The Power Of Daily Habits

Habits forges us

According to the Scientific British Journal, 879 million adults and 159 million children and adolescents were obese in 2022. How did these people get obese? Is it because of the way they ate, the food they ate, the lack of activity they had, or the increase in estrogenic in the world? What is the leading cause of this issue?

The leading, underlying cause of all of this is that they built bad habits. Building bad habits is easier than building good habits since it's often more accessible and cheaper in our society. It feels much better and it's much cheaper and it's much more accessible to eat a chocolate bar rather than go and buy some meat.

And so, if bad habits are the underlying cause of any addictions and problems, how can we counter-attack them and build better habits? This is the question author James Clear probably asked himself when he wrote his bestseller, universally famous book, Atomic Habits.

In this book, James Clear offers practical advice on changing your habits to improve your life, and he tells us about how habits work and what they fundamentally are, etc.

It's important to understand that our habits make our actions, and our actions make our habits, and our actions and habits reflect our identity. If we constantly eat junk food, we will have the identity of someone who's eating junk food, even unconsciously, and we will therefore start eating junk food often. Once the boat has been thrown into the sea without direction it's just going forward now.

And so, some people end up becoming obese. Their actions become their habits, their habits create beliefs, and their beliefs become their identity. In this manner, people spend decades smoking cigarettes until they learn they have a deadly cancer, they go and eat junk food all day long until they learn they'll die ten years sooner and they have diabetes, etc.

This is the sad truth: we humans, at least the vast majority of us, aren't really smart. It's funny to me that in reality, most people can't control their simplest desires. But, everyone has to start SOMEWHERE, and at the end of this article, you will have learned to change your habits.

How habits works

To make it simple, habits are in a four-step framework. This four-step framework is called the "Habit Loop" by James Clear. It consists of a cue, which turns into a craving, which turns into a response, and which finally turns into a reward.

You see a chocolate bar (the cue), you crave the chocolate bar (craving), you take action and go eat it (response), and then it tastes great and your brain sends you a ton of dopamine, the hormone of pleasure (reward).

In this manner, habits are made. Before telling you how to change your habits and a few practical tips for it, let's assert something important first: you should focus on your systems, not your goals. Wanting to be a millionaire is great, but doing nothing about it sucks.

Instead of focusing on the goal of becoming a millionaire, focus on the steps: what steps could you take right now to get more toward your coveted goal? Maybe it is to start a business, learn more about finances, and become more disciplined, anything is better than nothing.

Also, one idea that is often repeated in James Clear's book is that small, consistent habits make up big wins. We often see in other's successes only luck. We see how someone reached up to them to collaborate and to create a huge business, we see how the right person was here at the right moment, etc. However, these "breakthroughs" to success are seldom achieved without consistent habits beforehand and years of hard work.

Sure, there might have been luck involved, but this luck happened after a ton of failure and training. It's the natural consequence of the universe, you work hard and you're rewarded. And, these breakthroughs are at the epitome of YEARS or DECADES of good habits.

In other words, small good habits make you 1% better each day, and in terms, these 1% add up to help you build 100%, 1000%, 10000% more progress in life. Small wins turn into big wins. Small identity changes and consistent habits make up for big wins. And, if you choose habits that are aligned with the person you want to become, this can end up changing your whole life.

There are FOUR LAWS of behavior change that you can use to change your behavior. Each will have a small set of tips to help implement them. Let's begin.

The First Law: Make It Obvious

Making a good habit obvious is great. It initiates the cue. If you see an apple on the kitchen counter there would already be a higher chance, as slight as it might be, that you'll start to eat it or eat healthier.

You should write down all of the habits that you have in your life right now to be aware of them. Once you've done this, you can find the cue that triggered them, eliminate it to erase bad habits (make bad habits un-obvious) and then you can literally start building new ones.

Also, use environmental change to your favor: make good habits obvious. Make them obvious by putting them in your house where you would see them often, and make bad habits un-obvious by hiding them for example. You could hide the chocolate on the kitchen counter and change it with apples. You could install a treadmill in your home. All of these things can end up helping you start healthier habits.

Use implementation intentions and habit stacking. Implementation intentions, in the book, is when you choose a specific time and location to practice a habit in your day. It's like scheduling this habit. "I will do [Habit] at [Time] in [Location]."

Habit stacking, in the book, is when you stack a habit on another habit to make it easier in your mind to start it. For example, stacking going to the gym and eating healthy would be much more effective since you're "in the mood for good habits" than going to the gym and watching TV. "After [Habit 1], I will [New Habit]"

The Second Law: Make It Attractive

There is something that James Clear calls "temptation bundling". Basically, you need to pair something you want to do with something you need to do to make it more attractive, A.K.A easier. For example, let's say you love watching TV but you hate exercising. Then, start exercising whilst watching TV. Even better: allow yourself to only watch TV when you exercise. Install a treadmill next to your sofa for example.

You should also join a culture where your desired behavior is considered the norm. You see, your environment really does affect you and your identity a lot. If you're constantly in contact with negative people there is a high chance you're going to be quite negative about life. If you're in contact with great and happy people, there's a high chance you'll feel more positive about life.

So, if you're around people who eat junk food, smoke and drink alcohol often, do you think you'll become healthier? Little hint, you'll probably not. Now, I personally had to live through this with my family myself, and it doesn't affect me much on the "staying healthy" scale for example that they're smoking or drinking or eating junk food daily.

But, it can still affect you heavily, both physically and mentally. And trust me, I would prefer living in a community at home where people eat healthy and don't smoke and don't drink. So, be careful about your environment and the people you keep or choose in your life because they can affect you directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously.

The pressure of the group also makes us often bend to the desires and needs of our culture, so we become more like them and we are accepted. This tendency to want to belong is totally healthy and normal: our ancestors used it because if we were kicked out of the tribe, we would die alone and be eaten by the wolves. I bet, if you go to India, people dance more and sing more and eat more curry than we do. It might be cliche, but it's the influence of the culture.

Therefore, try to find a community where the people there are like-minded and into the habits that you want to build. If you want to eat a carnivore diet, go and meet some people with the same goal as you, or go to seminars or webinars about the carnivore diet to find these people. Find a community, even online, where eating a carnivore diet is the norm.

The Third Law: Make It Easy

To make a habit easier, reduce friction. Reduce the number of steps you need to take before practicing a good habit. For example, to make it more easy to exercise, reduce the friction of dressing up and driving and showing up to the gym by buying a treadmill at home. Now sure, you might want to weight-lift and in this case except if you're rich or have the space it's going to be complicated to build a full-on home gym with everything you need, but you got the point, it could still help.

You should once more use environmental change so everything is at your disposition. Put your workout clothes ready next to your bed, put your workout shoes next to your bed too, and prepare your gym bag the day before.

If you struggle to install a habit in your daily life, make in sort your habit lasts at least 5 minutes. If you can exercise for 5 minutes every day, then it's already a "good day" marked on your habit calendar. By the way, for this "5-minute rule", in the book it's 2 minutes, but I thought five minutes was better.

Automate your habits by investing in technology and one-time purchases. If you want to become healthier, buying a weight-loss course for example could be of help (wink). It's a one-time purchase that pushes you to be healthy and responsible.

Investing in technology can help you too, to lock your future behaviors. You can use timers, phone blockers, new apps on your phone or computer, reminders, etc in your favor to help you build good habits. Use all the tools in your arsenal.

Optimize the small choices that deliver outsized impacts. For example, if the thing that helps you the most in building an exercise habit is doing a few specific sets of exercises, optimize these sets. Optimize the small choices, the small things, that give most of the results, the 80/20 paleo principle. Don't waste your time doing a ton of isolation movement when you can focus on a few sets of compound movements at first.

The Fourth Law: Make It Satisfying

A habit needs to be rewarding in order to be repeated. You should give yourself an immediate reward after completing a good habit because most good habits only give rewards in the future. For example, you're not going to get the reward of your dream physique after going to the gym once. However, you can eat a protein bar (be careful as they're often unhealthy) or go and enjoy a good, healthy meal afterward. Try to find the rewards not in instant gratification (watching TV) but still in delayed gratification which will make you feel good about yourself (eating healthy).

Never miss twice a good habit. Some people like to use habit trackers and try not to "break the streak" but I think streaks are stupid. When you're having a "meditation streak", you're not seeing yourself as a meditator (your identity is not set), but as someone who's not a meditator who tries to have a meditation streak. Instead, see yourself as a meditator, and if you miss one day, fine, you're a meditator so you'll get back at it anyway.

For bad habits

For bad habits, simply inverse the laws. Make it easier? Make it harder. Literally, make your habit harder by inverting the steps you would take to make it easier. For example, it is said in the book that in order to make a habit easier, you should reduce friction. It means, reducing the steps to doing your good habit. So, if you want to make it harder, increase friction.

If you want to make the bad habit of eating junk food harder, increase friction by throwing away junk food and having to go to the supermarket to eat junk food. In this manner, you'll take your first step to increasing friction.

So, here are the four laws, but inversed.

The First Law: Make It Invisible.

The Second Law: Make It Unattractive.

The Third Law: Make It Difficult.

The Fourth Law: Make It Unsatisfying.

Simply inverse the rules of these laws to make the habits harder. It's as simple as this.

Conclusion

I hope this article was of help to you. By using the advice found in this article and reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, you will undoubtedly build better habits. Remember, building good habits takes time and don't be frustrated if you fail at first. Set realistic goals and small wins and in time, you'll induce big wins in your life.

Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next time.

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