Why do old habits die hard?

[Jitendra Hydonus]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201602/why-old-habits-die-hard

The core of an impulsive system is made of learned habits. In the absence of self-control, habitual behavior is the default option. Especially when under the sway of overwhelming emotions, we react to surrounding cues without awareness of doing so. We fall back to our old habit whenever we face stressful event. With each repetition, however, behavioral patterns become more automatic and part of an unconscious system.

[Jitendra Hydonus]

I believe another way of describing it is calcification. The mind becomes so convinced of its own headlines it will improvise new ways to convince itself that it is true in its convictions. We have a spin-doctor in our own mind that desperately  tries to arrange the headlines we create and arrange them so they read according to our own views of the world.

The left hemisphere of the brain is trying to put a story together about our life.  The left hemisphere will do anything to keep a belief - sticking to it no matter what.    There was a woman in a hospital in New York.  She kept saying that she was at her home in Maine.  The psychiatrist asked her, "If you are in your home in Maine, then why are there elevators in the building that she is in now?"  The patient explained to the doctor, "You wouldn't believe what it cost to have those elevators installed in my house".   So you see we have a spin-doctor who is trying to keep the story together of  'who I am '.   We believe our own press releases.