How a Family Breaks Bad Habits, Makes Good Habits

Parenting is the composing, the performing, of music, song upon song.

Musicians play one right note after the next right note after the next right note. It’s not an erratic splattering of sound, a fickle, helter-skelter banging of random notes. Music has order. It is composed. Notes are intentional, considered, deliberate.

“Forty-five percent of what we do every day is habitual,” posit researchers. “That is, performed almost without thinking in the same location or at the same time each day, usually because of the subtle cues.”

We play a note that becomes a subtle cue for another note to always follow: rise and pray. Or check the internet. Or go for a run.

Day after day we practice our chosen series of notes, the actions cued by other actions.

We become a song. As Aristotle wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.”

To sing new songs, we need to pay attention to our rituals, the beat of our days, even more than simply focusing on self-discipline.

For the power of association, what note accompanies a time and place, may in fact be more potent in habit formation than simple willpower.

Researchers suggest that ...

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