Creatures of habit

Some rules are nothing but old habits that people are afraid to change

Therese Fowler

Recognizing your bad habits is simple. To know that something is unhealthy or destructive, you generally don’t usually need to look far to obtain that kind of information. But what about changing habits and behaviors?

Our environment dramatically influences our behaviors and healthy or unhealthy habits. If you have grown up in a culture that indulges in unhealthy foods and eating out then it makes it much harder to try to adopt healthy eating behaviors. With chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes affecting millions of people, finding a way to influence societies nutritional choices is a vital target for preventative healthcare.

By changing what we consider social norms, we can dramatically affect a population’s habits. However, this occurrence does not usually happen all at once. After all, it is one thing to want to change, but it is another to actually overcome things that have become almost impulsive.

I recently enrolled in a communicating science course as a part of my graduate program and changing human behavior was the center of the focus for the first lecture. I found this appropriate for a group of life sciences major who are enrolling in a course that, for most of us, is completely different from every other class we have been in for the last few years. For me personally, this topic resonated with me for so many reasons, but the most important one was how I was going to have to overcome my behavior that makes me so uncomfortable with public speaking.

As a high school student who enjoyed liberal arts much more than anything else, especially anything science related, I frequently performed at poetry readings or readings in my creative writing classes. However, as time has passed and I have switched over to mathematics and life sciences, I have become more and more comfortable with my introvert behavior that I’ve been allowed to settle into. This course will push me back into something that feels so unfamiliar and I am sure that a dozen class meetings isn’t going to change me, but it puts me an environment that encourages change to happen.

My fears of failure and my intense anxiety that I struggle with on a daily basis feels vulnerable, but then I guess change has never been comfortable.