Changing our Minds: Mind hacks to shape our habits with Manda Scott

Why are some habits easy to form (immoral, illegal or bad for your health, as my dad used to say)  - but the ones we actually want, are far harder to set up? 'Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny'  - Lao Tsu mapped the progress from habits of thought (and we would add habits of feeing) towards the truth of what we become.  In this week's podcast, we take a deep dive into the neuroscience of habits: how they form and how we can set ourselves up for maximal success with the ones we *actually want*.  We map the core science of what makes our habits move from simply things we do once, to things that we do without thinking them... that then have a core impact on who we are and how we design our energy through the days, both as individuals and as a culture. We look at the absolute basics of reinforcement (positive and negative) and how habits become enduring - by becoming easy, obvious, attainable and definable and having four distinct parts: a trigger/cue that tells us this behaviour needs to happen now; a desire; the behaviour; and the reinforcement or reward. Taking a particular behaviour of listening to a 5 minute visualisation we look at how to anchor this as a habit within our existing behavioural sequence, with a deeper dive into the nature of intrinsic reinforcement. We look four of the main internal reinforcers: Dopamine, Serotonin Oxytocin and Endorphins. We explore clean loops, backchaining and real world applications of habit-building. 

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