Context
Context has the power to shape our most basic behaviors and our most private thoughts. From moral character to a sense of identity to physical attraction and falling in love, our instincts and actions are surprisingly subject to the power of ordinary situations.
Many of our bad habits become routinized in particular settings. Most of our daily existence takes place in familiar environments, within the confines of well-worn routine. We get to the point where we take those immediate surroundings for granted, but we also come to associate automatically certain behavioral tendencies with those routines.
Anything you can do to disrupt your automatic response to your surroundings can be beneficial. Frankly, just being aware of the role context plays in sustaining bad habits can be enough to kickstart the effort to snap them.
One of the major themes of the past decade of social cognition research is that we can combat implicit associations by making them explicit. So by forcing yourself to appreciate the ways in which context shapes behavior, you can regain the upper hand in the battle for self control.
As with other aspects of human nature, you have to recognize that the world around you is pulling your strings before you can effectively start yanking back.
Psychology Today
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