PSYCHOLOGY – Changing a habit takes time and willpower, but strategies exist to maximize the chances of success.
Twelve months after taking a good resolution, the success rates are only around 10-15%. And that comes as no surprise to Dr. Bernard Anselem, a neuropsychology researcher on emotion regulation and author of the book Cthe emotions that drive us” (ed. Alps) “Our brain must constantly save energy by seeking the least costly strategy for it, because if it represents only 2% of body weight, it consumes 20 to 25% of its total available energy. However, initiating a new behavior requires much more energy from the brain than maintaining a habit.».
Another obstacle to change is the plasticity of brain networks. “A behavior creates neural traces in the brain. In the case of a habit, by definition often repeated, this neuronal trace is very strong, a real highway! Whereas if one adopts a new behavior, the trace is so weak at the beginning that one could compare it to a…
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