Addiction Patterns & Expression Responses

I've just finished the book Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. In this book he emphasizes how we are always creating and strengthening neural pathways. The more often we focus on a particular topic or have a particular feeling, the more that pathway is strengthened, thus we are more likely to have that feeling again or muse on that topic again. Sort of a 'path of least resistance' type of thing! In this way, we can say that our behaviors and thoughts can be addictive.
Oh, and to strenghten this argument from a different perspective, imaging studies show that the same brain centers light up when we see a loved one as do when heroin is used. Makes heroin sound tempting in a way it never did before, actually!:)
Anyhow, we can resolve to change our pathways, but the initial steps are the hardest, as it is like clearing a pathway the first few times--we have to hack through obstacles and underbrush to get through, whereas the well-travelled neural pathway is sooo easy to fall back on... This explains why all of us are prone to committing the same mistakes and behaving in the same patterns. It's not that we can't change, it's just that it is HARD to change. Luckily for us (to varying degrees), we also have some very positive patterns that are easy for us to continue. Perhaps we should focus more on those, since they are already well-travelled as well!

One tip that Goleman gives in molding ourselves to be our ideal personas is to pretend to be those persons. He relates that Edgar Allen Poe would assume the 'mask' of whatever character he was writing about, and after he'd taken on that character's affect, he often then knew what the character would say or do next. I love this idea.

Also, Goleman relates that we have a reflexive mirror response to the expressions we see. This can be employed logically in reverse to help our loved ones to assume the expressions that we would like to see them have. Simply put, if we want to see a smile, we should give a smile. We all know this is true with babies, who will reflexively smile almost immediately when any stranger smiles at them. The same is largely true with adults as well, though they may be a bit more guarded.