A habit is like a hill that’s steep and muddy at the bottom, but which levels off and becomes less slippery as you go up. At first, it’s very hard to get a foothold and make progress. It’s really easy to slip back down to the bottom. But if you can make it past the difficult beginning, continued progress gets easier and easier. This is similar to how memory works… Read More »A Habit is Like a Muddy Slope
Everything you do is controlled by your brain. Muscle memory? Nope. That’s brain memory. Like all memories, it’s stored in your brain as a neural pathway – a connection between neurons. The first time you learn something – whether it’s how to throw a frisbee or the square root of 49 – your brain forms a new neural connection. It literally grows a tiny filament between two or more neurons… Read More »Habits are Neural Pathways
These days, I live in a lush, thriving forest. But it’s not a forest of trees; it’s a forest of habits. Sobriety. Meditation. Eating salad. Exercise. Reading. Deep work. This is the ecosystem in which I live. Over the years, I’ve been planting seeds and tending to them. They sprout, turning into saplings. They start small and fragile. But with time and care, they put down deep roots, growing tall… Read More »Growing a Habit Forest
When you feel a craving for something – a cookie, a beer, Instagram – what does the craving say? It says, “You need this. Right now.” And our default response is to believe what the craving says. But it turns out that both the need and the now are lies. In fact, cravings aren’t just lies, they’re illusions. Cravings are Externally Triggered I recently did this jigsaw puzzle: Although I… Read More »Your Cravings Are Illusions