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A Sober World

Charles Duhigg in his book “The Power of Habit” has shared great inspirational stories of people who changed their lives for the better by changing their habits. I think the most important story out of the first five chapters that I keep going back to is the story of the success of Alcoholics Anonymous to help sufferers to believe in themselves enough to quit drinking. This is no small feat when we live in a culture surrounded by liquor stores and happy hours and highways where alert drivers can never be sure of their safety on the road. It’s the randomness of the acts that are bound to happen, for it’s a fact that people still drink and drive. They cross centerlines, drive the wrong way, and mow down pedestrians taking away the lives of real people from real families. These people need some kind of love or inspiration to believe in themselves to not make these choices that not only hurt themselves but others.

Charles Duhigg has researched and explored the psychology of habits, their origin and his belief that they can be changed. I think for some people who have hit bottom or are in a crisis, as those are the times we often are ready to make a change, Duhigg’s stories provide a framework for change. At the end of his book, Duhigg shares statements about the American psychologist William James concerning how he experimented with making positive changes in his own life and that he “famously wrote 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”(273). Furthermore, Duhigg adds, “The way we habitually think of our surroundings and ourselves create the worlds that each of us inhabit”(273). Clearly, the power lies within us. 

For arguments sake, I noticed that I found myself resisting a bit the whole idea of a habit loop with routines, cues, and rewards. I am remembering a quote I heard once and I do not know who the author might be but the gist was that…”where there is love, there is no discipline.” Personally, the word “discipline” is such a loaded word for me that I just want to start running. It seems to me that love is a more direct route. If you love something you just start doing it. It’s finding that love that you love...

Charles Duhigg definitely is to be commended for shedding light on how the power of habits and understanding their source can be helpful for many, many others as it gets people aware and makes them think about their “invisible decisions.” The other beautiful thing is that Duhigg is a great storyteller and he put a lot of effort into researching the details of his stories and they are definitely inspirational. And finding inspiration wherever it may be and falling in love with that inspiration I would say is also a key to change. For if you fall in love with something, anything... you will not want to leave it and will do everything in your power to bathe in its presence and you will definitely change all your habits if those bad habits get in the way. Also, finding an object of inspiration you love can also help one to never get involved with a bad habit at all in the first place. This is exactly what happened with John Mayer who was influenced as a young guitar player by blues guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan who spectacularly overcame his drug and alcohol addictions and shared his story onstage when he played.  When John Mayer inducted Stevie Ray Vaughan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 he shared how profoundly Stevie inspired his life in the You Tube video Mayer said “...Because of Stevie I grew up proudly turning down every drug and drink ever offered to me because in my mind that could bring me closer to the man I never met and never could.” And speaking of inspiration, Stevie Ray Vaughan is probably the easiest heart and soul to ever fall in love with and I know he will continue to inspire a new generation to never get started down that empty path of drink and to never ever drink and drive. 

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Post #8: A Cup of Self-Discipline

 Chapter 5: Starbucks and The Habit of Success

Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit” quotes researchers from the University of Pennsylvania: “Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent”(131). This is the same self-discipline, according to Duhigg, that played an important role in the mega-success story of Starbucks. A statement like this makes me want to go into the nearest Starbucks and have a cup and sit down in a corner by a window and have a conversation with just “self-discipline.”  Chapter 5 is devoted to the story of Starbucks, a well-known success story that is easy to notice just by counting the Starbucks establishments around the town I live in. I was impressed to read about the “life skills” training that Starbucks employees are given in Starbucks classrooms with Starbucks workbooks and with Starbucks mentors. The main goal of a Starbucks education is to strengthen the self-discipline of employees to give excellent customer service that leads to customer satisfaction. The good news it can be “learned” and become a “habit.”

Starbucks mentors encouraged employees, “to write out plans of action of how they would respond dealing with customer service…and then practice those plans, again and again, until...automatic”(146). This statement reminds me of the habits of Paul O’Neill in the last chapter who made lists everyday of everything he needed to do. The act of writing it down whether to write out plans or make lists is important to see actions followed through and to stay on course. Much of the discussion in this chapter also focused on Howard Schultz, the man behind the success of Starbucks. In a very telling exchange Duhigg interviewed Schultz who told him that it was his mother who said to him as a child, “You don’t quit”(147). She also told him that he was going to go to college and that she “trained” him to set goals. Schulz concludes, “And I really, genuinely believe that if you tell people that they have what it takes to succeed, they’ll prove you right”(148). This statement makes me wonder how all of us might have turned out if we had a mentor as a child to tell us these things every night before we went to sleep. These particular circumstances related to Schultz appear to have created his billionaire mindset and it’s inspiring to talk about how this success happened for him. Ordinarily, when I think of a creative life as opposed to a life of self-discipline, I don’t think of the word habit, or automatic or self-discipline or even life skills, but for running a company it sounds like the right path. 

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Post #7: How To Transform Everything?

Chapter 4: Keystone Habits, or the Ballad of Paul O’Neill

So far, each chapter of Charles Duhigg’s, “The Power of Habit” opens with a powerful story of a person who made a change or behavior choice in his own life that also translated into his larger life, impacting all lives touched. The beginning of the story usually sprouts with the background of the person with details about what he did in his life to be so successful. At the time, the person does not know how powerful his choices may be. Through twists and turns and many years of trial and error by the end of the chapter we come to know how the choices made by the individual were brilliant after all. But at the start the known path was not known. Only patience and perseverance were the discoveries, the never giving up which seems to always have a break through. Was it the “never giving up” or was the break through always there if one could have just seen it? How often it seems to come down to “never giving up.” “Never giving up” seems to imply somewhat that the mind is tarnished, diminished in some way that it can’t see the light first but must struggle in the dark to find that pinhole. It must struggle through a “break” through. Everything seems breakable and capable of being broken in to something that leads to something else. What is the mind breaking through? And so it goes. The perceived limits of the brain when pushed against, wailed upon…when squeezed for “however long it takes.” But sometimes one does hear the “I give up.” And in the midst of “not giving up” the “I give up” often does cough up a deep sea treasure. I am still working with the idea of habits because they are really hard to tackle down or even seduce away to become another habit. I am more disappointed in my mind’s limits or perception of limits. Are limits a habit? And for the fact that it’s all hard work. If you want to transform everything, you must work to get better at everything. And it takes a lifetime to get good at something. CEO Paul O’Neill that Duhigg discusses in Chapter 4 did not have this problem. He never gave up improving on his system, but it seems he got off to a good start as a young man because he had a great habit of making lists of everything he was to do.

        As Duhigg shares, CEO Paul O’Neill grew up to transform Alcoa into one of the safest companies worldwide to work for while also making it a successful “profit machine.” As a young man he made lists of everything he ever wanted to accomplish. His lists were handwritten and helped to organize his mind. When he first started to overhaul Alcoa, O’Neil said he knew that “you cannot order people to change…so I decided I was going to start by focusing on one thing” (100). O’Neill believed that changing one habit (in this case “worker safety” which was first on his list) would trigger a “chain reaction” that would spread out to change other behaviors. This is what our author Duhigg notes is a “keystone habit,” that can “transform everything”(100). But Duhigg also adds keystone habits create a culture of like-minded people that help the “small wins” add up to big wins, the little experiments or “tiny moments of success” that give one a “sense of building victory”(112), for not just the individual but the whole company. Building victory is another way to say, “never give up.” Creating safety in the workplace and making that change matter…that all lives mattered, everyone mattered…gave workers dignity and energy to do better in other areas of their job too so production ran smoother and it also reflected positively in their personal lives. What a great boss and leader! For myself, I can see I haven’t made my list yet. I am going to make a list today. I won’t say what kind of list or the content of the list because it’s like clouds passing by but what is important is that I make a list of something, of one thing I can work on. Just one thing. And give it a try. If it turns out to be a “keystone habit” then all the better. If I could just transform one thing...

I am sharing an inspiring video of Paul O’Neill about leadership.

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Post #6 Habit Breaker Stevie Ray Vaughn

Chapter 3: The Golden Rule of Habit Change by Charles Duhigg

Charles Duhigg lays out The Golden Rule of Habit Change very simply: “You Can’t Extinguish a Bad Habit, You Can Only Change It.” And how does that work? “Use the same cue, change the routine and provide the same reward,”(63). For an example, Duhigg recounts the success story of Alcoholics Anonymous and how it has helped people who drink too much to change their behavior. Duhigg is clear about one thing that the habit loop is not enough on it’s own. People who want to change bad habits must have a belief in themselves or a higher power that they will overcome, that they have enough will power to stay with a new routine. The examples Duhigg offers are encouraging and powerful, but I don’t think a formula for change is always going to work for everyone. There are habits that affect a life in different degrees of severity. This is the case with Duhigg’s recounting of the story of Bill Wilson who founded Alcoholics Anonymous in 1934, who while detoxing in a hospital from 3 bottles of booze a day experienced a transformation of religious proportions. After being engulfed in “white light,” Wilson declared that, “…I was a free man”(67). His complete freedom from the death grip of alcohol continued for 36 more years as he devoted his life to helping others through founding Alcoholics Anonymous till his passing in 1971. Duhigg calls Alcoholics Anonymous the most “successful habit-changing organization in the world”(68). More to the point, Duhigg says that AA provides a “method for attacking the habits that surround alcohol use”(69). Treatments include identifying old triggers, replacing the destructive routine with a positive behavior, while maintaining the old reward. One important element was identified that must be included for success: The belief in oneself that one can succeed or a belief in a higher power that could turn the situation around. This spiritual connection was what set the success of AA apart from other medical or scientific approaches to understanding success with changing habits.

I have posted an inspiring video here of one of the most beautiful human beings that lived in my lifetime and the most passionate guitarist that ever shared his music with the world, Stevie Ray Vaughn. He was also an AA success story having given up drugs and alcohol after 25 years of continuous use only to tragically die a couple years later in a helicopter crash. There are many videos and interviews of Stevie sharing how he overcame his addictions. I have posted a song called, “Life Without You.” About 4 and half minutes into the song he stops to speak intimately with his audience about his recovery. He is a pure example that recovery is possible. I do not know how he overcame his triggers, but he did. I do not know if his “bad habit” was erased and replaced by something else. He played guitar brilliantly while high and sober. While sober, he spoke about God and his hand in helping him recover and this is the larger belief that Duhigg stressed that was needed to make the habit loop not only open to change, but a permanent change.

I think Stevie obliterates Duhigg’s Golden Rule of Habit Change…In my eyes, he has to be the exception as he definitely “extinguished” a bad habit...too beautiful for this world as God took him back quickly, but still his legacy can heal those today still suffering to be free while they still breathe.

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Post #5 Chapter 2 THE CRAVING BRAIN, How to Create New Habits

From the “Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg

Duhigg states, “This is how new habits are created: by putting together a cue, a routine, and a reward, and then cultivating a craving that drives the loop”(49). He then offers the contemporary example of email “craving”: “When a computer chimes or a smartphone vibrates with a new message, the brain starts anticipating the momentary distraction that opening an email provides. That expectation, if unsatisfied, can build until a meeting is filled with antsy executives checking their buzzing BlackBerries under the table…”(51).

Advertisers work hard to create new habits for consumers to fall in love with their product, to want it, need it, justify it, buy it and just plain use it on a daily basis. Advertisers want you to get addicted to the need, they want you to “crave” it, whether it’s a smartphone, toothpaste, cigarettes or alcohol. They want to create the habit in you to grab the product off the shelf and give your cash in exchange. A habit is driven by a “craving” for the product in the brain of the consumer. For toothpaste, sometimes this craving can be considered good as it encourages people to brush their teeth, but on the other hand it can be destructive for drinkers and smokers. Duhigg devotes Chapter 2 to the story of Claude C. Hopkins, whose powerful salesmanship skills in advertising in the early 1900’s made American household products out of Schlitz beer, Puffed Wheat, Palmolive soap, Quaker Oats, Goodyear tires, and Van Camp’s pork and beans to name a few. His autobiography, “My Life in Advertising,” outlined a set of rules that “explained how to create new habits among consumers” (32). Incredibly, Hopkins rules of how to sell products still impact CEO’s and marketers today from “how we buy cleaning supplies to the tools governments use for eradicating disease”(31). His most impressive product was to turn Pepsodent toothpaste in the 1930′s into “one of the best-known products on earth”(32). And even more impressive, Hopkins got more than half of Americans to brush their teeth with toothpaste everyday. He said this was due to identifying the “cue and reward” of a habit, to keep the loop of the habit running.

Hopkins two basic rules:

1.   Create a specific cue.

2.   Define clear rewards.

In the case of Pepsodent, the ads convinced “millions to start a daily ritual” by creating a cue to get rid of “tooth film” and be rewarded with a “beautiful smile.”

Through more advanced explorations by companies trying to identify how to lure customers to their products, it was discovered that a product must not only have the “cue and reward” but be presented in such a way as to create a “craving” that would keep customers coming back.  

Even though he did not identify it himself in his set of rules, Hopkin’s product Pepsodent did create a “craving” in Americans. Pepsodent left a tingling sensation that consumers associated with a clean mouth that made them want to brush everyday. The reward was not just a beautiful smile, but the “clean” sensation produced by the toothpaste.

Our chapter notes that we can apply the cue, routine and reward to creating our own new habits, but also notes that there are “dozens of daily rituals” that “ought” to be habits like drinking enough water or eating more vegetable and putting sunscreen on which do not have “cravings” associated with them.

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Blog Post #4: “lodged & looped”

Chapter One Part III & IV

I guess our heads, as far as evolution goes, have no intention of growing bigger after all. Author Charles Duhigg points out in accordance with his fellow MIT researchers who have been studying human habits since the 1990’s, that our brains are wired with an “effort-saving instinct“ as he clarifies, “An efficient brain requires less room…a smaller head…makes childbirth easier…causes fewer infant and mother deaths.” He continues, “An efficient brain also allows us to stop thinking constantly…”(406), as ultimately our daily routines want to transform into a habit where the brain doesn’t then have to think so much, doesn’t have to work so much. So it seems, habits have not only a beneficial mental component, but a physical component.

Duhigg asks his readers to visualize our human brains “as an onion” with layers closest to the scalp handling immediate ideas and the “center of the skull,” tackling “automatic” primitive actions like “breathing and swallowing (346).” The deeper core is where it has been discovered where habits are formed. A study of the deeper core in brain of rats proved this location allowing MIT scientists to label the process of habit formation: a three-step loop process involving cues, routines, rewards, called “The Habit Loop” (423). Duhigg”s central point: “Habits, as much as memory or reason, are at the root of how we behave. We might not remember the experiences that create our habits, but once they are lodged within our brains they influence how we act—often without our realization” (511).

Central Points of “The Habit Loop” confirmed by experiments with E.P who lost his memory, but was still able to function with his habits:

1.   The brain in habit-mode : “where behaviors occur unthinkingly” (437); decisions are unconscious; leaves space to do other things.

2.   The brain doesn’t judge whether habit is good or bad.

3.   Habit patterns in brain never go away, but remain hidden behind new brain patterns.

4.   Habits can be “ignored, changed, and replaced.”

5.   Habit Loops keep brain from collapsing against overwhelming stimuli.

6.   Habit cues trigger behavior but can collapse with slightest change in cue.

No doubt all these habit-forming structures can be a curse too.

The idea that much of our behavior is ruled or operating under unconscious habits, reveals that our brains manipulate us, as if our brains are playing a trick on us. All the more reason to be aware of our habits and how we can instead manipulate them to help us maneuver through life should we want to approach life fully conscious all the time. I don’t like the idea of something “lodged” in my brain.

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Blog Post #3: What Memory?

Blog Post #3

Commentary on “The Power of Habit”

Chapter One, The Habit Loop, How Habits Work: Part I & II

Part I: Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit” begins Chapter One with details of the sudden illness of an elderly man called E. P. who enters a Los Angeles hospital in 1992, with what is found to be viral encephalitis, a disease known to eat into brain tissue, specifically where the cranium and the spinal column come together, also known to be the spot where our thoughts originate. After being given antiviral drugs, he had a remarkable recovery over two months, though left with huge confusing lapses in his cognitive recognition. A year later, in the fall of 1993, the changes in his behavior became the study focus of scientist Larry Squire whose goal was to understand how the brain of E.P. “stores events” (230). Squire’s investigation with E.P. would discover that habits still form, even for a man who “can’t remember his own age.” Squire and hundreds of his researchers would soon clarify for the medical community at large that though E.P had had his thought center destroyed, there were “subconscious mechanisms” (230), still impacting the “countless choices” that not only was he facing and all the rest of us as human beings face every moment of our lives moving about in our world.

For Squire, meeting E.P reminded him of a man he had studied 30 years earlier at MIT known as H.M. “one of the most famous patients in medical history” (242) who experienced a lifetime of seizures after falling off a bicycle at 7 years of age. With the case of H.M, after researchers experimented by removing his hippocampus, his seizures all but disappeared, yet he retained early childhood memories but his memory after the surgery was “erased.” Duhigg elaborates, “From the day of his surgery until his death in 2008, every person H.M. met, every song he heard, every room he entered, was a completely fresh experience” (257). This led Duhigg to formulate the most important question he could ask himself while comtemplating how his own memory functioned, “Why does my brain decide one memory is more important than another (271)?

Squire continued to study both cases, comparing the limits of the memories of both men, with serious studies focused mostly on E.P.s behavior, noting how E.P retained some of his early life habits, but could not retain any new memories for more than 20 seconds.

Squire’s study brought him more questions about how E.P. was holding the new information coming into his brain, “But where inside his brain was that information residing (323)?

 I find both these cases utterly fascinating, revealed by the questions and studies of brilliant researchers that want to know just like we all would like to better understand how our mind operates. Every second of every day we live in the world of our minds filled with memories and hopes and dreams while navigating the hours, months, years of days and nights…both beautiful and worrisome too in all sorts of degrees to each to his own particular life. Memory is especially a slippery area, a double-edge sword, that only exists in one’ mind, but still impacts the mind so powerfully. The “erasure” of memory and/or the idea of living with every moment “fresh” are two intensely interesting thoughts to contemplate without judging the mind, it’s qualities or capacities. These thoughts have given me an idea to question my own memories, to pick a particular time in my life and see how much I can remember and why I remember some parts of it and not other parts.

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William James in a séance with a spiritualist medium. Photograph: William James (1842-1910) sitting with Mrs. Walden in Séance. Undated but before 1910. Photographed by "Miss Carter".  Houghton Library, Harvard University

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Blog Post # 2

Commentary on The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

“All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.”              William James, 1892

In the second half of Duhigg’s prologue he asks, “When you woke up this morning, what did you do first (101)?” This is a reasonable question. Then, he continues to guide the reader through more questions, as if to take us by the hand through our day, hour by hour, to help us think about the reasons behind our choices. His point is that our behaviors that we think are coming from the source of our own decisions are in fact not our decisions, but are habits. Duhigg offers supporting research from a 2006 Duke University professor who, “…found that more than 40% of the actions people performed each day weren’t actually decisions, but habits” (116).  If this is true, 40% is a lot of our daily lives to be on automatic pilot.

Apparently, this information is not new as Duhigg digs out and presents his readers with an 1892 quote by American philosopher William James, “All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits (116).” Duhigg moves on to declare that the research of the last two decades has finally opened up the secrets of our habitual behaviors and given us answers to the workings of habits and strategies for changing them. (116).

So when I woke up this morning what did I do? I got up and I made a cup of coffee and brought it back to my bed to accompany me while I write. I know I do this out of habit because it reminds me of my mom. When I lived with my mom this is what she did at 5 am every morning. She made her cup of coffee, and then went back to her bed to write letters, volumes of letters, a task when internet & cell phones did not exist. I do not want to change this habit as I adore it and it connects me with my memory of my mother when she was alive and writing.

In the prologue of Charles Duhigg’s book, “The Power of Habit,” he offers a “technical definition” for what are “habits”: “the choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about but continue doing, often everyday (136).

When I first read this quote I thought that for bad behaviors, anything that flows over into the realm of automatic is not good. On the other hand, it made me think that there may be also a positive aspect for this phenomenon that having certain good behaviors go automatic allows the mind to relax and paradoxically focus on something creative. 

Assuming, as human beings, our one life or our endless lives with layers of dimensions, personalities and ancestries exist simultaneously, I wanted to include this fascinating photo of William James at a séance. It makes me wonder just how many layers will Duhigg explore to uncover the origins of the human habit.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOENiLv5Vxk)

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Aloha! A Book Blog Exploration: into“The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg

Assignment for Maui College English 102: For two months (March through April, 2017), write a 16-post blog about a book. Explain ideas and concepts, chapter by chapter, and share what happens when concepts are applied to my own life creating a picture of myself utilizing these ideas now and in the future while also noticing how these ideas may relate to my current community Maui County and world events beyond or simply “something in the news.”

The name of the book I have chosen to document is called “The Power of Habit, Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” by Charles Duhigg. I am inclined to reveal from the start that I have never written a blog, nor am I familiar with reading blogs. I hope this changes for me, in fact, I hope the act of blog writing and commenting will turn into a good habit as I read and grow and learn from other bloggers too.

I will begin by addressing the beginning of the “Prologue, The Habit Cure” (45).

Charles Duhigg begins by describing Lisa Allen, a very fit thirty-four year old woman who has positively transformed her life in just a few short years leaving behind a heavy decade and a half when she was chained to the habits of out-of-control smoking, drinking, and binge-eating. She has been the focus of a scientific study funded by the National Institutes of Health to understand how she manifested such a turnaround so quickly. Duhigg says, “The researchers’ goal was to figure out how habits work on a neurological level---and what it took to make it change” (53). Duhigg shares the dramatic outside events in Lisa’s life that led her to reach rock bottom and the realization that something had to change. Duhigg states that the main shift happened for Lisa when she had no choice but to take a first step to focus on changing one habit called the “keystone habit.” For Lisa this was smoking. What the researchers’ confirmed is that the success of changing one habit then became the success for changing all the her other habits.

My first thought is that Duhigg chose to demonstrate a participant in a study that would dramatically illustrate an extreme transformation. This is inspiration for anyone who wants to improve their behavior and powerfully re-tune their reactions to life’s struggles. However the researchers may desire to pinpoint just how Lisa remade herself, I am not sure this could ever be a blanket map that anyone could follow and say this is how it is done and this will work for everyone. That being said, I am looking forward to Duhigg’s exploration into understanding how a habit operates and how the utilization of that knowledge can make our lives more livable, lovable and creatively rich.

As this is my first post, I will not have had a chance yet to apply any book concept to my life. But if I may, and this is a real stretch (but really not!) as I would like to connect Lisa Allen’s transformation described in the prologue of “The Power of Habit” before I know how far she has transformed, with something very important in the news. Today, March 8 is known as International Women’s Day, a day that “commemorates the movement for women’s rights” and according to the UN Secretary-General calls for change “by empowering women at all levels, enabling their voices to be heard and giving them control over their own lives and over the future of our world” (Wikipedia/Internet). This has to be the realm where “The Power of Habit” should arrive at to teach something new that will uplift our lives.

Although, I am only at the Prologue in our book, I hope this stage of empowerment is where Lisa Allen will land by the end of the book. I hope this is where the book is leading, that empowerment becomes a spontaneous embodiment for all women, way beyond words like “habit.” When I think of the word “habit” I feel a constriction and imagine a repetitive wheel that one cannot be free of. I think that International Women’s Day is honoring that kind of empowerment that women need all over the world, a protest for respect, so they never are ever forced or coerced to take a path of destruction with detrimental habits tangled in wheels and addictions that do not dignify how important women are in the world.

I will end this post here with a youtube video of Joan Baez that I wanted to share. She embodies a power in her voice that she says she can sing what she wants and is not afraid of being judged. If I had to have a habit, this would be one I would not want to toss away, but hold it close to my heart without fear...in essence to be who you are, to be seen, to be heard, without fear.