6: You don't just start behaving in any way for no reason -- you do it because something happened. There's always a push, initiating your actions.
A great example of using it for your benefit is described in The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, where she says that having daily rituals helps in shaping new habits. In her example every morning she goes outside and hails a taxi; then she goes to the gym where she exercises for an hour. The point is she's not going to the gym every morning (that's hard, I tried it); instead she's just hailing a taxi (sounds much easier, doesn't it?). This puts her in motion. Waking up is a trigger to have a shower and dress, this leads to putting your shoes on and getting outside; once you're outside you just call the taxi, and once you're in the taxi there's no going back. You've tricked yourself into going to the gym. Again!
> 3: A great illustration for this is the infamous Stanford prison experiment:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
It is infamous largely for having no controls and rapidly deteriorating scientific conditions. Please do not draw conclusions from Zimbardo's failure; there's a whole body of better social psychology on this topic.
6: You don't just start behaving in any way for no reason -- you do it because something happened. There's always a push, initiating your actions.
A great example of using it for your benefit is described in The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, where she says that having daily rituals helps in shaping new habits. In her example every morning she goes outside and hails a taxi; then she goes to the gym where she exercises for an hour. The point is she's not going to the gym every morning (that's hard, I tried it); instead she's just hailing a taxi (sounds much easier, doesn't it?). This puts her in motion. Waking up is a trigger to have a shower and dress, this leads to putting your shoes on and getting outside; once you're outside you just call the taxi, and once you're in the taxi there's no going back. You've tricked yourself into going to the gym. Again!