The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

I enjoyed this book tremendously. This is a topic that I haven’t had the opportunity to read, and it was indeed refreshing. The book delves into how our habits work, how we can change our habit and study into organisation and societies’ habits.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Later, he would famously write that the will to believe is the most important ingredient in creating belief in change. And that one of the most important methods for creating that belief was habits. Habits, he noted, are what allows us to do “do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all.” Once we choose who we want to be, people grow “to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterward into the same identical folds.”

If you believe you can change – if you make it a habit – the change becomes real. This is the real power of habit the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be. Once that choice occurs – and becomes automatic – it is not only real. it starts to seem inevitable.

Everyone goes through periods when we know we need to change. Studies, however, tell us that simply knowing often isn’t enough. Sometimes it takes something else – exposure to the right idea, hearing stories that resonate in our own lives, a certain kind of encouragement – that makes the first step feel within reach.