FROM THE MAZE TO SUCCESS

In the book that follows, I will share a step-by-step plan for building better habits-not for days or weeks, but for a lifetime. While science supports everything I've written, this book is not an academic research paper; it's an operating manual. You'll find wisdom and practical advice front and center as I explain the science of how to create and change your habits in a way that is easy to understand and apply. The fields I draw on-biology, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and more-have been around for many years. What I offer you is a synthesis of the best ideas smart people figured out a long time ago as well as the most compelling discoveries scientists have made recently. My contribution, I hope, is to find the ideas that matter most and connect them in a way that is highly actionable. Anything wise in these pages you should credit to the many experts who preceded me. Anything foolish, assume it is my error. The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits-cue, craving, response, and reward-and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps. Readers with a psychology background may recognize some of these terms from operant conditioning, which was first proposed as "e;stimulus, response, reward"e; by B. F. Skinner in the 1930s and has been popularized more recently as "e;cue, routine, reward"e; in The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Behavioral scientists like Skinner realized that if you offered the right reward or punishment, you could get people to act in a certain way. But while Skinner's model did an excellent job of explaining how external stimuli influenced our habits, it lacked a good explanation for how our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs impact our behavior. Internal states-our moods and emotions-matter, too. In recent decades, scientists have begun to determine the connection between our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This research will also be covered in this book"e;