People love talking about decision-making as if we are all sitting around carefully analyzing every action we take. It's almost like we’re all these deeply rational creatures constantly weighing options and making intentional choices throughout the day. But if we start to pay attention to how we actually live our lives, most of our days are pretty much automatic. We all follow the same routes we’re used to, open the same apps, react to the same emotions in the same ways, make the same mistakes over and over, and call all of this just who we are.

There’s a reason researchers keep describing habits as behaviors tied to context and repetition instead of conscious intention. A lot of studies on habit formation point to the same idea: repeated behaviors slowly become linked to cues around us, like places, emotions, routines, times of day or specific people. Eventually, the cue itself starts pulling the behavior out automatically. That’s partly why changing environments can disrupt habits so much. People who move houses, change jobs, transfer universities, or go through breakups suddenly realize how much of their routine was being held together by environmental triggers they never noticed before (1, 2).

And this is not just about simple routine choices. I think anxiety is a very good example, because anxious people are basically watching habit loops happen all the time. Overthinking starts as an attempt to prevent something bad from happening. Seeking reassurance feels like you're just being responsible at first. Your brain starts to learn that these behaviors reduce discomfort, even if only temporarily, so it keeps repeating them, until one day you realize you’re no longer consciously choosing those reactions at all, they just happen. And that's why repetitive negative thinking is so strong. People keep thinking because it feels like they are being productive. Your brain convinces you that if you analyze the problem enough times, you’ll finally feel safe. Meanwhile, the very thinking itself becomes the thing that traps you. The loop continues long after it stopped being useful (3).

I also think part of what makes this an intriguing discussion is that automatic behaviors never actually feel automatic when we are experiencing them. Nobody wakes up thinking “I am now performing a conditioned behavioral loop.” It just feels like your personality, preferences, or just your normal reactions. Researchers studying habits often describe these behaviors as patterns shaped by repetition and familiar contexts, eventually requiring very little conscious monitoring. And that’s probably why people get defensive when talking about unconscious behavior, because we experience ourselves as intentional even when we are mostly repeating familiar patterns (2, 4, 5).

And modern life feeds these loops constantly, because now, very uncomfortable emotions have an immediate escape route attached to them. If you're feeling awkward in public, you can always just check your phone! Or if you are feeling uncertain about your health, just Google your symptoms! If you're overwhelmed by the amount of things you have to do, just scroll through social media and completely lose track of time, because then you'll always have another distraction available within seconds. We ended up creating an environment where almost no feeling needs to be tolerated anymore, and I don’t think our brains are adapting to that particularly well.

We end up romanticizing conscious decision-making way more than we probably should. People talk about “thinking things through” as if consciousness is this perfectly rational system guiding our lives, but conscious attention is actually very limited. Some researchers argue that the amount of information we can consciously process at once is surprisingly small, which means a huge part of human functioning HAS to happen automatically or outside awareness. Otherwise, daily life would become impossible (6).

And then people just talk about "control" as if it's something absolute, like you either have discipline or you don't. Many performance coaches will just convince people that it's just a matter of trying hard enough, as if we can pick every single decision we make. Human behaviour is not that black and white... Nobody is carefully making hundreds of deliberate decisions every day. Most of us are simply repeating patterns we learned a long time ago.

And then we end up naming these patterns as if they are our entire personalities. Someone might call themselves avoidant, pessimistic, hyper independent, obsessive, emotionally unavailable, when part of that identity may just be years of reinforced behavioral loops repeated so many times they started feeling natural. And once something feels natural, we stop questioning it, that’s probably why changing yourself can feel so hard sometimes. People think change is mostly about motivation, but I’m not convinced that’s true. You can consciously want something and still find yourself automatically doing the opposite five minutes later because the older pattern is stronger, faster, and more familiar. Habits do not care about your beautiful plans for self-improvement. Your brain cares much more about efficiency than self-awareness.

References: (1) Changing Circumstances, Disrupting Habits (2) The Unbearable Automaticity of Being (3) Psychology of Habit (4) Habits in Everyday Life: Thought, Emotion, and Action (5) Habits, Rituals, and the Evaluative Brain (6) Think Different: The Merits of Unconscious Thought in Preference Development and Decision Making