This is Annie Grace and you're listening to this naked mind podcast where without judgment,

pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture.

I have a question from Kathy and Kathy says, hi, thanks so much for everything.

I could go a great length on what you've done for me, which has been amazing, but I'm sure you've heard it before,

but I keep sensing this idea repeated, non-year work, but elsewhere, that if you do something for 21 days, it becomes a habit.

My understanding is that's incorrect and it came from some plastic surgeon in the 1920s who basically made it up.

And I think it's kind of dangerous for people to rely on this.

Maybe we've already done a video on this, but I didn't see one, which you mind answering this for me.

Kathy, yes, you're right. There was a surgeon, his name was Maxwell Malt and he was in the 1950s.

And what happened was that he observed that within about 21 days, people would become used to whatever surgery he had done to them.

So for instance, if they got a nose job, then in 21 days, they started to become used to where they've reported being used to seeing their new face in the mirror.

And so he said, huh, well, also in my life, I feel like it takes about 21 days to get used to a new habit.

So he actually published a book and it was called Psycho Cybernetics.

And in this book, he says this and I'm going to read it so I can quote it.

He says, these and many other commonly observed phenomenon tend to show that it requires a minimum of 21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and the new one to gel.

Now here's the thing. Number one, he said minimum of 21 days.

Number two, he said mental image. So it wasn't talking about habits overall, but what happened was psycho-psychoproonetics sold 30 million copies.

And so this idea got really distorted and kind of it was like this game of telephone where someone said to somebody and all of a sudden this idea became very prevalent in our society that it takes 21 days to form a new habit.

And that's how long it takes and that's the schick. And so even like Zig Ziglar and all these self-help people were saying 21 days, 21 days, there was all sorts of 21 day fads and you know the thing.

So interestingly, I was able to find a really cool study that NASA did.

And just say, okay, how long does the brain actually take to rewire itself? So not just to think about something differently, but actually deform enough new neural connections that the world is perceived differently.

And this study was very cool. So they were planning to send astronauts into space and they wanted to answer this question.

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