Here is an excerpt from WSJ's SmartMoney.
Charles Duhigg may have found the key.
Duhigg, a reporter at the New York Times, spent three years interviewing researchers, marketing mavens and neuroscientists to understand better how our brains work, and how we can use that knowledge in our daily lives.
He's published the results in a new book, The Power of Habit.
The bottom line: We're running on autopilot most of the time, and we don't really know it. We are controlled to a remarkable degree by our habits, not just by our conscious choices.
"A habit is a choice that we deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about, but continue doing, often every day," he writes.
Even people in crisis can use this knowledge to turn their lives around.
We can't unlearn bad habits. The way to defeat them is to learn new, better ones.
I cannot think of any real bad habit that I think I should have trouble living with at this moment of my life. On the other hand, the lack of certain habits, good habits, has caught my attention lately, that is, my frequent failure to take a moment to savor both trivial and grandiose joys, windfalls or achievements in my life. It shouldn't be hard, though, to learn to take a step back, think about, and appreciate the good things that I should wholeheartedly enjoy every second of my life. Let's enjoy. It won't be hard.
