Make Your Habits Atomic
FABLES FOR OUR GRANDCHILDREN
READING TIME: 2 minute
There is a wonderful little book called Atomic Habits by James Clear, and I am excited to tell you about it.
Bad habits compound. Smoking leads to yellow teeth, bad breath, stinky clothes, less money, disease, and you can imagine from there.
Good habits compound. The good effects get better and better. For example, quitting sugar soda compounds to fewer cavities, saved money, weight loss, higher self-esteem, and you can imagine from there too.
So we need effective ways to stop the bad habits and replace them with good ones. This book tells you exactly how to change habits using the best science has to offer.
Until you have time to read Atomic Habits, here’s some thoughts from the book that might help you right away.
THE SEQUENCE
Every single habit, good and bad, has the same cognitive and behavioral sequence: cue, craving, response, reward.
Embrace the cue. The commercial reminds you of ice cream, the end of lunch cues time to smoke a cigarette, your baby’s dirty face makes you grab for a wipe. Embrace it.
Accept the craving. Cues are a part of life. They will trigger the habit via desire for pleasure (like ice cream) or duty (like caring for your child).
Be present with the response. With habits, all you need to do is the first thing. Grab the wipe or the cigarette and the behavior unfolds. For good habits, do the first step. Grab the wipe. You don’t need to decide whether to clean a baby’s face, it is a sequenced habit. But, for bad habits, you need to decide with all your might NOT to take the first step. Don’t grab the pack of cigarettes. Intervene in the cue/craving and give yourself something else satisfying to do, or distract yourself, or just wait and see how long it takes for the craving to dissipate (it’s faster and faster each time decide not to do the behavior).
Enjoy the rewards. Celebrate.
BAD HABITS
To extinguish bad habits, the keys are:
Invisibile - give away your cookie jar.
Difficult - I have been known to keep cookies inconveniently in my trunk of your car.
Unattractive - only eat a cookie after you’ve walked a mile.
Unsatisfying - buy crappy, generic cookies.
GOOD HABITS
To entrench a good habit, the keys are the opposite:
Visible - put the dental floss on the counter every morning.
Easy - I get frustrated when the floss is too short and keeps sliding off my fingers, but I also get frustrated when its too long and there’s a lot I wasted and didn’t need. I have a little benchmark on the mirror. I hold the floss up and pull out the same perfect length every time.
Satisfying. I buy the best floss I can afford. It slides nicely and has a superb flavor. I look forward to it.
Attractive. I periodically whiten my teeth and floss in front of the mirror to enjoy the improvements my efforts make to my smile.
ATOMIC HABITS
is Paw recommended and Granny approved
Click THE TITLE to buy iT on Amazon
Atomic Habits
I love you,
Granny