Positive or negative, habits are immanent to all people. It is always easy to develop a habit (especially unintentionally) and difficult to get rid of it. The mechanism of forming a habit does not sound too complex. After a person has learned something new, there is a three-stage process which turns it into a habit. First of all, there is a trigger which forces the brain to refer to a certain type of behavior regularly. Next, it is important for time or setting to be the same as they were when the action took place for the first time. In a while, the brain stops analyzing the necessity of action in each particular case – it just recalls automatic behavior when it finds a proper setting (for example, being in the cinema and eating popcorn).
Breaking or even changing behavior is not that easy. Frequently, we are not thinking about what we are doing while performing another repetitive action. We find ourselves biting nails or eating snacks only when other people pay attention to this action. The first way to change or break the nasty habit is to change a setting. For example, having changed the places for products in one’s own kitchen, people will break the chain of habitual eating every time they drop in here.
Many of us believe that 21 days are enough to form a new habit. However, we shall not put ourselves into strict time limits. Some habits may take 15 days to break, the others need more than 250. While forming a new habit, it is necessary to repeat actions in the same environment. For example, reading a book in the bedroom but not in the kitchen and going to bed straight after that we will teach our body to fight insomnia using a new habit.