The Power of Habit: How New Actions Change Your Inner State

Here’s a fun (and slightly scary) fact: 40% of your actions are pure habits. Why? Because your brain doesn’t want to waste energy on repetitive tasks. Instead, it saves its resources for things like creativity, decision-making, and skill learning. 

Sure, your days are efficient while on autopilot, but it also means that once bad habits sneak in, they also run the show. If you’ve recognized yourself, then this article is definitely for you. Let’s find out how habits are formed and how exactly they can change your inner state. 

How Do Habits Start?

Your habit formation starts in one of the older brain areas — the basal ganglia, which is responsible for the execution of automatic actions. But as you’ll find from mental health app reviews, including the liven app reviews, people are looking for tools that help them form healthy habits because basal ganglia is a pretty sabotaging mastermind. It evaluates the reward for every action and turns the most rewarding actions into habits. But here is the twist.

Binge-watching, doomscrolling, eating sugar foods… Oh, yes, your basal ganglia loves immediate reward. And it surely doesn’t care about the consequences of these habits for your mind or body. 

Before we move to how new actions change your inner state, let’s take a quick look on how to break the habit loop with a science-backed approach. 

How to Form a New Healthy Habit

There is actually this book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, in which the author dissects the mechanism of habit formation: the “cue-routine-reward” loop. The cue is what triggers the behavior, the routine is the actual behavior, and the reward is the feeling of satisfaction or relief that your brain gets after executing the behavior. 

According to the book, you don’t have to change the trigger and the reward — only the behavior. Let’s say you come home stressed (cue) and immediately grab sweets (routine) to relax (reward). This is a common example of self-sabotaging symptoms, where instead of managing stress in a healthy way, you turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms. Next time, try to opt for 10 minutes of stretching, reading, or even calling a friend. That’s way healthier than eating sweets non-stop as a form of relaxation.

Here is what happens to your brain and body when you swap old routines for healthier ones.

#1: New Habits Increase Neuroplasticity and Rewire Your Brain

Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, is the ability of your brain to form new connections between its cells. Think of it as a forest where one takes a new path no one has been on before. Due to this process, your brain learns new things, recovers from injury (for instance, stroke), forms new habits, and gets rid of the older unhelpful ones. 

This means that repeating new actions again and again eventually makes it automatic. At the same time, the older unhelpful neural connections weaken. And that’s how your brain learns. 

Interesting fact: People who practice new skills consistently (like playing piano or learning a new language) show structural brain changes in MRI scans within just a few weeks.

#2: Give You a Dopamine Boost

When you exercise or engage in your favorite creative hobbies, your brain releases dopamine, the reward-and-motivation hormone. Unlike quick dopamine spikes from junk food or social media, these are stable, long-term boosts.

Dopamine actually helps you initiate the task and keep that motivation going till you finish it. And yes, that rewarding feeling in the end is also dopamine in work. 

Interesting fact: Studies show that even a 20-minute brisk walk can increase dopamine release and improve mood for several hours.

#3: Help With Mood Regulation

When you build habits like journaling, yoga, or deep breathing, you train your nervous system to calm down. This reduces activity in the amygdala (your brain’s fear center) and strengthens the prefrontal cortex (the reasoning and self-control area). As a result, you get fewer mood swings and generally stay calmer. 

Interesting fact: Just 8 weeks of regular mindfulness practice can actually shrink the size of the amygdala and thicken the prefrontal cortex simultaneously.

#4: Disrupt Negative Thought Patterns and Behaviors

Habits like overthinking, binge-watching, or late-night snacking keep you in a destructive loop. Each time you repeat the behavior, your basal ganglia reinforces the loop and makes it way harder for you to stop next time.

How to break the loop? By adding a new behavior to it. For instance, once you find yourself spiraling in anxious thoughts, you can take a “pattern break” like journaling or walking. Over time, these new choices will help you weaken the negative patterns. 

Interesting fact: Neuroscientists call this experience-dependent plasticity, meaning that the more you engage into a new behavior, the stronger the new brain connection becomes. 

#5: Improve Focus and Productivity

Healthy habits reduce decision fatigue as your brain no longer needs to spend precious energy on “Should I or shouldn’t I?” debates. Instead, it can focus on more complex tasks. 

For instance, if you always start your morning with a glass of water and 10 minutes of stretching, you no longer waste willpower to decide whether you’ll do these things because you wake up and simply do them. 

Interesting fact: Studies suggest that people make up to 35,000 decisions every single day.

#6: Reduce the Feeling of Social Isolation

How is that important in times of individualism and big cities? Well, social connections are one of the strongest predictors of long-term health and happiness because as humans, we weren’t designed to be isolated. 

When you regularly call friends, join group workouts, or attend classes, you actually get a sense of belonging and a boost of serotonin (the happiness hormone) and oxytocin (the trust hormone that also deeply relaxes your body). 

Interesting fact: Loneliness can increase the risk of early death by up to 26%.

Final Thoughts 

Habits help your brain run the show on autopilot. They rewire your brain, shape your mood, and even build resilience for the long run. The trick is to choose ones that benefit you and get rid of those that don’t.

So, start small, try new things, and stay consistent.

You’ve got this!