Social Habits

“For an idea to grow beyond a community, it must become self-propelling. And the surest way to achieve that is to give people new habits that help them figure out where to go on their own.”¹

“Movements don’t emerge because everyone suddenly decides to face the same direction at once. They rely on social patterns that begin as the habits of friendship, grow through the #Habits of communities, and are sustained by new habits that change participants’ sense of self.”¹

Social habits are one of the most powerful influences that can propel and ignite activist movements or to change people’s heart and perspective. The day Rosa Park’s was arrested, under the bus segregation law, in 1955 after refusing to give up her seat for a white man, her outstanding reputation and vast connections sparked the Montgomery bus boycott which led the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to be signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson–an act that would have been considered a “political suicide” a decade earlier. Martin Luther King Jr. preached peaceful protests, to offer the other cheek to the violence against the black community. Peer pressure helped the movement grow and encourage the community to participate, but would rather have died sooner had it not been for the social habits King planted into the community. With King’s guidance, new leaders emerged to further the cause and to inspire other people. The movement self-propelled.

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