Charles Duhigg The Power Of Habit

So, you place your last packed box with your belonging into your parent’s car, and are heading off to live, make memories and study, to the campus of your dreams with several hundred or thousands of other college students. You are off to college, making your first significant move into independence. For many college students, going to college is a time in their life where they feel that they have more freedom and opportunity to grow. Unless you are attending a military academy, no one will tell you that you need to eat breakfast, when to wake up, and when to go to bed. No one takes the time to check to see that you are eating breakfast. Mom will not be there to wash your clothes, making you something to eat, or to be constantly reminding you to do your homework. Oh Yeah! Sounds good doesn’t it! Even though, the idea of independence sounds incredible it turns out that for many independence is not what it is said to be. Research states that many college students are not only not eating enough fruits and vegetables; in fact, they are not even eating one serving per day. (Oregon, 1). Because, many college students are slipping into these bad eating choices, college students should be presented with practical approaches to a healthier lifestyle.

According to Lupien, McEwan, Gunnar, and Heim (2009), going off to college involves significant adjustments to their daily routines; sleeping and eating habits, time-management skills, and stress levels will be altered in one way or another. First-year students have to adjust to the new school environment, different social settings, and new schedules, all without the help and guidance from their parents, who have been there for them for eighteen years. Over 30% of college freshman report that they feel overwhelmed (Klainberg, Ewing, & Ryan, 2010), where some students even opt to work as they juggle their class and work schedules. Some students work at a job or study harder than others, but they are all trying to get degrees so maybe one day they will have meaningful and significant lives. It is a constant struggle for everyone who is trying desperately to make him or herself into a success. And every college student wants to be involved in society in a positive manner, allowing contribution of their ideals and values to others.

In the book “The Power Habit,” the author is talking about a woman named Angie Bachmann who was a housewife and who used to clean her home when her husband and kids would be gone during the day until one day she decided that she will change her life totally. Bachmann once sitting at home started to think that she should find something to enjoy her day just like her husband and kids. She wanted to have a story to tell her family at night. Bachmann instead of thinking about doing something good and productive, she chose a wrong path that ruined her life totally. Bachmann chose casino over all the other work because she thought that casino might make her feel good. Angie Bachmann is responsible for her gambling debts because she chose to make her own decision and not stop gambling, even though she knew she is putting herself in trouble.

In " The Neurology of Free Will," Charles Duhigg puts a special importance on habits –their inner working and how they can change. Duhigg describes how habits work through the cycle of cue, routine, and reward. Angie Bachmann from being a bored housewife to losing all her money through uncontrollable gambling.

The thought of new adventures I will encounter and the freedom I will gain in college makes me ecstatic. Your First Year of College: 25 Strategies and Tips to Help You Survive and Thrive Your Freshman Year and Beyond written by Randall S. Hansen, who is an entrepreneur who is focused on helping people with college success and health and wellness. “Get enough sleep, take your vitamins and eat right.” Getting enough sleep can improve your focus and agility. The author suggest that if you stay healthy, get enough sleep, and take your vitamins you should have a better chance of avoiding the “Freshman 15.” Without having your parents around to serve you a good balanced meal, one may be tempted to go for the cookies

Currently, college age individuals are more overwhelmed than ever. More often than not, a college student will use the term “stressed out” to describe themselves. It seems to have become more of a lifestyle over time without proper coping mechanisms. Why are college students so stressed out? Students are constantly faced with many demands all at once – to study and achieve good grades, to work, to pay bills, have a social life, and still manage to sleep, eat, and take care of themselves all within the 24 hours the day has. Fit for Fifteen is a program that will benefit college students in teaching them healthy coping mechanisms for stress, while helping them create healthy meal plans and budgeting strategies.

According to F.M. Alexander, "people not decided their future, they decide their habits, and these habits decide their future". A habit is a learned behavior repeated regularly, requiring small or no reasoning. Habits are created, are not obtained by inheritance, habits can transform themselves in needs. In addition, habits are not unique to people, organizations, to be made up of people, have habits also. There are right, and wrong habits; right habits normally are called as virtues, and wrong habits are called as vices. Undoubtedly, virtues must be constantly reinforced; on the other hand, vices must be rebuilt step by step, and convert them into virtues. In “The Power of Habit”, Charles Duhigg manages to reveal with great clarity how the different phases of the cycle of habits are conformed; how wrong habits can be reconstructed, and transformed to allow the growth of both, individuals and organizations. Through the use of various cases, Duhigg manages to explain how to transform wrong habits by focusing on the phase of the habit that need to be rebuilt. The author explains how people can fail to be slaves to the "customs", and as to regain control, either of their lives or their Organizations.

Exploring only two topics of engaging in physical activity and having and using a support system it is easy to see that one should not succumb to the pressures of freshman year, rather embrace them and use the resources that are readily available. Other articles state that how a student performs in high school can directly influence how he or she will perform in college. “Academic preparation in high school predicted all indicators of college success, and student absences in high school predicted two individual indicators of college success and a composite of college success indicators” (Stephan). Jennifer Stephan states that one can determine a college student’s success by analyzing their high school academic performance. Regardless it is important that incoming college students understand that they deserve to be where they are and that it is a privilege that not many people around the world have the chance to do. If one realizes how blessed they are to be attending a university obtaining a formal education they will likely find ways to succeed because they know that it is a once in a life time opportunity. There are more questions to be asked and am sure research will continue on areas of improving incoming college students’ success. More research needs to be done in examining and selecting roommates. For example, place students with at least a few similar interests together so they have a sense of belonging and that should start with surveys before entering college while the student is still in high school so there is time to properly room them. There are many facets to improve on and with more research being done everyday there is no reason for high school students’ college acceptance rates and first year college students’ GPA to continue to

The Power of the Habit in chapter 3 by Charles Duhigg, argues that habits cannot be erased; they must be replaced. The Golden Rule of habit change is to keep the cue, keep the reward, but change the routine. Football coach Tony Dungy simplified and programmed his team’s formations by removing thinking time and shaving milliseconds off of the team’s game-playing routine. He left the same cue which is the start of each play and the reward; victory, in place. Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous came across this formula for habit change as well. He was able to quit drinking by responding to the cues of anxiety with social interaction rather than drinking to achieve the same reward. Whether the goal is sobriety, athletic victory or

Life is full of beliefs because people act, speak, and think the way that they believe it. According to chapter 3 of The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg, the author talks about changing habits. The key is to keep cue and reward the same, but the routine need to be change (62). It means that the bad routine can change to good routine, but it will give the same rewards. More important, the author talks about belief that can change habits.

College is a new stage in life with a new environment and maybe a different lifestyle. This makes it a prime opportunity to take control of a healthy lifestyle. Who would want to have the dreaded Freshman 15 (or even more)?

When it comes to the topic of addiction, most of us will readily agree that it is a miserable trait to possess. An addiction is a physical and psychological state of being that if not treated correctly could result into harmful wrongdoing. In The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, he recounts a story in which a fatigued housewife named Angie Bachmann lost all of her family’s assets, amounting to a million dollars due to a gambling addiction. Every habit has three components: a cue or a trigger of an automatic behavior to start, a routine the behavior itself, and a reward which is how our brain learns to remember this pattern for the future. According to Duhigg, “you cannot extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it” (63). Duhigg

Have you lived, or spent the majority of your life, living in one place? If so, you most likely have a home, a family, friends, and commitments to various activities. These assets in life give a sense of security and help to develop an everyday routine. For this reason being, there is little or no drastic change in this place. Perhaps, the biggest transitions you’ve encountered so far have been your birthdays or entering the high school atmosphere. Throughout high school, teachers focus on preparing you for college courses, yet they fail to prepare you for the major transition from high school to not only college, but into the real world also. The college phase of the real world is an environment full of change; one of these changes can be an alteration in your diet, resulting with students gaining the “freshman 15”. To defeat this excessive college weight gain expression, students should develop a daily routine focusing on healthy eating habits, self-restraint, and exercise.

We tend to think of habits as bad (smoking, cussing, biting your fingernails) but they can also be good (walking the dog, oatmeal for breakfast, a weekly date with your spouse). THE POWER OF HABIT shows how easily habits form. They rely on three simple things–a cue, a routine, and a reward–and don’t take long to stick. Our brains love habits. They allow us to be efficient. They help us do things like drive a car without constant self-monitoring. Once we learn where the brake pedal is and how hard to press the

Over the years many studies have been conducted to determine what creates stress and how college students can cope with stress. Stressors in a student’s life can be created through personal, educational and social experiences. A student faces many experiences while transitioning from high school, to college, and into adulthood. These experiences include: living arrangements, personal finances, important career decisions, experiences of failure, interpersonal relationships, and personal finances. These stressors involved with daily hassles can create an unhealthy high pressure environment which makes stress for college students inevitable. During one study, researchers found that physical activity throughout a student’s life can increase one’s stress tolerance and positively cope with stressors (Bland, Melton, Bigham, & Welle, 2012).