Starting off I think it is most appropriate to start off looking at the psychology of why creating a habit is so difficult. After doing some research I have found that two parts of the brain are responsible for creating new habits or breaking them. It has a lot to do with the Basal Ganglia and the Cortex. According to “Neuroscientists have traced our habit-making behaviors to a part of the brain called the basal ganglia……...Decisions, meanwhile, are made in a different part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex (Habits: How They Form And How To Break Them 1).” The Basal Ganglia is responsible for a wide variety of things but mainly focus in on “motor control, as well as other roles such as motor learning, executive functions and behaviors, and emotions (Lanciego 1).” This is important because as we learn new habits the basal ganglia and the cortex work with each other alongside special “neurochemicals called endocannabinoids allow for habit to take over by acting as a sort of brake on the goal-directed circuit (Vozza 1).” We want to create a type of habit loop where all these things are working together to create new habits heading towards a new lifestyle change. But in order to make new routines you have to get rid of old ones and rewire your brain to start fitting the lifestyle you want to live.

At stage 2, this is where most people quit, it is much easier to stop trying to improve yourself because trying to create a new habit takes more energy and more concentration and when you are trying to do things alone it can be very difficult. This is where people feel those feelings of stress and dislocation as discussed in the story. You see this affect of habit recreation in multiple places of life and even the most detrimental habits when we try to stop and recreate a new and better ones we fail. For example, “Smokers usually try to quit several times before permanently kicking the habit, and smokers who don't participate in a smoking cessation program fail 95 percent of the time (Smoking Cessation 1).” Even as something bad for us as smoking can be quite difficult to quit. Another example would be dieting, “In a survey out this week, a UK food company found that of those who diet regularly, two out of five quit within the first seven days, one out of five last a month, and the same number--just 20%--make it to the three-month mark (Sass 1).” Most of us crave to look a certain way or be healthier but it's rare for people to go through with a diet. Even with stuff that is a little more simple to stick with such as a new year's resolution we find out that a “study prospectively tracked the self-change attempts of 200 New Year's resolvers over a 2-year period in order to more fully understand the coping determinants of maintenance and the natural history of lapses and relapses. Seventy-seven percent maintained their pledges for 1 week but only 19% for 2 year's (Norcross 1).” That is a large number that doesn’t make much sense considering these are the things we want.