Staying in the Loop!
So, you think you're pretty good at making decisions, and you naturally assume most everything you do is under your conscious control - right? Wrong! It turns out most of what you do and think and feel isn't under your conscious control at all. Your brain is in the business of gathering information and steering behaviour quickly and automatically and outside of your consciousness. It doesn't need you to stop and think. You operate day-to-day on multiple feedback loops - habits, that are hidden from view. As Pink Floyd put it, "There's someone in my head, but it's not me." What happens when you want to change one of these feedback loops? How do you take back conscious control of your own brain? Habits First, you need to know something about the machinery of the brain. Habits emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. The process of habit-formation is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells yo...