Konrad Lorenz, the Nobel Prize-winning zoologist, had a pet goose that he allowed the run of the house. The first day when the goose waddled in the door, there happened to be a mirror near floor height; the goose mistook his own reflection for some rival bird and flew into attack mode.

Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz and friend

He pecked the hell out of the mirror before moving on to the kitchen and the rest of his day. Next morning: same thing. After a few days, Mrs. Lorenz removed the mirror so it wouldn’t get broken—but the goose kept pecking the same spot. It never stopped. Over a lifetime, every time that goose webfooted its way into the Lorenz house it was compelled to peck that very spot where the mirror had been.

That’s habit. But here’s the intriguing part: the goose’s offspring, who had never seen the mirror, learned the habit too. Two generations later, every one of them, when it first entered the house, was still pecking the spot on the wall where the original goose had kicked off these shenanigans years earlier.

The point of this story is that habit is powerful, not only among us humans but in the animal kingdom as well.

Steven Pressfields blog is a must read - make sure you check out this entire article at this blog.