We’ve all be in the situation where you want to learn a new habit but making that habit work is the hard part. It’s one thing to start a new habit or stop a bad one, it’s another to be consistent.
But have no fear, because James Clear’s latest book ‘Atomic Habit’ will help you do just that.
So if you want to learn a new language or musical instrument or you want to lose weight or quit smoking, James outline how you can make remarkable results by making tiny incremental changes with an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones.
To get your own copy of the book, you can do so here.
You can watch the video…
….or read the transcript instead.
Transcript
We’ve all been there haven’t we?
When you want to start a new habit or you want to break an old habit and you want to learn something, you want to be consistent at it.
You want to be doing it every day so that you can, I don’t know, learn a new language or learn how to play a musical instrument or maybe you want to quit smoking or you want to lose weight and then didn’t happen because the habit didn’t work for you.
You broke your habit, you broke your system and you quit before you got anywhere and you got frustrated.
So you’re back to square one again.
It’s so frustrating, isn’t it? We’ve all been doing that. I’ve done it a bunch of times and it made me think like, right, what can I do? How can I create a habit, stick at it, be consistent with it so that I can get to where I want to be.
I want to learn what I want to achieve. So I just thought what books out there that are available to read about habits and long behold?
Thankfully ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear came out very recently, by the time I have been coordinating videos, and I’m so thankful it came out because it came at a good time for me when I want to look at what changes I can do in my work in my life and how can I achieve those changes over a period of time.
Thankfully, James Clear has written a great book. It’s about an easy way proven ways to build good habits and break bad ones.
We all want to do that and I’m going to be just briefly talking about this book, why you should so get it. It’s such a great book. Let me go over it briefly and what to expect as well.
The main thing that James wanted to talk about is that you should obviously focus over a long period of time which is obvious because that’s how things work. You’re not going to get your results today instantly.
Not going to happen.
What you should aim for though is to improve about 1% every day. It’s those incremental compound effects, like when you invest money and over a number of years, you’re more likely to get that better reward.
Whereas if you invest money today and you take out tomorrow, you’re not going to get anything extra, if anything at all. That’s why loan incremental period works better.
The thing is though, when you do that, it’s not truthful that you’re not noticing any changes, any movement, anywhere in that habit that you want to build or break and then you get frustrated, you give up, you move on and then you just thought, okay maybe I try it again.
And then you try that again and you give up and you break it and it just doesn’t work at all.
But we should be thinking long-term. However, if you have been trying to do all these things. You’ve been following the advice of the professionals about, for example, losing weight and you’ve been doing that, but you haven’t even been able to get to what you want to achieve.
Maybe it’s because of this system that you have in place because the system is essentially what makes or break your habit building process.
And James talks about how there are four main things that you should focus on when it comes to building a habit and I’ve written them all down and it’s all about making the obvious, making it attractive, making it easy and making it satisfying enough to build good habits.
Whereas to break your bad habit is to make it invisible, make it unattractive, make it difficult, make it unsatisfying.
Now the book obviously goes into much more details about those kind of laws of human behaviour, if you like.
But let’s just maybe focus on, for example, if I want to read a book more often or make it a frequent thing and I want to follow those four things that James talked about in terms of the making obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying.
So making it obvious maybe I just make it like visible in front of me by, I don’t know, maybe put the book on the pillow of my bed so that when I go to bed I just read one page.
That’s easy enough, that’s obvious enough and that’s also attractive. You’re not overwhelming yourself to make it like a big thing and to read half a book per day for example.
No, don’t do that to yourself.
Make it as easy as possible and that’s an obvious way to start and then make it attractive and make it fun as well by you want just to enjoy the book you read.
And so I enjoyed this book for example, so I knew that I’m going to be able to follow that habit.
It’s kind of simple when you put it that way. On the other hand, if you want to break bad habits, then it’s four steps as well. So if we follow, for example, you want to be on your mobile less often, then maybe you should follow the four steps.
The first step is make it invisible. Easy, don’t have your mobile beside you. Put it into other room then you don’t have it visible there.
Make it unattractive.
Maybe you should think about what it’s doing to other people and how it’s going to make you unsociable or maybe you should block certain things that allows you to think “Oh God, I don’t want to be doing that again!”.
By having certain apps that block you from accessing it, making it difficult. That’s a good way of doing it actually have an app, have someone take it away from you, have someone to be accountable to get it put away.
And then make it unsatisfying, I don’t know with a mobile phone, again, you just have to look at your own behaviour about what you will miss high on.
So if you’re always on your phone, then you miss out, say for example, if you’re a parent you’re not going to be really spending your time with your kids if you’re always on your phone to by being aware.
That’s the general overview of the book and the four clues for the good habits and bad habits, but you have to get this book. You guys have to get it.
It’s such a great book and you can find a link down below in description and it really will make you think about how you can do a better job at building good habits or breaking bad one.
Create a system in place and you’re on your way. You’re on your way.
So let me know if you have read it, if not, why not get that book! And also I’d love to know an example of when you tried to create a habit, why it did not work for you? Have you thought of a reason why it did not work for you?
And I love to know that because I’d love to see from your experience and let me know in the description down below, and I’ll get back to you because I’m really curious to hear about your own experience about the building of good habits, or breaking the bad habits as well.
In the mean time though, I would love to hear from you and speak to you again soon and I’ll see you next time.
Take care!
