Good vs. Bad Habits — Why Are Good Habits So Hard To Keep & Bad Habits So Easy To Pick Up?

Lukas Schwekendiek
4 min readAug 22, 2021

The action of grabbing another chocolate bar is supported by our bodies desire to stack up on calories and fat, for which it will reward us positively with both taste and endorphins.

Watching another episode of our favorite show on Netflix keeps us safely in our home, conserving energy and entertains our mind by forgetting all the things that cause us stress.

Every Bad Habit is made easier through millions of years of evolution that we have to fight through in order to establish good habits.

We have to remember that we have not long yet been at a stage where we have had the liberty to not focus on our survival and where we could focus on other things.

While the world changed drastically, we did not.

The world is now a place where, at least if you can read this, you likely have a roof over your head and do not have to fight for food every single day of your life.

That is a luxury that our body does not yet understand.

From its perspective, we are still in survival mode, fighting for our existence, which is why we still feel amazing when we do things that encourage survival and reproduction, which are often not success oriented things any more.

Most habits that make us feel good or that support our bodies are either bad for us in the long run or beget instant gratification.

What this essentially means is: That there is a reason we think chocolate tastes so good and why most shows are so addictive.

It does not help that most big companies understand this and use this to make us even more dependent on Entertainment, Fatty Foods and Procrastination.

That is why developing bad habits is so easy: Our bodies are basically designed for them.

Good habits, on the other hand, usually require something our bodies are rarely willing to sacrifice.

Sports requires Energy, healthy food sacrifices taste or sugar, working hard at your job induces stress and consumes the energy we’ve built.

Lukas Schwekendiek

Life Coach, Speaker, Writer. Published on TIME, Inc & Huffington Post.