——选自News Locker 网站（吉玛译）

Living a healthier lifestyle isn’t always down to sheer willpower – it can be as simple as forming new habits. But how do we do that?

健康的生活方式并不总是取决于意志力——它可以像养成新习惯一样简单。但是我们该怎么做呢?

Last year, my New Year resolution was to go for a run first thing every morning. It started well: 1 January was a great success. On 2 January, though, I hit snooze and went back to sleep. I tried to get it going again, I really did – I even wore my gym clothes to bed – but nothing worked.

去年，我的新年决心是每天早上第一件事就是跑步。开局很好:1月1日非常成功。但在1月2日，我打了个盹，又睡着了。我尝试了一遍又一遍，我真的尽力了——我甚至穿着我的运动服去睡觉——但是并无奏效。

This year, I’ve resolved to wean myself off scrolling mindlessly through social media on my phone, but when it comes to making resolutions – or, rather, breaking them – it feels as though there are forces at work far stronger than my willpower. I know I’m not alone in that; if I were, there wouldn’t be nearly 6,000 books on Amazon under the category “self help – habits”, nor so many psychologists researching the subject. So, could they help me keep my resolution this year?

今年，我决定不再盲目地使用手机上社交媒体，但是在制定新年计划的时候——或者更确切地说，是破坏它们——感觉好像有一股力量比我的意志力要强大得多。我知道我不是唯一一个这样的人;如果我是唯一的一个的话，在亚马逊上就不会有近6000本关于“自我帮助”的书籍，也没有那么多心理学家研究这个问题。那么，他们能帮我坚定今年的决心吗?

Charles Duhigg, the author of The Power of Habit, certainly thinks so. He tells me there is “a ton of research” to show that New Year resolutions are an effective way to make changes: they create a sense of expectation and ceremony, while the link to a particular day helps to fit our experiences into a narrative of before and after, which makes change more likely. “There are people who will decide on 1 January to lose two stone and who will keep it off for the rest of their lives, others who have been smoking two packs a day for over a decade who will decide to quit and who will still not smoke this time next year,” he says. “Anyone can change any habit; it doesn’t matter how old you are or how deeply ingrained that behaviour is. But that doesn’t mean – as everyone knows – that New Year resolutions are consistently successful.

《习惯的力量》一书的作者查尔斯•杜希格确切的肯定。他告诉我有“大量的研究”表明,新年计划是做出改变的一个有效的方法: 他们创造出一种期望和仪式感,而特定时间的联系能符合我们之前和之后的叙事经验,这使得改变的可能性更大。“有人将决定1月1日减肥,剩下的生活里他们也会这样做,十多年来一天抽两包烟的人决定戒烟,明年的这个时候他就不会抽烟了,”他说。任何人都可以改变任何习惯;不管你多大，或者你的行为有多么根深蒂固。但这并不意味着——众所周知——新年计划一定能成功。

When our New Year resolutions fail, we berate ourselves for our weak self-discipline; we tell ourselves our willpower wasn’t strong enough, as though we are a marathon runner who couldn’t make it to the finish line. The image of a self-control muscle that gets tired over time, first proposed by the social psychologist Roy Baumeister in the late 90s, has shaped our collective consciousness.

当我们的新年计划失败时，我们责备自己缺乏自律; 告诉自己，我们的意志力不够坚强，好比我们是一个无法到达终点的马拉松运动员。社会心理学家罗伊·鲍迈斯特在90年代末首次提出，随着时间的推移，自我控制的肌肉会变得疲惫，它塑造了我们的集体意识。

But a new generation of psychologists, unable to replicate the studies that proved his theory of “ego depletion”, are questioning this model. They are exploring other factors that might determine whether individuals can stick to their goals, including their motivation and environment, explains Katharina Bernecker, a postdoctoral researcher at Leibniz-Institut in Tübingen, south-west Germany. “The idea of a limited resource is about a capacity or an ability – you can or you can’t – whereas motivation is something that fluctuates. We’re searching for a new theory that tells us more about this process,” she says.

但是，新一代的心理学家，由于无法重新证明他的“自我消逝”理论的研究，并质疑这种模式。德国西南部图宾根的莱布尼茨学院的博士后研究人员凯瑟琳贝内克解释道，他们正在探索其他因素，以决定个人是否能够坚持自己的目标，包括他们的动机和环境。“有限资源的想法是一种能力或才能——取决于你能或者你不能——而动机是一种波动的东西。”我们正在寻找一种新的理论，它能告诉我们更多关于这个过程的信息。

Putting all our New Year resolution eggs in a willpower basket is exactly where we are going wrong, suggests Wendy Wood, provost professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California. Although studies show that people who have a lot of self-control tend to be good at meeting their goals – if they are motivated to do well at work, they get promoted; if they want to live a healthy lifestyle, they exercise more – it isn’t because they use their willpower to control their behaviour, she explains. In fact, it is because they find a way around it. These individuals score highly on scales that measure their ability to control their actions and resist temptation, but “the interesting thing is that it doesn’t work that way”, Wood says. “What we’ve learned is that people with high self-control are not going through these white-knuckle struggles to eat better, exercise more or work harder. Instead, what they do is form habits. They automate their behaviours that get them to their goals, so they perform them without even thinking about it. That’s what makes them so successful.” It isn’t about willpower; it is about habits.

南加州大学的心理学和商学教授温迪·伍德建议，靠意志力来实现我们的新年计划，是不正确的。尽管研究表明，自我控制能力强的人往往善于达到他们的目标——如果他们有动力在工作中表现出色，他们就会得到提升; 她解释说，如果他们想有健康的生活方式，他们就会多加锻炼——这并不是因为他们用意志力控制自己的行为。事实上，这是因为他们找到了解决问题的办法。这些人在衡量他们控制行为和抵制诱惑的能力上得分很高，但伍德说，“有趣的是，事实并非如此。”“我们所了解到的是，自控能力强的人不会为了吃得更好，锻炼得更多，工作更努力，而经历这些痛苦的挣扎，。”相反，他们所做的是形成习惯。他们将自己的行为自动化，使他们达到目标，所以他们不暇思考的情况下做了这些行为。这就是他们如此成功的原因。“无关意志力;只是习惯。

This epiphany is what turned Gretchen Rubin, the author of the bestselling blockbuster Better Than Before, into the US’s happiness queen. “Habits are freeing and energising and really powerful. If there’s something you want to do consistently in your life – like New Year resolutions – habits can make the wear and tear on following through so much easier. They get us out of the tiresome business of making decisions and using our self-control.”

这一顿悟让畅销大片《比以往更好》的作者格雷琴·鲁宾成为美国的“幸福女王。”习惯是自由，活力，真正强大。如果在生活中有一些你想要坚持的事情——比如新年计划——习惯可以让你更容易经历日久耗损。让我们摆脱了做决定和自我控制的无聊事务。

Rubinspeaks with the authority of a woman who has honed her lifestyle by knowing her weaknesses and how to overcome them: “I don’t have to decide to get up at 6am – that’s a habit for me, on autopilot,” she says.

鲁宾通过了解她的弱点以及如何克服这些弱点形成了自己的生活方式并以此来证明她的权威性。她说:“我不需要下决心在早上6点起床——这对我来说是一种习惯，是一种自然而然的习惯。”

So, what makes a habit? First, says Bas Verplanken, professor of psychology at the University of Bath, they are automatic, occurring as part of our daily flow. “If going to the gym is a conscious decision, we’re vulnerable, because we have a fantastic capacity to rationalise why we should not go – we’re very, very good at that. Habits protect you against thinking,” he says. Second, they are triggered by cues in the environment, such as time or place. Third, every habit has a reward: when our brain starts to anticipate and crave the reward, it makes the behaviour automatic.

那么，什么是习惯呢?首先，巴斯大学心理学教授Bas Verplanken说，它们是自然而然的，是我们日常生活的一部分。“如果去健身房是一个有意识的决定，我们很容易放弃，因为我们有一种莫名的能力去理顺我们不应该去的原因——我们非常非常擅长这个。”习惯会保护你不去想，”他说。其次，它们是由环境中的线索引起的，比如时间和地点。第三，每个习惯都是一个奖励: 当我们的大脑开始预期并渴望奖励时，它会自动地使行为发生。

Thanks to the boom in research in the field in the past decade, Duhigg tells me, “we’ve seen a golden age in understanding the neurology and psychology of habit formation”. In the first half of the 19th century, psychology research focused solely on observable behaviour – as opposed to what Verplanken calls “what is going on under the hood” – a period known as the behaviourist revolution, led by the psychologist BF Skinner. This was followed by the cognitive revolution, which investigated how we think, as opposed to how habits work, which entails investigating how we can avoid thinking. “It’s only since the turn of this century that we’ve started to realise that the brain is actually made up of multiple systems that are connected, but somewhat separate as well,” says Wood. “One of these is a neural system that learns in a habit way and this is represented in our behaviour in terms of automaticity. All of a sudden, habits started to gain credibility.”

杜希格告诉我，由于过去十年在该领域的研究热潮，“我们已经看到了了解习惯形成的神经病学和心理学的黄金时代”。在19世纪上半叶，心理学研究只关注观察性行为，而不是Verplanken所称的“引擎下发生的事情”——这一时期被称为行为主义革命，由心理学家斯金纳领导。接着是认知革命，研究我们的思维方式，而不是习惯如何养成，这就需要研究我们如何才能避免思考。“直到本世纪初，我们才开始意识到，大脑实际上是由多个相互连接的系统组成的，但也有些独立。”伍德说。“其中包括一种以习惯方式学习的神经系统，它在我们我们的行为自然而然的表现出来。突然之间，习惯开始变得可信。

It was neuroscientists who brought habits on to psychology’s radar, since brain scans cast light on mechanisms unfolding in the deepest, darkest recesses of the brain, identifying which parts are activated as a behaviour becomes habitual. “As we repeat actions, we engage different aspects of our neural system and you can actually see habit formation taking place in the brain,” says Wood. “When you have people in scanners, activation starts in the decision-making areas of the brain – the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. Over time, as you repeat a behaviour and keep getting that reward, activation shifts more to the basal ganglial areas, particularly the putanem, because we’re no longer thinking actively; instead, we’re responding based on habit.” Wood’s research shows that 43% of what we do every day is performed out of habit. “It’s a shortcut – if you do what you did before, in this context, you’ll get the reward that you got before,” she says.

正是神经科学家把习惯带到心理学范围中，因为大脑扫描揭示了在大脑最深处、最黑暗的区域内形成的机制，识别出被激活部分，形成一种习惯。“当我们重复动作时，我们会接触到神经系统的不同方面，你可以看到大脑中发习惯的形成”伍德说。“当你扫描人的大脑，激活就会从大脑的决策区域开始——即前额叶皮层和海马体。”随着时间的推移，当你重复一种行为并不断得到奖赏时，激活会更多地转移到基底神经节区域，特别是在壳中，因为我们不再积极地思考;相反，我们是根据习惯做出反应。伍德的研究表明，我们每天所做的43%的行为都是出于习惯。她说:“这是一条捷径——如果你做了你以前做过的事，在这种情况下，你会得到你以前得到的奖励。”

These insights have significant implications for our New Year resolutions, says Duhigg. “Every habit has three components: the cue, the routine itself and the reward. A huge part of understanding how to change or control your habits is diagnosing the cues and, most importantly, the reward that routine delivers to you,” he says. I cast him in the role of my personal resolution consultant and ask what I need to do to break my phone habit. “The first thing is the terminology,” he says. “Breaking a habit is almost impossible. Once the neural pathways are set with cue, routine and reward, they are there to stay.” Rather than thinking in terms of breaking a bad habit, he says, I need to change my habit by finding a new routine that corresponds to the old cue, one that will deliver whatever reward I am getting from it currently.

杜希格说，这些见解对我们的新年计划有着重要的影响。“每个习惯都有三个组成部分:线索、常规和奖励。了解如何改变或控制你的习惯，很大程度上是在对线索进行诊断，最重要的是，你的习惯会给你带来奖励。” 我让他扮演我的个人计划顾问的角色，问我需要如何解决我玩手机的习惯。“首先是术语，”他说。改掉一个习惯几乎是不可能的。一旦这些神经通路被设定为线索、常规和奖励，它们就会留在那里。与其想改掉一个坏习惯，我需要通过寻找一个与老线索相对应的新习惯来改变我的习惯，它会给我带来现在我得到的奖励。”

I figure out that my cue is flopping on to the sofa after a long day, but I can’t pinpoint what reward it gives me. I suppose there is a voyeuristic pleasure in looking at my friends’ photos on Facebook and I’m interested by articles linked to on Twitter. This is a good start, says Duhigg. “You can easily change this habit; you just need to spend some time experimenting with other routines to see what can deliver something similar to that old reward,” he says.我发现在漫长的一天之后，我的球杆在沙发上乱摔，但我无法确定它给了我什么奖励。我想在Facebook上看我朋友的照片是一种偷窥的乐趣，我对Twitter上的文章感兴趣。杜希格说，这是一个良好的开端。“你可以很容易地改变这个习惯;你只需要花点时间去尝试其他的常规方法，看看什么能带来类似于过去的奖励。”他说。

For Rubin, the answer is more complex. “There is no magic, one-size-fits-all solution. Otherwise, we would have figured it out,” she says. In her book The Four Tendencies, she divides people into categories based on how we respond to inner and outer expectations (there is a quiz on her website, if you are intrigued). She says we need to tap into our own tendency to learn how to best stick to our habits. She diagnoses me as an Obliger – someone who meets outer expectations, but resists inner expectations; sounds about right – and suggests that the reason I failed so miserably (not her words) at keeping my running resolution last year could be that I had no outer accountability. Had I arranged to meet a friend for runs, turning inner expectations into outer, I might have been more successful. She also questions why I decided to run early in the morning when I usually exercise in the evening and why I chose running when I prefer exercise classes. Now, I realise why it went wrong: I didn’t know myself.

对于鲁宾来说，答案更为复杂。“没有不可思议的通用型解决方案。”否则，我们可以找到，”她说。在《四种趋势》中，她根据我们对内在和外在期望的反应(如果你感兴趣的话，在她的网站上有一个小测验)，将人们分成不同的类别。她说，我们需要利用自己的癖好去学习如何最好地坚持我们的习惯。她认为我是一个施惠与人者——一个满足外界期望，但抗拒内心期望的人; 听起来是对的——并且暗示去年保持我的跑步计划失败的原因(而不是她的话)可能是我没有外部责任。如果我和一个朋友一起跑步，把内在的期望变成外在的，我可能会更成功。她还问我为什么通常在晚上跑步的情况下，要决定在清晨早点跑步，为什么相对于跑步我更喜欢体育课。现在，我意识到为什么错了:因为我自己也不知道。

I wonder if this is the root of most failed New Year resolutions. The difficulty making or changing habits then becomes a more profound question of why we can’t make ourselves do the things we want or stop ourselves from doing the things we don’t. According to David Bell, a psychoanalyst and consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, the answer is resistance. “One thing Freud put on the map is that we’re all much more resistant to change than we like to believe,” he says. Resistance is what happens when our unconscious holds us back from making the changes we consciously desire. Resolving to behave differently won’t help, he says; what can help is trying to figure out why we are the way we are.

我不知道这是不是大多数新年计划失败的的根源。困难的形成或改变的习惯就变成了一个更深刻的问题——我们为什么不能让自己去做我们想做的事情或者阻止自己去做那些我们不做的事情。大卫·贝尔，塔维斯托克和波特曼NHS基金会信托基金的精神分析师兼心理咨询师，认为答案是抵抗。他说:“弗洛伊德提出，我们对变化的抵抗力比我们想象的要大得多。”他说，当我们的潜意识阻碍我们做出有意识的改变时，反抗就会发生。采取不同的行动是无济于事的;找到我们为什么如此的原因，才能对我们有所帮助。

“Sometimes people are very fearful of others for reasons they don’t understand,” he says. “That tendency in their character is not going to be dealt with by deciding not to be frightened of other people – they need to understand the roots of that and that takes more time.”

他说:“有时候人们会因为自己不明白的原因而害怕别人。” “下定决心不害怕他人是无法解决他们性格中的那种倾向——他们需要理解这个问题的根源，这需要更多的时间。”

This is why thinking of personal growth as a neurological habit loop to be hacked doesn’t sit well with Bell. “It might be helpful for some people, but I think human beings have a rich subjective life, some of it conscious, a lot more less conscious,” he says. “To me, this sounds like treating your own mind as if it’s a machine that needs correction. I think that mechanical way of thinking about the self is alienating to individuals.” He sees a darker side to this kind of self-improvement strategy, describing a cultural shift that has intensified over the past 20 years, in which there is an increasing pressure, he says, “to think of individuals just as individuals, not as people in a network of social, cultural, historical relationships that are determining and affecting them. That goes hand in hand with a wish to transfer all responsibility to change on to the individuals themselves – and with undermining systems of social and medical welfare that form the basis of our way of thinking about our responsibilities for each other.”

这就是为什么把个人成长看作是一个神经系统习惯被黑客循环攻击的原因。他说:“这可能对一些人有帮助，但我认为人类有丰富的主观生活，其中一些是有意识的，大部分是少意识的。”对我来说，这听起来就像是在把自己的大脑当成是需要矫正的机器。我认为机械的自我思考的方式于个体不同。”他认为这种自我完善的策略有更阴暗的一面，描述了过去20年加剧的压力越来越大文化转变,他说,“个体只是个体, 不是被网络社会、文化、历史的关系决定或者影响的人。 这与将所有责任转移到个人身上的愿望并行不悖——以破坏社会和医疗福利制度为基础，形成我们对彼此责任的思考方式。

Am I any more likely, I ask Verplanken, to be able to stick to my New Year resolution today than I would have been 100 years ago, given all these advances in psychology? His answer surprises me. “Human nature is, in essence, not very different from 100 years ago – we are wired in the same way,” he says. “We like to think that we are progressing – and we are in all kinds of ways – but human nature doesn’t change.”

我问Verplanken，相比于100年前，鉴于心理学的发展，我是否更有可能坚持我今天的新年计划? 他的回答让我惊讶。“从本质上讲，人类的本性与100年前没有多大区别——我们的思维方式是一样的。”他说，“我们认为我们在进步——以各种各样的方式——但人性是不会改变的。”

Yet I have felt something shift after speaking to these experts. Why do I reach for my phone every evening? Because I need to escape my stressful day and it is an easy way out – it brings relief. So, I am following Duhigg’s advice and experimenting with different behaviours that could give me the same reward – watching TV, reading a novel, listening to a podcast – and I am also, as Bell suggests, trying to explore more deeply why I get so anxious in the first place.然而，在与这些专家交谈后，我感到了一些变化。为什么我每天晚上都玩手机?因为我需要摆脱一天紧张的生活，这是一个简单的方法——它带来自由。所以，我在遵守杜希格的建议，尝试不同的可以给我同样的奖励的行动，——看电视，读小说，听播客——我也像贝尔建议的那样，试着更深入地探索为什么我一开始就会如此焦虑。

I hope that, eventually, this will enable me to connect better with myself and with my loved ones, instead of choosing to disconnect from the world. It is ambitious, as New Year resolutions go, but I am feeling optimistic.

最终，我希望，这将使我能够更好地与我自己和我所爱的人紧密相连，而不是选择脱离世界。虽然新年的计划的野心勃勃已经逝去，但依然积极乐观。

Link: ‘Anyone can change any habit’ the science of keeping your 2018 resolutions