Ask HN:Why we get used to everything?

I am right now used to an unhappy job!

By getting used to not getting used to things?

When you learn how to ride a bicycle, it is really hard. You fall, the entire thing seems almost impossible, it requires a lot of concentration and perhaps even leads to frustration. Once you learn how to ride the bicycle however, you sort of work on automatism.

If you have a routine in the morning, you do not need to stop and think what you are going to do. You get up, have a shower, brush your teeth, you know what you are going to do with your day, so you can keep the focus and attention for other new things which inevitably occur within the structure.

For example, reading hacker news is a distinctive activity, and it is the same activity any time you do it, but what you read is often new things.

I doubt I have explained myself well, but basically people get used to things because that is the most efficient way of operating. Learning how to write for example is a very hard thing, once you do learn however, it happens almost automatically. So too with such complex things as you mentioned. Finding a job is relatively hard, once you find the job however and settle in, you operate more efficiently.

I have been thinking very hard about how this can be broken. It happens all the time, we change habits all the time. As to why some are easy to break and some others are not I am not sure. I think there is this ingredient which I call conviction. It is not knowing that something is bad, nor understanding or realising, but an absolute conviction, that is absolute certainty that something is bad and damaging to yourself which seems to make breaking certain habits easier, even very easy to break.

When however you would like to do it, but know that it is bad, although you are absolutely certain that it is bad, it still is hard because although you might think you are absolutely certain, there is doubt, because you like doing the thing, and doubt makes breaking a habit very hard. In such instances, the only way I know to break the habit is by pure strength of will.