An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
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- In the same way we get a lot of power from splitting tiny atoms in the form of nuclear energy, you can unleash great power in your life with tiny changes
- Your habits shape your identity
- The four steps to building better habits
- Make it obvious
- Make it attractive
- Make it easy
- Make it satisfying
...the aggregation of marginal gains." ~Dave Brailsford, Performance Director of the British Cycling team
- Massive success does not always require massive action
- Over time, a tiny improvement can make a huge difference
- Habit improvements compound like money compounds with interest
- Be patient
- Be disciplined
- Don't slide back into your old routines and habits
- On a flight from L.A. to NYC, if the plane is 3.5 degrees off course, it will miss NYC by 225 miles and land in D.C.
- Success is the product of daily habits
- Be more concerned with your trajectory than your results
- Your outcomes are lagging indicators of your efforts, your habits
- You get what you repeat
- Good habits make time your ally
- Positive and negative compounding habits
- Productivity vs. stress
- Knowledge vs. negative thinking
- Relationships vs. rage
- Breakthrough moments come after long, focused periods of invisible work
- Bamboo
- Cancer
- Business wins
- The Plateau of Latent Potential
- Change can take years...before it happens all at once
- Mastery requires patience
- People call you an overnight success
- The Valley of Disappointment
- The results of our efforts are often delayed
- All big things come from small beginnings
- Breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak tree
- Building a good habit is like nurturing a delicate rose one day at a time
- Forget about goals, focus on systems
- Goals define the results you want, systems are the steps you take to get those results
- The only way to win is to get better every day
- Bill Walsh, Super Bowl-winning coach of the 49s said, "The score takes care of itself."
- Goals are good for setting direction, systems are best for making progress
- Winners and losers have the same goals
- Goal setting suffers from survivorship bias
- Achieving a goal is only a momentary change
- You must address the cause, not just the symptom
- You need better systems
- With the proper input, the output will take care of itself
- Goals restrict your happiness
- Goals create an "either-or" conflict
- A systems-first mentality is the antidote
- Goals are at odds with long-term progress
- It's a yo-yo effect
- We want to do more than win the game. Systems help us to continue playing the game.
- You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems
- Focus on 1% improvement
- Make small, easy-to-implement changes
- Why is it so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good ones?
- We try to change the wrong thing
- We try to change in the wrong way
- Three layers of behavior change
- Outcome (Get)
- Processes (Do)
- Identity (Believe)
- Most of the time, we work from the outside in
- We need to work from the inside out, i.e., from the identity to the process to the outcome
- Shift the focus from what you want to achieve to who you want to become
- "Want a cigarette?" "No, I'm trying to quit."
- "Want a cigarette?" "No, I'm not a smoker."
- Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last
- The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity
- Take pride in yourself, and you'll be motivated to maintain the habits
- True behavior change is identity change
- Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are
- Become a reader
- Become a runner
- Become a musician
- Get out of your cognitive slumber
- "I'm terrible with directions."
- "I'm not a morning person."
- "I'm horrible at remembering names."
- You create your own reality of negativity
- Identity conflict is your main barrier to positive change
- You are self-sabotaging because of your negative identity
- Progress requires unlearning
- So how do you form your identity?
- Your beliefs are learned and then conditioned through experience
- In other words, your habits embody your identity
- The word identity is derived from the Latin words essential, which means being, and identidem, which means repeatedly
- So your identity is literally your "repeated beingness."
- The more evidence you have for a belief, i.e., "I'm terrible with names," the more strongly you will believe it.
- The process of building habits is the process of becoming yourself
- Fortunately, meaningful change does not require radical change
- If a change is meaningful, it is big!
- To change who you are, change what you do.
- Trust yourself. Learn to trust yourself by doing small habits repeatedly that bring about the small results you're seeking
- You don't have to be perfect. You don't need a unanimous vote to become a new you.
- Just give yourself new evidence of your new self to create your new identity
- Who do you want to be?
- What do you want to stand for?
- What are your principles and values?
- Who do you wish to become?
- Maybe you have some big goals. Write those down, then work backward to figure out what you need to do to get there.
- "I want to write a book (outcome-based). Who is the type of person who writes books? Someone who is consistent, disciplined, and reliable. Okay. I am a consistent, reliable, disciplined person (identity-based)."
- This is a feedback loop. It's a two-way street
- Focus on becoming the right type of person you need to be, and the outcome will take care of itself
- Know who you want to be. Habits help you become that someone.