Page 49 - Healthy Brain Living Book
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the person with whom you’re relating smooths the way for more
good things to happen.
Tip #4 - Habit Forming
Your brain is a powerful neutral party. It will shape and support
all habits, good or bad!
According to neurological studies, habits come in three parts.
First, there’s a cue, the behavior trigger. Then there’s the routine,
the action itself. Finally comes the reward, the brain’s payoff for
staying with or abandoning the habit.
A child sucking its thumb (cue), isn’t a bad thing when first starting
out. But if prolonged beyond infancy, it can become a bad habit
(the routine). Smart parents have been known to devise a method
of curtailing this habit. For every day that the child goes without
sucking his/her thumb, he/she is rewarded with a star attached to
a calendar (reward). If this happened to you early on, it may have
been your first habit test. This basic formula can be self-taught,
helping create good habits and shed negative ones—although
wriggling away from the latter may pose a greater degree of
difficulty. Quitting smoking, for example, will require more help
from your brain than deciding to exercise more; but it doesn’t
hurt to try, and you will have more success if you can begin to
recognize your cues from the bad habits.
Of all good habits engineered, one of the most common is to eat
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