B Y M A E M A Ñ AC A P - J O H N S O N
To give a very simple example, imagine going back to 7th
grade. Chances are, if you went back to 7th grade now, as an
adult, you’d behave quite differently than you did when you
were 13 years old and in 7th grade for the first time. You see life
differently now. It didn’t take willpower or explicit behavioral
change strategies—you didn’t have to pull out any tools or take
lessons on how to act differently in 7th grade. You simply see
life and yourself in a very different way now than you did when
you were 13, so your behaviors would naturally be different.
P: How important is it to learn about the power of
personal urges in order to better understand habit
formation?
J: I wouldn’t call urges “personal”—they are quite impersonal,
actually. An urge is just your brain sending the message that
you should do your habit so that you can feel better. Urges are
a healthy brain trying its best to help you out.
When people come to really see that as strong, hijacking
and personal an urge might feel, it’s actually just a fleeting,
impersonal, well-meaning signal from your brain that goes
away on its own, everything begins to change. The habit has
no more power.
P: You mentioned that, although willpower can be a tool
to break a habit, it is the wrong tool to use. Why do you
say this and which tool should we use then?
J: Willpower is changing behavior from the outside-in.
It’s us deciding to do things differently from our
current understanding. It’s often an uphill battle
because—to return to the example above—it’s like
being on the bottom