The article from New York Times, May 4, 2008 “Can you become a creature of new habits?” by Janet Rae-Dupree looks at challenges we can meet and recommendations we can follow when we want to change ourselves. Change is difficult because we are familiar with old habit and don’t want to get something new. We also become fearful ourselves when trying to reach new things. Also, when we passed puberty, our brain lost half of valuable capacity that could make change easily. Because when we are older, in our brain, novelty declines and resistance to change increase. On the other hand, the author also gives some recommendations to change like make small, sustainable changes, not a big change, and apply what we have learned in the past to add new habit for the future.
I agree with the author of this article for several reasons. People can change themselves but it is too difficult, especially when people turn after 30 age. The first reason is that person’s personality traits tend to stay the same over his or her lifetime. Some of them was born depend on DNA, the others come out with environment. It also mention environment could be molds our biology. The second reason is that we usually incline to stay in the same way and don’t want to try a new thing. In my opinion, I agree with that. Sometimes, I want to change bad habit like lazy trait but it is easy to give up because up to now, I am still good with that. In addition, we fear in our emotion brain. We don’t want to leave “comfort zone” even we are trying positive habits. We fear failure. It is not good for changing. Those are some reasons make change is challenge.
Also, there are some recommendations are given. First of all, change should begin from small change, step by step, such as a Japanese technique is called kaizen or the way Matt Cutts gave a talk about try something new in 30 days. For example, we can run one mile and half in 10 minutes by practicing in 30 days unless we give up. Don’t make a big change like stop smoking or give up sugar in 30 days. That would be uneffected. Second, we should try to create new habit as soon as possible. When we are young, we tend to be open to new experiences easier than we are older. In addition, trying to learn new things helps our brain healthy and decreases brain diseases. It also help us lose weight. Third recommendation is that we find out the way is suitable for you when you have learned in the past, and you can make your own diagram to add new habits for the future. The last recommendation is that you can create new habit by 5 steps such as: write out a plan, keep a journal to track what you did, be aware of your environment, tell someone about your plan, and reward yourself. I am very interested in with this suggestion because it will help me control over myself and create new habit.