Talking about habits is not an easy point and even scientists are still in confusion about what habits can report to us.
In fact, many articles, blogs, and books were made to explain some habits` points, in this blog we will take the advantage of a great book written by Mr.Duhigg called 'The power of habit' which is a good guide to start with in order to understand the mechanism of habits.
So, Mr.Duhigg gives us a framework illustrating a habit loop (like shows the picture below) :
A habit is a process divided into three steps :
Cue: a signal for someone to do something (what triggers you to come and start the habit)
Routine: usual things, ways to do something (it is the habit here).
Reward: a prize or a gift that is given to someone by doing a good job (what we feel after doing the habit).
It is not always thinking of another habit can change this habit especially when we talk about a long-term habit.
The book on its last pages gives us a lot of solutions based on real stories and deep scientific researches and experiences, here is a part from this book showing us what to do :
” ...Later, he would famously write that the will to believe is the most important ingredient in creating belief in change. And that one of the most important methods for creating that belief was habits. Habits, he noted, are what allow us to “do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all.” Once we choose who we want to be, people grow “to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterward into the same identical folds. If you believe you can change—if you make it a habit—the change becomes real. This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be. Once that choice occurs—and becomes automatic—it’s not only real, it starts to seem inevitable, the thing, as James wrote, that bears “us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.”
Finally, I suggest you to read this great book for better understanding, and a great change is waiting for you.
Thanks for reading, have a good time.