Lovely little illustration on how best to approach seemingly invincible habits. From Unwinding Anxiety by Dr Judd Brewer.

There’s a relief on the Parthenon in Greece — one of these ones I think he’s referring to —  from like 450AD or something, a very very old relief that depicts a horse and a rider, and the horse denotes our passions, cravings, desires, urges; the rider resembles our reason and willpower, and appears to be taming this horse. Well, ‘appears to’…

The problem is that our willpower is rooted in our relatively young orbital-frontal cortex (OFC. Like Colonel Sanders but not.) and is an easy pushover when presented with choice, especially if the habit is well-rooted and your behaviour is conditioned to follow the path of least resistance. Some good research is being done the past few decades with the help of fMRI and other sorcery about how this OFC part just plainly goes offline if the going gets tough, read about it in the book (Chapter 5 I think).

The better way of approaching habits, and by extension, addictions, would be to think of the horse-rider interaction as more of a dance. If you’re outgunned by a beast use your head and make the relationship work to your advantage.

More about it in the book, or have a glimpse of what Dr Judd talks about in podcasts like this one.