Behavior happens when three things come together at the same moment: a motivation to do the behavior, an ability to do the behavior, and a prompt.

People don't like to admit this, but our behavior is influenced by our environment more than we think, and part of that environment is the people around us.

People are set up to believe that taking 10,000 steps a day will lead to weight loss; I challenge that notion. I don't think 10,000 steps a day is very effective for weight loss. It's great for other things, but weight loss is primarily a function of nutrition, and then after that, in my amateur opinion, strength training.

The emotion you feel as you perform the new behavior is what wires it into your brain as a habit. In other words, it's emotions that create habits.

When people see that they can change behavior and reach a success, that helps wire in the habit and helps them sustain the change over time. The feeling of success is what wires in habits and keeps people going.

Habit strength correlates with repetition, but repetition isn't what creates the habit.

Information alone does not reliably lead to sustained behavior change. Information can be part of the puzzle, but that alone doesn't seem to do the trick for most people.

Stories are a technology for transmitting cause and effect relationships within communities and through generations.

What we seem to be terrible at as human beings is projecting our future levels of motivation.

I think the whole reason stories exist— whether they're in folk tales, songs, parables, or little sayings—is to perpetuate a sense of cause and effect. If you're honest, people will like you. If you lie, you'll be kicked out of the community. If you follow the rules, you will succeed.