Atomic Babits The Power Of Chemicals

Few weeks back I started reading the book Atomic Habits. When it comes to books like novels, fiction, crime I get hooked up and complete the book in a day or two. Atomic Habits doesn't fit in such categories. It's more of a psychological book that dives deep into how habits can be created or broken and how strongly they get imbibed into our subconsciousness.

I have read books like "Do it now", "The power of habit" etc and tried to implement the learnt methods with great failure. The problem is, these books have well articulated on "how to do" and "what to do" but dealt poorly on the pitfalls that come in life, very often I found myself giving away to unforeseen temptations in life.

The I started to wonder, I know "what to do" and "how to do" 
but how do I deal with temptations in life and not give in ? 

Great achievements in life or businesses doesn't come overnight, when you want to enjoy the fruits of a tree there's a whole process of planting the seed, patiently nurturing the plant every single day until it bears the fruits. Doing something repeatedly over a week or a month is okay but for years it takes a habit.

Name one healthy habit that you have succesfully imbibed and practicing over years ? 
and how many habits have you tried to create and gave up in a week or a month ? 

World driven by chemicals

While reading this book, I suddenly realized both the external and internal world is driven by chemicals. Let's look at an experiment stated in the book.

Decades back, a scientist was experimenting on rats. He cut off dopamine harmone gland 
from the rats and observed their behaviour. The rats were given all the comforts of 
delicious food and water but they didn't eat or drink, they simply did nothing 
and eventually died. 

But when the scientist forced suger into their mouths he observed pleasure 
signs in their brain. 

Dopamine is a pleasure giving hormone and called as brain's reward system. 
When this hormone is released we feel pleasure and joyful.  

In the above experiment the rats lost desire in eating or playing or anything. Simply because they don't feel the change internally no matter what they do. Since the rats were cut off from dopamine they have no reward system to make them feel joyful or sad.

The rats can still smell the cheese but what's the point of taking an action 
if you still feel the same before and after eating the cheese - No reward system. 

Interestingly, we humans are exactly driven by these same chemicals. Every single act we perform in our daily life is motivated towards a reward that our brain creates in terms of hormones.

Every single action watching scary movie, eating, sleeping, sex, sports, coffee, smoking, drinking, studying, proud, empathy ... releases specific hormones in our body acting as rewards for those actions.

Remove these hormones from our body just like those rats, then we will loose the will to act on anything in our life. We only perform all these actions because every action makes us feel something.

Author: James Clear

Status: #writing

Tags: #book