I was caught in the haze of ad­dic­tion, in the red room at the old house, read­ing the New York Times. Read­ing the sci­ence sec­tion al­ways makes for good pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and for a pseudo-in­tel­lec­tual so­cial sci­en­tist like me, ar­ti­cles with pre-di­gested neu­ro­science make fine con­cealed weapons.

I should have been study­ing. Or think­ing through the im­pend­ing changes in my life. My fiancé was going abroad, we had a new puppy and I was stum­bling through life in a cloud of pot smoke and emo­tional avoid­ance. This is truly the best time to take an in­ter­est in brain de­vel­op­ment.

The ar­ti­cle was about habits, good ones and bad ones. It said that you can­not get rid of bad habits. No sir, they are here to stay. The only thing to do is make new ones, make bet­ter ones. Try­ing to quit smok­ing? Don’t pain your­self over hav­ing 3 cig­a­rettes in a day vs. 4, just go for a run! Try­ing to stop eat­ing fatty foods? Don’t beat your­self up over that piece of fudge, just eat a car­rot too. The stub­born­ness of bad habits makes per­fect sense given what we know about the brain’s adapt­abil­ity. I’m glad, after all, that the marks reg­is­tered in my gray mat­ter have stayed put. I still know how to tie my shoes, and I still know how to ride a bike al­though I don’t do it very often. Cher­ished mem­o­ries stick around, parts at least. This etch­ing makes for other trou­bles too. Most peo­ple don’t know that the hall­mark of PTSD is the in­tru­sion of un­wel­come mem­o­ries, the per­sis­tent re-ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of a trau­matic past.

By a cer­tain age, most of us are de­cid­edly wed to our pre­ferred sources of dopamine. I for one am prone to co-de­pen­dency and sub­stance use. Like most hu­mans, es­pe­cially my peers in the “self-es­teem gen­er­a­tion,” I also thrive on com­pli­ments and pos­i­tive re­in­force­ment, pats on the habit head. This ar­ti­cle’s ad­vice was sin­cere and I heard it clearly, “All your bad habits are here to stay, ac­cept them, love them. Sur­round them with good things.” Rats in a bleak cage will self ad­min­is­ter co­caine until they die, rats in a stim­u­lat­ing, safe en­vi­ron­ment will find a com­fort­able rate of use. Be the good rat.

So, at the thresh­old of my most dif­fi­cult se­mes­ter yet, I bought pro­duce. I de­vel­oped a com­pli­cated ex­er­cise rou­tine. I would first walk the new puppy, in­creas­ing speed and dis­tance as he aged. Then, yoga for sup­ple­ness and lim­ber limbs, fol­lowed by weight train­ing and pull ups. I would eat a strict diet: whole grains, sweet potato, grape­fruit, tea. Of course I didn’t plan to stop pulling into the Plaid Pantry, munchies rag­ing, and find­ing the old candy gang I knew and loved. No prob­lem here, folks, noth­ing to see! I’m de­vel­op­ing good habits!

I wouldn’t quit smok­ing cig­a­rettes, as I’d al­ready read the eu­logy on that idea (it was in the Times!). If I could just exert my­self with enough force, the old habits would sim­ply be crowded out by the new ones. I was going to com­pletely rein­vent my­self, to­tally un­con­sciously. I would con­quer my so­cial awk­ward­ness, not by pa­tiently look­ing at what caused my sense of alien­ation, but by forc­ing my­self to go to par­ties in a grand mal state of ten­sion. I would do it full on. And what to do, if by some chance, I was two years deep into a re­la­tion­ship, en­gaged, and mis­er­able? Get a dog to­gether, of course.

They were strange and fren­zied days, as the girl pre­pared to leave for a se­mes­ter abroad. I worked fran­ti­cally to pro­duce the image of a co­her­ent life, of a self re­silient enough to stand on its own. Of all the myths and de­nials that up­hold bro­ken per­son­al­i­ties and bro­ken homes, this may be para­mount: the no­tion that we are au­tonomous from one an­other. “I’m fine! Stop ask­ing.” This is what the al­co­holic fa­ther of­fers to his son as the ex­pla­na­tion for his pal­pa­ble mis­ery. “We’re fine! Stop ask­ing, this is a pri­vate mat­ter.” This is the ex­pla­na­tion the al­co­holic fam­ily of­fers to the rest of world.

And who is it, what en­abler, who whis­pers at night, “If I can just love him hard enough, love him for long enough, be his good habits for him, then he’ll change.”

It doesn’t work like that. My life was not co­her­ent, and bad habits aren’t just bad habits. They don’t come with­out their rea­sons, al­though it’s easy to think of them  as an alien force which de­scends, with no fath­omable mo­ti­va­tion, to pos­sess and ruin our too trust­ing minds. The nail bit­ing, nose pick­ing, junk shoot­ing, and tar­di­ness are eas­i­est to deal with if they are ran­dom, ac­ci­dents of the chaotic uni­verse. They are not. At bot­tom, some­where be­neath our tan­gled con­di­tion­ing, they are the prod­uct of re­peated at­tempts to find com­fort from suf­fer­ing, and they stick around, not be­cause they work well, but be­cause they meet some min­i­mum. A cig­a­rette doesn’t soothe anx­i­ety for more than five min­utes, and it breeds more wor­ries down the line, but that sooth­ing is enough for that mo­ment. Rea­son enough to light up. Bad habits are more than they seem, they are the cur­rent state of a sys­tem doing the best it can to sur­vive. My one time part­ner was doing the best she could, shuck­ing off to Nepal to get some per­spec­tive. I was too, and in the clas­si­cal form: de­nial.

This the code by which I was raised. When my dad joined Al­co­holics Anony­mous, he started apol­o­giz­ing for things. A mis­placed anger, a sharply sculpted tone of voice, and then he would say, “I’m sorry about ear­lier, it was habit en­ergy.” A strip of paper ap­peared on our fridge and stayed there until we moved, “You be­come what you prac­tice most.”

These habits we have are often a smoke­screen be­tween us and the lives we’re lead­ing. We have daily rou­tines of for­get­ting and we go about the weeks and months doing the dili­gent work of avoid­ance. Ex­er­cise and leaves of kale are good for you, they help build a healthy life, and I wasn’t wrong to turn to them. I was a fool, how­ever, to for­get that be­neath the habits is some­thing scarier. Down there are the true needs and de­sires.

What if you did stop? When the fil­ter is be­tween your lips and you bring the lighter under your cupped hand to start your first drag, what if you stopped your hand right there. With your grip tense and your thumb primed to spark the flint, what if you waited there? What do you re­ally need?

You Will Not Have Me - Amelia Spin­ney

“I trust noth­ing es­pe­cially my­self and slide head first into the fa­mil­iar abyss of doubt and hu­mil­i­a­tion and threaten to push the delete but­ton on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it into shreds - and then I re­al­ize, it doesn't mat­ter, words are al­ways a gam­ble, words are splin­ters from cut glass.”

–Terry Tem­pest Williams

I’ve got this old cedar chest half-filled with jour­nals. Stacks of tat­tered Mole­sk­ines, 70-page col­lege rule note­books col­laged with old cal­en­dar prints, a few grid­ded Rite in the Rains from that time when I lived out­side. I fell in love with a per­son, a place, an idea, a feel­ing. I wrote fa­nat­i­cally and des­per­ately, but I wrote to per­fect those mem­o­ries for a fu­ture self — I wrote final drafts, caged be­tween the lines on the paper. Lord knows I be­lieved I could im­mor­tal­ize those blinks of time in paper and ink, but even this pho­to­graphic mem­ory can tell you that it’s not the words that stick around longest.

You know, I burned one of those jour­nals. I ripped the pages from an­other until I could no longer rec­og­nize the words but as fuel to a fire. I danced with the fumes of lighter fluid, filled my nos­trils with the sul­furous af­ter­math of a stricken match. I swept my hands through the hot air and teetered on the thresh­old of pour­ing my whole self into those flames. The pages fell apart and the ink and pen­cil smudged and faded.

I fell out of love with a per­son, a place, an idea, a feel­ing and Lord knows I clung to those in­ten­tional words I had writ­ten. Writ­ten. Nearly a year passed and blank page after blank page kept star­ing. “Fill me up.” How can I fill you when I can’t even fill my­self?

Writ­ing had be­come this rit­u­al­is­tic process that bore a heavy bur­den of re­spon­si­bil­ity, until nearly every­thing that went to paper was so ex­act­ingly con­structed. You know that bull­shitty feel­ing that can man­i­fest when you skip to some end with­out ac­knowl­edg­ing how you got there in the first place? For the sole pur­pose of the pur­pose, to see noth­ing of what re­mains? It hurt my hand, and my brain, and mostly my heart be­cause I craved that I could sit and doo­dle and write non­sense. Or things that ac­tu­ally meant some­thing to me rather than the things I thought should mat­ter. You know? Writ­ing with my glass shards. Numbly bum­bling, fum­bling for some idea of what I thought or was. I knew it had got­ten bad when the guy on the bus asked me if I al­ways looked so se­ri­ous. I don’t think I smiled back.

I needed to get it back. I needed to get my­self back. Breathe when you can’t rec­og­nize the per­son you see in the win­dow re­flec­tion any­more, and see if they too in­hale.

One day I walked to a cof­fee shop with a stack of lined paper under my arm and a cou­ple of pens in my back pocket. I sat in a quiet cor­ner and let my legs bounce ner­vously, mak­ing the small table quake un­con­trol­lably. I looked down at my hand and found my fin­gers twirling one of the pens. I for­got I could do that. And then it started.

I kind of love how things fall out of my pock­ets when I bend down to pick up my dropped pen or pen­cil. I kind of love how the tex­ture of the lead, the flow of the ink changes upon being bro­ken. How the tex­ture of time changes upon being bro­ken.

Some­thing started as soon as I stopped tak­ing my­self so se­ri­ously. I fell in love with the rose­mary in my pocket and sleep­ing with my win­dows open, the smell of cin­na­mon-spiced quince on the stove and watch­ing my cur­sive scrawl take over a page. I no­ticed the scars on my hands and the way it feels when my eye­brows fur­row if the light is too abra­sive. I started lis­ten­ing to the creaky floor­boards and the shud­der­ing of my door on windy days. Fill me up. And over­flow. I write my­self back to­gether. I write be­cause the words don’t mat­ter.

Now I crack open new note­books with­out think­ing too much about it. Fear­less. Cathar­tic. Out of habit. Just writ­ing. I prob­a­bly won’t look back on the words that form. When the pages are sat­u­rated, I’ll file them away. And one day, when the stack gets too high, I’ll burn those too, danc­ing on the edge of the flames.

Kris­ten Mit­tel­steadt

From the depths of si­lence and dark­ness a soft breeze ap­proached, paint­ing its own re­al­ity as it rus­tled through a field of tall grass and a trick­ling stream bor­dered by a stand of trees. Birds began to chirp, and be­fore Spencer opened his eyes, he could al­most feel the sun ris­ing. Con­tent with this, he reached above his head to grab his alarm and opened his eyes as he re­mained re­clined in his cof­fin-sized en­clo­sure of a bed. A heavy cur­tain on his right kept the space comfy and non-threat­en­ing.

He had scram­bled the clock the night be­fore, and now, as it con­tin­ued to trickle and chirp, he spun it around to see the ini­tial con­fig­u­ra­tion of its six sides. Be­fore he could shut off the sonic re­minders of a liv­ing earth, he would need to solve the Rubik's cube clock. The tired fuzzy feel­ing faded from the field of his con­scious­ness and he began to me­thod­i­cally slide and clack each metal fa­cade of a cube swiftly to its rel­a­tive home sur­round­ing the vaguely un­der­stood joints and elec­tron­ics within.

Within a minute it was solved, and now he spun it around to see each side, re-ad­just­ing his vi­sion set­tings to its six basic col­ors. He pulled his over­head com­puter dis­play down, and its voice filled the new si­lence, re­cap­ping his so­lu­tion on the screen, stop­ping once to point out a shorter so­lu­tion. His eyes mem­o­rized this new po­si­tion and his fin­gers moved through the steps of the new pat­tern as the com­puter coached.

"Well done!", the pro­gram in­formed him, dis­play­ing a graph of his long term re­duc­tion in solve time and pre­dict­ing the next few weeks' re­sults based on the most re­cent pat­tern learned. With the prospect of good things to come, Spencer swept the cur­tain back and slid out into the real world.

Eric Ehrn­schwen­der

1. Get in the habit of mak­ing good habits

I stare at “num­ber one” in my list of per­sonal goals. The first, last, and only goal I’ve been able to come up with so far.

Right. At least it’s a strong start.

I tap my pen against my note­book. I stare out the win­dow. I twirl the pen through my fin­gers.

I fi­nally focus again after about twenty min­utes. And only be­cause I ac­ci­den­tally sent the pen fly­ing across the room and had to go get it.

As I trudge back to the task I’ve set for my­self, I won­der. How does one go about mak­ing a habit on pur­pose?

I’ve heard peo­ple say “oh, it takes six weeks to make a habit”.

But I find the habits I make on pur­pose are the eas­i­est for me to break: going to the gym, going on a diet, writ­ing in my jour­nal, tak­ing up run­ning, keep­ing a food jour­nal, count­ing calo­ries. These are all things I have made a habit (that is, I did them con­sciously over an ex­tended pe­riod of time); and they are also all habits I have, at one point or an­other, de­lib­er­ately de­cided to break - and in some cases, sub­se­quently re­in­state

I won­der if it has some­thing to do with the fact that they’re all re­lated to per­sonal health; or the fact that, in some cases, I was going di­rectly against my own na­ture (let’s face it, I’m a walker not a run­ner).

When I think about my habits, the ones that seem to have “stuck” were gen­er­ally not started on pur­pose. I keep my fin­ger­nails squared off rather than rounded - don’t ask me why, I don’t re­mem­ber why I started doing it but I like them that way. I read, if not every­day, at least very fre­quently. If some­thing is re­ally both­er­ing me, chances are I’ll end up writ­ing about it - it’s my way of work­ing through it. I eat mainly (but not com­pletely) veg­e­tar­ian - it was cheaper in col­lege and I kind of kept with it.

I think of these habits as hav­ing sprung from per­sonal pref­er­ence or ne­ces­sity and cir­cum­stance.

My prob­lem is form­ing habits when I want to. I can spell out which habits I would like to cul­ti­vate (lis­ten­ing to my body so I don’t eat more than I need; mov­ing more dur­ing the day rather than sit­ting and read­ing for hours). But if I start think­ing too much about them I...​psych my­self out. I set my­self up for fail­ure. The only time I have suc­ceeded in a habit I specif­i­cally cul­ti­vated was when I was some­how able to ar­tic­u­late the habit and then for­get about it for about three months (while fol­low­ing it sub­con­sciously).

It’s a con­vo­luted process; and once I fig­ured out my trick, I pretty much ru­ined it for my­self for fu­ture use.

Hm…

1. Get in the habit of mak­ing good habits

1. Learn how to not over-think mak­ing a new habit so you ac­tu­ally suc­ceed.

Tap. Tap tap tap. Twirly twirl. Tap. Tap.

1. Make a list of habits. The hide the list for three months. Re­visit at that time and de­ter­mine suc­cesses and fail­ures.

Tap tap tap.

Right … here goes. I open a new doc­u­ment:

“My Habit Time Cap­sule”

(to be opened in three months)

1. Eat slowly to enjoy food and give my body to tell me “I’m done”.
2. Get out of the house at least once a day for a walk.
3. Limit al­co­hol in­take (to what? As yet to be de­ter­mined)
4. Focus on eat­ing a healthy, bal­anced diet that lim­its processed foods.
5. Ask more ques­tions re­gard­ing Celiac when din­ing out.
6. Write every­day (750­words).

As I look over my list, I won­der whether I can trick my­self into form­ing good habits.

I’ll find out in three months.

Char­lie stepped out from the tall curb turn­ing his head side­ways to look up the street, the sun warm on the back of his green jacket. The jacket and his World Champs Bulls sweat­shirt were pur­chased at a thrift store, the scuffed black boots he would die in taken mud­died from be­side the wel­come mat of a nearby porch.

The shop win­dows glinted in the sun­light and cars flashed bright as they passed. Peo­ple began to emerge from the build­ing be­hind him. Across the street he ripped the ad­he­sive paper from his jacket and tossed it crum­pled against the con­crete under the win­dow of a bar­ber­shop. He marched up the side­walk with eyes straight ahead.

He slipped into a 7-Eleven and headed to the back with eyes un­stray­ing from the re­frig­er­a­tors there. The at­ten­dant fol­lowed his steady march up and back. At the counter Char­lie’s eyes met the at­ten­dant’s as his left hand mashed onto the smooth sur­face a dol­lar and coins from his pocket while his right gripped the glass. The at­ten­dant gave a nod as he turned, reach­ing into a pants pocket for a lithe brown bag. He slid the cold bot­tle in­side and turned the bag to hide the black scrawl be­hind his thick hand.

Now Charles can’t you stay for din­ner baby? We worry about you. If you ever need any­thing, baby. Any­thing. Let me write down my num­ber again baby.

Out­side in the door­way in the breeze of the store he paused squeez­ing the hard glass cool under the soft paper. Bright cars whizzed by in the street be­yond the shade of the gas sta­tion. The bot­tle­cap crunched softly as he plucked it off with a twist. The first pull was slow and long and his chest grew as if his lungs too were fill­ing with the gold liq­uid. He sur­veyed the cars and cus­tomers walk­ing to and from their cars in the park­ing lot. A dog sat pant­ing under a win­dow ad­ver­tise­ment for a deal on a hot dog and a coke. Char­lie pulled at his hat and took an­other slow sip be­fore step­ping into the mid­day sun.

@Bill­Haslam 1 out of 3 Ten­nesseans is obese. Why? Let’s dig deeper.

Any­one who has ever gar­dened knows you can’t pick at the leaves of a dan­de­lion and ex­pect re­sults; you dig to the base and re­move its en­tirety.

From his desk Sea­mus watched his fa­ther dig­ging, just as his fa­ther’s fa­ther. One clump after an­other flew from the spade. Sea­mus hadn’t joined his fa­ther since he was a boy. The act of dig­ging felt an­ti­quated some­how. His in­ter­na­tional con­tem­po­raries were mov­ing for­ward, spread­ing out. In Ire­land, they kept dig­ging down.

Habits are not keep­sakes you stow in a box and take out when needed. When peo­ple say they want to make or break a habit, what they re­ally want is a change of lifestyle. But in­stead of dig­ging to that lifestyle change, they pick at the habit and what they don’t want grows back over time.

Habits an­chor them­selves in lifestyle choices that - once threaded to­gether - form our day-to-day. To change the dis­creet de­ci­sions in our lives we have to dig deeper, un­der­stand how the par­tic­u­lar habit at­taches it­self to other parts of our life, and make a con­scious de­ci­sion to change our lifestyle based on pos­i­tive re­in­force­ment.

Why will start­ing the habit change things?

Why do you need this change?

And why is that?

Why?

Dig.