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The problem is that your brain can't tell the difference between bad and good habits, and so if you have a bad one, it's always lurking there, waiting for the right cues and rewards.

Charles Duhigg

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Charles Duhigg
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: January 1
Journalist
Writer
New Mexico
United States
Differences
Brain
Waiting
Cues
Tell
Lurking
Problem
Habits
Right
Rewards
Good
Habit
Always
Difference

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The same process that makes AA so effective—the power of a group to teach individuals how to believe—happens whenever people come together to help one another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.
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Hiding what you know is sometimes as important as knowing it.
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Some say because music is as much about personal expression as listening pleasure, sharing is integral to why songs have value in the first place.
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For a habit to stay changed, people must believe change is possible.
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Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.
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There's a natural instinct embedded in friendship, a sympathy that makes us willing to fight for someone we like when they are treated unjustly.
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Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.
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If you tell people that they have what it takes to succeed, they'll prove you right
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Habits are malleable throughout your entire life.
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The biggest moment of flexibility in our shopping habits is when we have a child, because when you think about it, all of your old routines sort of go out the window, and suddenly a marketer can come in and sell you new kinds of things.
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Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change. Belief was the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into a permanent behavior.
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Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war.
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Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the orther team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.
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Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.
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It is facile to imply that smoking, alcoholism, overeating, or other ingrained patters can be upended without real effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understanding of the cravings driving behaviours.
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This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.
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When people have a willpower failure, it's because they haven't anticipated a situation that's going to come along.
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Between calculated risk and reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss.
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Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It's not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.
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