Learning. Pain. Routines. They all have one thing in common and that is 'YOUR BRAIN'
Our likes, dislikes, habits, play, fun, in fact EVERY experience and every situation we have is processed by our brain's 'reward centre' and it forms the basis of our behaviour.
We begin to form a hierarchy of associations and behaviours that either lead us 'towards' a 'high reward' behaviour or away from a bad 'low reward' behaviour.
And the more we do this behaviour, the more we re-enforce it's place on the hierarchy of our brain's reward centre. For example, eating cake might make you feel better, it may remind you of fun you had as a child, and every time you went to a party and ate cake you had fun, so 'eating cake' gets logged in our brain as an action that is 'high reward'.
But as an adult, if we decide we need to stop eating cake for health reasons, it can be hard to break the habit.
However, when we understand our triggers and the 'reward' behind the behaviour we can re-train our brain to create new neural pathways and change our habits.