At some point, if you're changing a really deep-seated behavior, you're going to have a moment of weakness.

Between calculated risk and reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss.

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

When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit -- unless you find new routines -- the pattern will unfold automatically.

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

Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change. Belief was the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into a permanent behavior.

Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.