks into your brain. That doesn’t go away overnight. So give yourself a break. And if you’re trying to change a habit,
know that it’s usually best to try and replace bad behavior with a new behavior instead of
just trying to erase the pattern altogether. The good thing is that now you know you have
the power to change your brain. It’s as easy as brushing your teeth. And
if you haven’t already made it a habit – Stay Curious.
