Our campfire is looking really good. The tinder did its job to get the fire going and the kindling is helping the fire stay burning.
Habits are the big logs on our fire of self-improvement. Motivation starts us off and the discipline keeps us on track but we need our actions to be sustained without being constantly motivated. We need to build off the momentum that motivation and discipline provided us.
In the final installment of this three part series I will explain more about habits.
What are habits?
The definition of a habit explains a lot about how they work and how to go about attaining them.
A habit is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. Habits can be good or bad, and they can have a significant impact on our lives.
Routine behavior that tends to occur subconsciously
We talked about routine in the previous newsletter and how it helps to establish discipline. Doing something repeatedly creates a neural pathway inside your brain.
We want the things that improve our lives to happen without thinking too much about them and here is where we harness the power of habits.
Doing things that benefit us in the long term usually don’t feel good in the short term.
You want to stop smoking and in a few months the benefits will start to show but over the course of the next few days you will have cravings, you will feel miserable and be angry or irritated.
If you automatically reach for a stick of gum or glass of water instead of reaching for a cigarette your brain rewards the behaviour because you feel good about yourself for not smoking.
As you repeat the process of swopping a cigarette for gum or water it becomes automatic. This means your new habit is starting to form.
How do habits fit into the campfire analogy
To keep the fire burning through the night or for cooking something you need larger pieces of firewood. This is where habits fit in: they automatically keep you going and moving forward in achieving your goals.
Getting these large pieces of wood requires more work. More than with the tinder and kindling. Perhaps you need to use an axe to chop down a tree or split some logs. Similarly habits develop over time and requires effort to build.
You have to put in the work to build habits.
Consider the two sides of the coin: where you could be in six months if you decide to take action VS where you could be in six months if you decide not to take any action.
How powerful habits can be
If you think about building habits you might wonder how powerful are habits really? Two words come to mind that will convince you about the strength of habits:
Bad habits.
Eating if you feel bad or smoking when your are nervous soon turns into a habit. You only realize the position you are in when it is too late. Driving past a liquor store and getting a beer to help you unwind has the potential to lead to an alcohol problem.
And there we created bad habits.
Bad habits have ruined lives. Bad habits have sent people to their graves. Bad habits have the ability to change your life for the worse.
With the power of a bad habit so evident why would you not decide to have good habits in your life?
How do you create habits?
Look at the definition of a habit:
a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly
Our brains are constantly seeking out pleasure so it can give us a reward in the form of dopamine. The age of technology has provided us with ample opportunities to get an instant fix of dopamine.
Fast food. Netflix. YouTube. Social media provide us with unlimited (and unhealthy) amounts of these spikes.
A habit where you constantly watch YouTube shorts would be built up in a way similar to this:
You start watching a short when you have nothing to do. You spent fifteen minutes in front of your computer. You get a huge spike in your dopamine. Two days later you spend thirty minutes watching. You get drawn into it and it feels good watching these videos right?
Our brain rewards us when we do things. Eating a bag of chips makes us feel good. We get used to these feel good sensations so we start doing things without thinking about them. One bag becomes two. Once a day becomes three times a day.
Imagine what effect this is going to have on your life if you don’t manage it?
But it isn’t all bad in terms of building habits.
Since our brain build habits around feel goods we can give it something healthy to feel good about. If you write every day, if you go to the gym every day, if you create art every day and feel good about it guess what your brain will do?
This is called: experience-dependent neuroplasticity and it is a passive way to reinforce habits by repeating them. This works for both good and bad habits.
Habits are usually form with 2 - 3 months. The type of habit plus your personality will also be factors on how it takes for the habit to form.
How do habits help you attain goals?
If you need consistent work to achieve your goals then habits are the answer to your questions.
Habits gets you sitting in the chair and writing a few pages per day. Habits get you up early so you can be ready to start work. Habits are important when it comes to attaining your goals. Reaching a goal requires building towards it on a regular basis.
Habits help you to do the things you need to do. The perfect physique, the bestseller, building the community. It is all about repetition and consistency.
In closing
If you want to improve yourself habits are going to be some of the best tools at your disposal.
Building the habits you want will take some time but if you can push through the difficulty, stay motivated and become disciplined you will put good habits in place and be on the right path towards reaching your goals.
If you’ve followed the three newsletters thank you very much. My subscriber count is slowly growing but that isn’t why I’m writing these newsletters. If you find any value in here please share it with someone that needs it and leave a comment below about your journey with habits.
Thanks for reading :)