{"id":3670,"date":"2021-06-26T03:39:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T03:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3670"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:40","slug":"power-of-habit-the-loop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3670","title":{"rendered":"POWER OF HABIT: THE LOOP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u00a0We have all heard it said: “Knowledge is power”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

So true. And I would add “Self knowledge is the greatest power of all”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

In his book on habits, Charles Duhigg unveils a potent bit of self knowledge, what he calls the “habit loop”. It is the basic structure of any habit – good or bad – and familiarity with it puts us back in the driver seat when it comes to starting new good habits or breaking bad habits.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

It is not just a matter of willpower, as I have assumed throughout most of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n

The habit loop is a system that operates within the brain to save it from the exhaustion of making and remaking thousands of little decisions on a daily basis.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

In essence, if the brain recognizes a certain action regularly tends to pay off in a particular reward, it will place the routine on a loop that gets kicked off each time a particular cue presents itself.<\/p>\n\n\n

We’re not too different from the lab rat placed in a box where a wall slides away with a click and the rat finds his way through a maze to a chunk of chocolate. The rat will quickly learn the maze and the click cue will trigger a craving for the reward and instantly engage the routine that will take the rat scurrying directly towards the reward.<\/p>\n\n\n

The author illustrates it this way:<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"
(Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit page 19)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0We have all heard it said: “Knowledge is power”.\u00a0 So true. And I would add “Self knowledge is the greatest power of all”.\u00a0 In his book on habits, Charles Duhigg unveils a potent bit of self knowledge, what he calls the “habit loop”. It is the basic structure of any habit – good or bad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3672,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670\/revisions\/3672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}