Atomic Habits Part 2
Atomic Habits Part 2:Laws for forming a good habit.
Law 1 : Make it obvious
The cues that trigger our habits are deeply embedded in our nature,so much so that they become invisible and the urges might feel like coming from no place at all.Behaviour change happens with awareness,a habit deeply rooted in our day to day life become automatic and spontaneous,thus one needs to be mindful of their actions in order to make the required amendments.The process of pointing and calling can be used to identify such type of bad habits as being aware of the consequences of our actions helps us take better decision and calling out such activities helps us reform for good.We can note down our daily routine with all the respective tasks on a format we can term Habit score card and rate every habit we have based on positive,negative or neutral habit.A habit that reinforces our faith in what we are or what we aspire to be can be termed as a good habit.A habit that deviates from it usually is termed as a negative one.Analysing our scorecard can help us proactively work towards development of better habits.
Habit formation works best when we have an implementation intention associated with it except for the part where just vaguely decide to change habits in broad strokes. I will excercise will yield better results when you put it like I will excercise at 7 AM in the morning at home everyday.Time and Location are important as they will act as the stimulus to your approach towards things.
Habit Stacking is the activity whereby you couple a desired habit with an existing habit for eg:- After I have coffee i will excercise in the morning for 10 mins,I will smile and take a deep breath everytime the phone rings and I am about to pick the call.This can work wonders as with an existing activity it’s relatively easier to introduce a change compared to altogether changing or introducing a new habit in your lifestyle.
These are ways how you can make the habits you want to introduce as obvious to yourself to imbibe them on a subconcious level.
Motivation is overrated,Environment is more important.Environment is the invisible hand in shaping human habits.Psychologist Kurt Lewin postulated that Behaviour is the by product of person’s environment.People dont usually chose things because of what they are but because of where they find them, thus easily found things,readily become part of our behaviour.
Every habit is triggered by a cue,but often these cues are not as obvious and can be invisible due to environment.Thus we have to make these cues readily available in the environment like if you want to learn to play a guitar it should visibly seen to you in the space you spend most time in it for you to notice.Eventually we have to achieve a state where our activities are not triggered by a cue but rather the environment and surronding itself such that context becomes the cue.Contrarily it is difficult to build a new habit in old environment due to old cues and a new environment would offer you a fresh start to build a new habit
Self control is a short term strategy when it comes to changing habits, self control is best observed in people who rarely need it. In order to achieve habit change one needs to formulate a more conducive environment applying the inverse of this first law which is “Make it invisible” as once formed a habit is unlikely to be forgotten but we can remove the associated triggers with it and make it’s impact negligible on our lifestyle.