Habits are malleable throughout your entire life.

Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.

This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.

When people have a willpower failure, it's because they haven't anticipated a situation that's going to come along.

Habits are powerful, but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission, but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realize—they are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense.

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.

For a habit to stay changed, people must believe change is possible.