Have you ever went out to mow the lawn and had your lawnmower tell you that it didn’t feel like mowing right now? Me either. That’s the advantage machines have over humans. They don’t have feelings, they just do the work.
The funny thing about humans is that we almost always know what we need to do. Whether that’s floss our teeth, exercise, clean the house or send a thank you card. We know these things will benefit us and that they’re the right thing to do. But actually doing them…oh boy!
Human emotions and decision making are rarely our friend. It always seems harder to do the right thing doesn’t it? But there is a way around this burden. A way to become more like a machine!
Habits are the way forward. Habits are actually stored in a different area of our brains than where we do our “thinking”. Scientists discovered this with the help of a patient named Eugene Pauly. Mr. Pauly had a viral infection in his brain that damaged the area of his brain in charge of thinking and reasoning.
It was a major surprise that he was unable to tell someone where the bathroom was in his home, yet he just got up and found the bathroom when nature called. He couldn’t draw a diagram of his own neighborhood but could go out for a walk and find his way home without a problem. Going to the bathroom and walking around his neighborhood had become habits and acted like automatic behaviors.
We can engineer habits to help us with weight loss too! We just have to recognize the structure of a habit and then design it appropriately. Habits all contain a trigger, craving, routine and reward. With this in mind you can either introduce or remove triggers. You can swap one reward for another. Or you can introduce a new routine that is more productive or healthy.
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