Why Your Brain Likes Bad Habits and Hates Good Habits

Amy Taylor March 13, 2013

Smokers understand the ill effects of tobacco. But why do most of them choose not to quit? You know donuts, fizzy drinks, crisps, and cookies could ruin your diet. But why do you keep on eating them? We definitely know how bad habits can mess up our life but why is it so difficult to break free from them?

Why does your brain like bad habits?

Way back thousands of years ago, humans and animals only want one thing in life – survival – survival from wild beasts, extreme weathers, hunger, and many other threats. And even with the dramatic improvement in our way of life, such as the arrival of new technology, and massive medical and healthcare advancement, in our inner core we still have the basic instinct of survival. But what does survival have to do with bad habits?

Basically, your brain likes bad habits because it thinks they are necessary for your survival. Whenever your mind is exposed to threats, your brain signals your body to crave for something that will calm you down. For example, if you are tensed, you try to comfort yourself by drinking beer, pigging on a bowl of chocolate cookies, or puffing a cigarette. And the next time you feel the same negative emotion, your brain automatically signals your body to resort to the same habits. You then feel the urge to do it. But when you resist, your brain makes you feel more anxious and uneasy.

So how does your brain trick you into sticking to bad habits?

It makes you think your future self is an entirely different person. Turns out, your brain doesn’t actually care about who you will become in the future. It only cares about who you are today, in this very moment – a fact that ruins your motivation to do better tomorrow and in the coming days. And that’s because your brain perceives the future you as a stranger.

Good habits are hard to make, as compared to bad habits. Did you know that it takes 66 days to form a good habit? Yes. So before you become a gym person and make exercising a hard habit to break, you have to wait for this long. In real life however, just three days of physical workout can exhaust you to death. But once you get over this ‘agonising’ period, everything becomes easy and ‘normal’.

Willpower depletes. To be able to establish good habits and break free from the bad ones, you’ve got have sheer willpower. But the problem is, the more you use it, the lesser it becomes. Stress, whether in physical, emotional or mental form can exhaust your willpower and drive you away from kicking off bad habits from your life.

Hard works motivates you to reward yourself. After sweating out for hours, you suddenly feel the urge to indulge in cakes, donuts, and some cold, refreshing fizzy drink. Well, that’s your brain at work! In one study, researchers asked two groups of dieters to choose between an apple and a chocolate. The first group was praised for their progress while the second group received no praise at all. And guess what the first group chose – 85 per cent of them chose chocolate as compared to 58 per cent of the second group.

You stick to habit as a coping mechanism for failure. Sometimes, people stick to bad habits because they think it protects them from facing things they fear the most. Subconsciously, you have a strong need to change those habits but unconsciously, your brain is hardwired to indulge and preventing you from facing your fears and accepting failures.

But just because your brain is hardwired to engage in bad habits doesn’t mean you should allow yourself to be controlled by them. Remember, you have the power to change your mind. That means you also have the power to eliminate your bad habits and stick to the good ones!

Dear Readers,

What advice can you give to people having problems changing their bad habits?

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