In this instructional video, Aaron Doughty explains how habit change can transform one’s life, grounding his advice in neuroscience. He begins with an Aristotle quote about habit shaping excellence, then presents data that people have 60‑70 k thoughts daily, 90 % of which are recycled from the previous day, linking repetitive thoughts to repeated outcomes. He describes how thoughts trigger emotions via neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine, vasopressin) and how altering thought patterns can reshape feelings and actions. Doughty outlines three practical strategies: (1) change your environment to break sensory and contextual loops; (2) start small, setting achievable micro‑goals that build momentum; (3) use accountability, enlisting others to reinforce commitment. He ties these tactics to the neuro‑principle “neurons that fire together wire together,” emphasizing consistent new thoughts create lasting neural pathways. He also urges viewers to consciously define the person they want to become, visualize that identity, and act accordingly. Personal examples include his own exercise routine and a twice‑daily meditation practice that boosts serotonin and dopamine, illustrating the tangible impact of habit change. The video concludes with encouragement to apply these ideas for lasting life improvement.
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Hey guys, Aaron here, and today what I want to talk about is something that's had a huge impact in my life. And what this is, is how to change your habits to change your life. One of my favorite quotes, and it was a quote that was on my iPad for many years, was by Aristotle, and it said that we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit. And that's one of my favorite quotes because it was something that I applied in my own life and I was able to make a big change on how I feel every day and the things that I do by understanding this. So in this video, what I want to do is I want to come at it from a little bit of a different point of view. I want to come at it from a neuroscience point of view, and the reason being is because once you understand this concept, it becomes very evident and very obvious why it's so important to change your habits and then how to do that. So what neuroscience tells us is that on average every day we think about 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day, and that out of those 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts we think, about 90% of them are recycled from the day before, which means that on a daily basis We're creating the same type of experiences, we're feeling the same way, and we're thinking the same way. So if we're constantly doing the same thing, we're going to get the same result. If we want to have new experiences, we need to change the way that we think, and we need to then change how we feel and what we do. And once I began to really understand this, it was also very much correlated to how, how you think correlates to your emotions, and the emotions that you feel come from the neurotransmitters and the hormones in your body, such as vasopressin, serotonin, dopamine. All of these have an effect on how you feel, and they're normally results of how you feel about what you think, because the thought comes and then the emotion follows. So knowing that how we feel is a result of how we think and how we feel about how we think, we can change how and what we think about to change our experiences, to expand how we feel and to expand out of our own comfort zone, which is something I talked about in my last video. So what I want to talk about are 3 ways that we can change our habits and a little bit of tips along the way for this. And I found that one of the easiest ways to change habits is to make it something that you do daily, because the more consistently you do it, the easier it becomes. Now the first way the first main step towards changing your habit is to change your environment. So knowing that 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day, that 90% of them are recycled from the day before, it's no question that most of that comes from the fact that we habitually are in the same type of environments. We get up, do the same things every day, we go to the same places, we go to the same gym, we go to work, we talk to the same people. Normally we have similar conversations that we did the day before, and this creates the the same type of experiences because we're in the same environment. So the easiest way to change our habits is to change our environment. So if, for example, we don't go to the gym, uh, that would be something powerful to do is to go to the gym or to go do something that we haven't done before, to get outside of our normal realm of comfort and our normal realm of daily activities. And it makes sense too because most of the stimuli, most of our 5 senses are, are come from the information that's coming into us, and if we're in the same environment, we're therefore perpetuating the same type of information that's coming in. So the first thing is to change your environment. The second tip that I have is to start small. A lot of times people will come, a lot happens a lot of times during New Year's resolutions, everyone has all these really big things they're gonna do. They're gonna start working out, they're gonna lose all this weight, they're gonna start making all this money, and they're gonna be, you know, having all this ambition all of a sudden. There's nothing wrong with that, but the way to really make it stick is to make it something that you start small with. So if you were to, instead of saying, I'm gonna go to the gym for 2 hours a day to change how I feel and how I look, and I'm gonna do it 5 times a week, that is less likely to happen if you don't go to the gym at all right now But what would be more likely is if you were to say, I'm going to go to the gym for 10 minutes today, I'm going to drive to the gym and do a little bit of cardio and then leave. That is more powerful because it's a more attainable goal. And if you do that consistently, you might find that then you can up the ante a little bit. It becomes easier for you to do a little bit more. And maybe after a couple months, then you are going an hour a day and you're going 5 times a week consistently. And you'll find that the more you do something, A lot of times you'll find more reasons to justify it and it'll be something that you associate pleasure with more. And if you were to think of not doing it, once you make it a habit, you would associate pain with that. It's something that I've done in my own life. If I were to think about not going to the gym, because I go consistently, if I were to think about not doing that, I associate that with pain because I associate so much pleasure with going. But that's because of momentum. I've been doing it so consistently that is something that's ingrained into myself. So that's the second one, is to start small. The third one is accountability. And accountability is something that's very powerful because then it's not just yourself holding yourself to what you say you're going to do, it's somebody else. And a lot of times, even if we let ourselves down, and that's okay, it's hard for us to let somebody else down who is holding us accountable. So the idea is that you can use accountability as a tool and you can have a friend or maybe a family member that checks in with you maybe every week to see how you're doing with that. And it's something that I found to be very powerful because you find that you will hold yourself accountable to not only yourself but to other people. So the third thing is accountability. And going back to the neuroscience of it, it's 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts that we think a day, and 90% of them are habitual. The way that we get outside of that is obviously we think different thoughts, and by thinking these different thoughts and feeling differently about the way we think, we're able to then create new connections. And when we create— another saying in neuroscience is that neurons that fire together wire together, meaning the more consistently that you think your new way, the new way that you define yourself, the easier it'll get because they begin to actually wire together. You're making new neural connections that begin to become permanent, and then it becomes easier for you to do it consistently. That's why if you do something consistently enough, it becomes easier and easier because you're wiring those connections in your brain. And one thing that I've also noticed while studying all this kind of information is that people will always remain consistent to how they define themselves. So what I encourage you to do is to define yourself and how you want to be defined or how you want to be— define yourself the way you want to be defined. Choose what that is. You get to choose. Don't be a victim to your thoughts and don't be a victim to your habits. Make new habits based on how you want to be. Visualize yourself doing those things and then take action on it. And it can have the power to change your life. And it changed my life. Some of the habits that I've changed that I've done that's really changed how I feel on a daily basis are not only exercise, which I've already explained, but also meditation. For me, meditation was the single most important thing that I've done over the last— I've been doing it about 4 years now— that's changed how I feel on a daily basis. And I'll go on this in a later post, but there's tons of research and tons of science that shows the powerful, uh, the powerful connection between the brain and meditation and how it makes you feel. You actually release more serotonin and dopamine, which are the happy chemicals, when you get into a common habit of meditation. But it's the first 30 minutes of my day right when I wake up, and it's the last 30 minutes of the day right before I go to bed, and it has completely, profoundly changed how I feel on a daily basis. And I'll go more into that on a later, on a later video. But I hope this video added some type of value to your life today, and I hope that you can take something and use it in a positive way. And until next time, you guys have a great day. Thanks, bye-bye.
