Good Habits, Bad Habits

More about the book

Much of what we do, we do by habit. How we respond to the people around us; what we buy; when and how we exercise, eat and drink are nearly all done without conscious thought. And yet, whenever we want to change something about ourselves, we rely on willpower alone. We hope that our determination and intention will be enough to effect positive change. And that is why almost all of us fail. What if you could harness the extraordinary power of your unconscious mind, which already determines so much of what you do, to achieve your goals? Drawing on three decades of original research, Wendy Wood shows how habits are stress-resistant, that varying rewards leads to faster and more effective habit formation, and why the oft-repeated idea that forming a habit takes twenty-one days is wrong.