Memento mori

Humans are animals that adapt. At first, everyone may feel unfamiliar in a new environment, but as time passes, they adapt to it.

However, once a habit is formed, it is rarely corrected. What's strange is that humans are creatures designed to adapt to their environment, so why is it that habits are so hard to change, contrary to that very design? If you don't break your existing habits, won't you inevitably fail to adapt and fall behind when faced with a new environment?

Habits too, follow the brain's plasticity, which pursues efficiency in daily life. For example, when brushing our teeth, we first take out the toothbrush and squeeze out the toothpaste. However, if this same action is repeated three times a day, it becomes far more energy-efficient to unconsciously reach for the places where the toothbrush and toothpaste are kept, rather than running through the same memory circuit each time - first the toothbrush, then the toothpaste. That would simply be a waste of energy. In the end, the entire sequence of hand movements involved in preparing to brush our teeth hardens into a habit.

People tend to use whether something aids environmental adaptation as the criterion for classifying habits as good or bad. But in themselves, the hardware programs built into the human body and the software imprinted on the mind are clearly at odds with each other.

Is everything really just a matter of willpower?