How We Are: Negotiating Change in Daily Life

Health psychologist Vincent Deary shows how much of our lives are lived automatically, according to beaten paths. How can we avoid becoming ‘habit machines’, and overcome our resistance to change, making our acts truly ours?

Our ways of life, our daily routines, are not just habits of thinking and doing the same things in the same way. We embed our ways of life in the places where we do our living and we surround ourselves with others, our tribes, who act as mirrors to remind us who we are and what we are like.

It takes a lot to get us out of that, a compelling call, an overwhelming imperative. But sometimes something interrupts our routine lives. Heightened arousal and attention are the hallmarks of these times of transition, putting us under constant internal pressure to get back to normal, a new normal, as quickly as possible. During such difficult times it is often easier to fall back on the consolation of old habits, even though these will not get the job of change done.

Drawing on a variety of resources, from the wisdom literature to modern evidence-based psychotherapy, from 'Rebecca' to 'The Matrix', health psychologist Vincent Deary illuminates and explores the way habit structures and runs our daily lives, counting the necessary challenges and costs of change.

Speaker: Vincent Deary, health psychologist, Northumbria University.