How Habits are Formed by Our Mind
Pattern recognition and association
Our brain is internally programmed through association. Since we were born our brain starts to recognize pattern of stimulus through our senses. Pattern is defined as a repeated form of something. When something is repeated frequent enough our brain recognize it as a pattern.
Once a pattern is recognized, our brain will try to associate it with something. It can be a feeling or biological response. Part of this what we call learning process, which also serves partially as safety mechanism for us.
For example, when a child touch a hot iron the first time he does not know what to expect. There is no pattern registered in his brain yet. If it continue to happen few more times, the brain start to see the pattern. The brain associates iron to hot, and it will trigger a response. In this case the child will try to avoid the iron, even the iron might not even turned on. Off course over time the brain will further detect another pattern - iron is hot if only when the power indicator light is on. Then new association is created.
What I describe is what is normally referred to as the learning process. What our brain learns is registered to both conscious and subconscious part of our mind. When we were a child, both of our conscious and subconscious mind are very flexible.
As we grow older our brain become more and more inflexible. At a point, those things that exist in our mind (consciously or subconsciously)are solidified and become what we are. We start to resist violently to any change, and we have habits (good or bad) forming. This is why changing behaviors and bad habits is next to impossible for most people.
Language.
Without we realizing it the language that we use is among the most important mechanism involve in the association process.
If I mention "red apple" - what do you see,feel,smell and taste IN YOUR MIND. Yes your brain already associate the word "red apple" to things in your mind. So even the apple is not physically there you still can visualize it,felt it,and smell it in your mind. Your brain can even further associates it with emotions if there is any event in the pass that it can associate to a red apple.
Our mind still can associate things with other senses such as smell and vision. When I smell certain type of soap, I will always remember when I was in a boarding school. Maybe the environment there and the type of soap that all of us in the school use just overwhelm my brain then. The smell actually make me happy as those time was among the best time of my life.
The difference is stimulus through senses is real thing - the smell,what you see is there. But language is only a concept - we associate our own generated sounds and written symbols into something. And after for a while our brain really buy it and make words in the language as a real object.
This is so well embedded in our mind, that studies have proven that even when we think silently we still forming sentences in our mind to represent what we are thinking.
Habit
Habits are formed when we repeat certain action frequent enough. This is because our brain do pattern recognition and association, as described earlier. Since this is how habit is formed, then in order to get rid off certain habit we just need to make our brain to associate things that trigger our habit to something new. Off course all of us know this is easier said than done for adult.
Our mind is programmed through senses and language, so these are also the channel how we can reprogram our mind to get rid off any habit. It is because of this that language, in the form of recorded Suggestions, Hypnosis Sessions or Auto-Suggestions, can be successfully used to associate ideas, concepts and beliefs to create healthy new behaviors if done correctly.
Other than use of language, there are other technologies which use other senses and access to subconscious mind to reprogrammed our mind and get rid off bad habits.
Sa Wahid is the owner of site http://www.dzikry.com/blog. Work professionally in software development industry, but leisurely likes to learn about human brain capacity. If you are interested to know more about human mind and thinking process check the "Brain and mind" section at http://dzikry.com/blog/category/brain-and-mind.
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