Every time you innocuously glance at your WhatsApp or Instagram, you are building a habit.
Every gratifying action builds a habit — no exceptions.
I had already known this from psychology. But the Buddhist meditation master (Nyanaponika Thera) says: “Repeated gratification turns a desire into a habit, and habit left unchecked grows into compulsion.”
So these meditation masters figured this out 2,500 years ago, without any research budget. 😊
Modern psychology explains habit formation through reward-based learning — any rewarding action causes dopamine release, which in turn, makes it more likely that we will take the action the next time.
And if we do it enough number of times, the gratifying action becomes a habit.
This means that every single day, with every small action, we are constantly building habits, some of which later become addictions.
But if we go down one small step at a time, how do we come out of it?
Again, one small positive action at a time.
Never underestimate the power of small, repeated actions.
– Rajan