âIn a 1994 Harvard study that examined people who had radically changed their lives, for instance, researchers found that some people had remade their habits after a personal tragedy, such as a divorce or a life-threatening illness. Others changed after they saw a friend go through something awful, the same way that Dungyâs players watched him struggle.
Just as frequently, however, there was no tragedy that preceded peopleâs transformations. Rather, they changed because they were embedded in social groups that made change easier. One woman said her entire life shifted when she signed up for a psychology class and met a wonderful group. âIt opened a Pandoraâs box,â the woman told researchers. âI could not tolerate the status quo any longer. I had changed in my core.â Another man said that he found new friends among whom he could practice being gregarious. âWhen I do make the effort to overcome my shyness, I feel that it is not really me acting, that itâs someone else,â he said. But by practicing with his new group, it stopped feeling like acting. He started to believe he wasnât shy, and then, eventually, he wasnât anymore. When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real. For most people who overhaul their lives, there are no seminal moments or life-altering disasters. There are simply communitiesâ€sometimes of just one other personâ€who make change believable.
One woman told researchers her life transformed after a day spent cleaning toiletsâ€and after weeks of discussing with the rest of the cleaning crew whether she should leave her husband.
âChange occurs among other people,â one of the psychologists involved in the study, Todd Heatherton, told me. âIt seems real when we can see it in other peopleâs eyes.â
The precise mechanisms of belief are little understood. No one is certain why a group encountered in a psychology class can convince a woman that everything is different, or why Dungyâs team came together after their coachâs son passed away. Plenty of people talk to friends about unhappy marriages and never leave their spouse; lots of teams watch their coaches experience adversity and never gel.Â
But we do know that for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible. The same process that makes AA so effectiveâ€the power of a group to teach individuals how to believeâ€happens whenever people come together to help one another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.â
†The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg
