Post by Elliot Kane on Jun 19, 2009 13:33:23 GMT
Habit: The Prime Human Motivator
In any examination of the effects of habit on the human thought and decision making process, the first step must be to define precisely what 'Habit' means in terms of this article. It is, after all, a word with many meanings in English, not all of which will be relevant here.
Habit will be used herein to refer to a process of learned thought or reaction that has become ingrained through long-held belief, repetition or experience. It can refer to mental, emotional or physical processes. It will not in any way be used to refer to any kind of chemical addiction, such as to drugs or certain forms of medicine which create an actual physical dependency. A habit can be a reliance on or learned need for some kind of thrill, interaction or device (Such as the internet). A habit is something we condition into ourselves, consciously or otherwise, or that is learned by us through mimicry or experience.
With the definition made, we may move on to exactly why I refer to Habit as the Prime Human Motivator. But then, it has become obvious, hasn't it? As people, we all have our daily routines and shifting outside of those routines makes us nervous or calls us to question what we are doing. If you doubt this, there is an easy way to test it: tomorrow, when you get dressed, deliberately ignore your usual routine and start putting clothes on in an order that you would not normally use. You will find that you slow down, that you start questioning yourself, that you might even start forgetting things. Even so simple a process as starting with the 'wrong' sock is enough to make you feel uncertain. Habit is that well ingrained in us all.
When you stand up after sitting down, you will start walking by putting the same foot forward, every time. When you speak, you will use certain terms or phrases and the inflections and accent you use will be learned responses - habits. You write in a certain way. When you reach for a door handle, it will almost always be with the same hand. While you are reading this now, many of you will be playing with the mouse, tutting softly, or engaging in other small habitual movements that help you to think.
Habit is our friend, because it takes care of all the little things we do regularly so that we do not have to think about them and can concentrate on other things. It means we can get dressed while so tired we can barely concentrate. It enables us to become masters of the Martial Arts or other disciplines that require a speed far beyond the scope of conscious thought. It can protect us from thinking too much. Through habit we learn language, social interaction and the things that will allow us to function in our society.
But Habit is also our enemy. The same thing that makes us never question the way we get dressed, the terms we use or the way we move also ties us into shortcuts we should not have. If we learn, say, that all green people are evil and wish us only harm when we are children, by the time we reach adulthood the idea may be so ingrained that even meeting and regularly interacting with green people (And finding them as human as we) cannot entirely break our long held and utterly habitual belief that all green people are evil.
Similarly, if our society has embraced deeply destructive ideas we grow with the idea that they are 'normal' and we never question them because we are habitually used to them. The most extreme example of this is probably the idea of human sacrifice, which has been practised by a number of societies. There were bound to be those who questioned the idea, but for the practise to have been regularly carried out, it would have to have been viewed as perfectly ordinary behaviour.
Habit is the art of the pre-conceived idea. Someone who believes themselves to be naturally socially inept, for example, is brought down not by a lack of ability but their own habitual expectations of failure. Because they believe they will fail at social interaction, such people get nervous, uptight and panicky and tend to blurt out the first thing they can think of, then take any reaction to it as further reinforcement of their own inability because they have conditioned themselves to see things in that way.
Habit reinforces our attitudes to ourselves and to others, whether those attitudes are good or bad. A person with an expectation of failure is less likely to succeed because the idea that they will fail is already ingrained: habitual. So they try less hard, they are more negative when talking to others about their prospects and - without ever meaning to do so - they become the authors of their own misfortunes.
This is also true of relationships, of course, romantic or otherwise. Someone who believes they are incapable of having friends will tend to drive away anyone who might become a friend. A person who believes their romantic relationships will all fail will be less likely to work at keeping their relationships alive and more likely to walk out in order to bow to what they think of as inevitable.
When we come across new things we have never done before, we are often nervous, edgy and inclined to panic. We have no habits built up to deal with the situation, you see? But if we can suddenly relate it to something we already know, the new thing becomes far less frightening and we suddenly feel a lot more confident in ourselves and our ability to cope.
Habit is in all of us and in everything we do. Bad habits can cause a lifetime of misery, especially if you don't even know you've picked them up. Good habits can create opportunities we would otherwise have missed. Nothing is guaranteed, but understanding your habits is a good first step to any attempts at self improvement or sorting out messes in your life.
A final example
Consider: a man has a basketball hoop set up in a sheltered, screened area so there is no wind. He has a line chalked out and every morning he walks down to the hoop, stands at an exactly marked spot on the line and shoots a ball at the hoop for about half an hour. He has done this for ten years. His reactions are so perfect that he doesn't have to think about it any more. The ball flies easily up and through the hoop, bounces off a board he has positioned below and lands back in his hands for another throw. Thu-thump-thump. Like clockwork, morning after morning, day after day.
One morning, the neighbours kid, being something of a practical joker, rubs out the line and re-inscribes it half a foot back from where it was.
What do you think the chances are that the man will get the ball in the hoop when he comes down and starts throwing?
That's habit. Makes you think, doesn't it?
In any examination of the effects of habit on the human thought and decision making process, the first step must be to define precisely what 'Habit' means in terms of this article. It is, after all, a word with many meanings in English, not all of which will be relevant here.
Habit will be used herein to refer to a process of learned thought or reaction that has become ingrained through long-held belief, repetition or experience. It can refer to mental, emotional or physical processes. It will not in any way be used to refer to any kind of chemical addiction, such as to drugs or certain forms of medicine which create an actual physical dependency. A habit can be a reliance on or learned need for some kind of thrill, interaction or device (Such as the internet). A habit is something we condition into ourselves, consciously or otherwise, or that is learned by us through mimicry or experience.
With the definition made, we may move on to exactly why I refer to Habit as the Prime Human Motivator. But then, it has become obvious, hasn't it? As people, we all have our daily routines and shifting outside of those routines makes us nervous or calls us to question what we are doing. If you doubt this, there is an easy way to test it: tomorrow, when you get dressed, deliberately ignore your usual routine and start putting clothes on in an order that you would not normally use. You will find that you slow down, that you start questioning yourself, that you might even start forgetting things. Even so simple a process as starting with the 'wrong' sock is enough to make you feel uncertain. Habit is that well ingrained in us all.
When you stand up after sitting down, you will start walking by putting the same foot forward, every time. When you speak, you will use certain terms or phrases and the inflections and accent you use will be learned responses - habits. You write in a certain way. When you reach for a door handle, it will almost always be with the same hand. While you are reading this now, many of you will be playing with the mouse, tutting softly, or engaging in other small habitual movements that help you to think.
Habit is our friend, because it takes care of all the little things we do regularly so that we do not have to think about them and can concentrate on other things. It means we can get dressed while so tired we can barely concentrate. It enables us to become masters of the Martial Arts or other disciplines that require a speed far beyond the scope of conscious thought. It can protect us from thinking too much. Through habit we learn language, social interaction and the things that will allow us to function in our society.
But Habit is also our enemy. The same thing that makes us never question the way we get dressed, the terms we use or the way we move also ties us into shortcuts we should not have. If we learn, say, that all green people are evil and wish us only harm when we are children, by the time we reach adulthood the idea may be so ingrained that even meeting and regularly interacting with green people (And finding them as human as we) cannot entirely break our long held and utterly habitual belief that all green people are evil.
Similarly, if our society has embraced deeply destructive ideas we grow with the idea that they are 'normal' and we never question them because we are habitually used to them. The most extreme example of this is probably the idea of human sacrifice, which has been practised by a number of societies. There were bound to be those who questioned the idea, but for the practise to have been regularly carried out, it would have to have been viewed as perfectly ordinary behaviour.
Habit is the art of the pre-conceived idea. Someone who believes themselves to be naturally socially inept, for example, is brought down not by a lack of ability but their own habitual expectations of failure. Because they believe they will fail at social interaction, such people get nervous, uptight and panicky and tend to blurt out the first thing they can think of, then take any reaction to it as further reinforcement of their own inability because they have conditioned themselves to see things in that way.
Habit reinforces our attitudes to ourselves and to others, whether those attitudes are good or bad. A person with an expectation of failure is less likely to succeed because the idea that they will fail is already ingrained: habitual. So they try less hard, they are more negative when talking to others about their prospects and - without ever meaning to do so - they become the authors of their own misfortunes.
This is also true of relationships, of course, romantic or otherwise. Someone who believes they are incapable of having friends will tend to drive away anyone who might become a friend. A person who believes their romantic relationships will all fail will be less likely to work at keeping their relationships alive and more likely to walk out in order to bow to what they think of as inevitable.
When we come across new things we have never done before, we are often nervous, edgy and inclined to panic. We have no habits built up to deal with the situation, you see? But if we can suddenly relate it to something we already know, the new thing becomes far less frightening and we suddenly feel a lot more confident in ourselves and our ability to cope.
Habit is in all of us and in everything we do. Bad habits can cause a lifetime of misery, especially if you don't even know you've picked them up. Good habits can create opportunities we would otherwise have missed. Nothing is guaranteed, but understanding your habits is a good first step to any attempts at self improvement or sorting out messes in your life.
A final example
Consider: a man has a basketball hoop set up in a sheltered, screened area so there is no wind. He has a line chalked out and every morning he walks down to the hoop, stands at an exactly marked spot on the line and shoots a ball at the hoop for about half an hour. He has done this for ten years. His reactions are so perfect that he doesn't have to think about it any more. The ball flies easily up and through the hoop, bounces off a board he has positioned below and lands back in his hands for another throw. Thu-thump-thump. Like clockwork, morning after morning, day after day.
One morning, the neighbours kid, being something of a practical joker, rubs out the line and re-inscribes it half a foot back from where it was.
What do you think the chances are that the man will get the ball in the hoop when he comes down and starts throwing?
That's habit. Makes you think, doesn't it?
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