Changing habits are hard to do?

What are habits and why are we having a hard time to change them? Habits are routine behaviors we have that we have already been accustomed to. We sometimes do it unconsciously because we have been doing it for some time that we do not think and just do. Let us go to the field of neuroscience, which is the study of the human brain and its functions to explain habits more clearly and see how our daily lives are affected by it. Let us say we want to attain the goal of living a healthy lifestyle. In order for us to attain this goal of ours we need to change certain bad habits. Habits that we are to change can be the following: We love to drink soda and we sleep in the wee hours of the morning. Now, we know that these habits are bad for us but we still do them because they have been part of our daily routine and we are having a hard time to change it. It has been long part of what we usually do that it difficult to shake the habit off. Instead of drinking soda we should drink water. Each day passes and we say we will stop drinking soda but we maintain to slip and instead continue to drink soda. We also say that we shall start sleeping early and get at least 8 hours of sleep, but we give ourselves excuses to stay up and each night we sleep late. What may have happened also was at the beginning we started to change our habits but as time progressed we went back to our old habits. This is the reason for others who lose weight and then gain it back after a few months. We are unable to maintain the change that we were beginning to be accustomed to. Our willpower was not that determined or strong and we gave in to our weakness which was our old bad habits. Scientists call this the “habit loop.” What are we to do? We consciously know what to do but are unable to do what should be done. Let us strengthen our effort and consciously do what is necessary. In the end we will be the happiest for it. If we make a conscious effort to get rid of all our bad habits, then our body and mind will thank us for it.