Atomic Habits are small habits that are essential to your overall improvement and that seem insignificant at first sight but that can create powerful outcomes if practiced regularly…
Atomic Habits help you grow in confidence, overcome setbacks and fulfill your potential.
Habits create freedom by removing the need to make decisions about simple tasks and by allowing your mind to focus on other challenges.
1. Improvements & Atomic Habits
There is tremendous value in improving incrementally thanks to the power of small habits.
Truthfully, incremental improvements are not noticeable right away but become meaningful and make a difference in the long run.
That’s because, small good habits compound themselves into big results and bad habits into toxic results. However, these habits will place you on the path to success.
The only thing, to see the results of your habits, to track your progress, you need to implement these habits long enough in order to cross what James Clear calls the Plateau of Latent Potential.
To get over the Plateau of Latent Potential, you need to avoid setting goals. Instead, you may have to set up a system to make actionable progress and to create better habits.
2. Building & Changing Habits
Changing habits is difficult because we try to change the wrong thing or we try to change the wrong way.
Furthermore, change is especially difficult when your identity is in direct conflict with the habit you want to develop, if you are too attached to your identity or believe that your identity is set in stone.
To change the right way, you need to make a shift in your identity, rework your system of belief and make this habit become an intrinsic part of your identity.
In turn, your identity will gradually be molded by your habits and the belief that you have the power to change whichever habit you want.
3. The Four Laws of Behavior Change
Before trying to change, we must be aware of the old habits that have held you back and have most likely become automatic and unconscious.
You can make a list of your habits and ask yourself objectively whether or not these habits help you become the person you want to be. You don’t need to evaluate, congratulate or criticize yourself while doing so.Â
To create better habits, you can follow the Four Laws of Behavior Change:
- Make the habit obvious
- Make the habit attractive
- Make the habit easy
- Make the habit satisfying
1. Make the habit obvious
You can make it obvious by clarifying the habits you want to acquire.
You have to make it clear when, where and how you want this new habit to take place.
You can set your habits at a particular time and location, you can group them with other habits or you can set up your environment to stimulate the said habit and to encourage self-discipline.Â
2. Make the habit attractive
Habits become more attractive if you can associate them with things you already enjoy, if you surround yourself with people who already have that attractive habit or if you shift your perspective and change the way you talk to yourself.
Making your habits attractive motivates you to act because you definitively expect a reward.
3. Make the habit easy
To build up a habit, it is important to practice. To make practicing effective, you must make it easy because it is human nature to preserve energy, reduce the amount of work and follow the Law of Least Effort.
Therefore, to make a habit easy, you canu must make it easy because it is human nature to preserve energy, reduce the amount of work and follow the Law of Least Effort.
Therefore, to make a habit easy, you can remove any element of friction associated with the habit, set up your environment to ease yourself into the habit or practice a small habit for at least 2 minutes that will progressively grow into the habit that you desire.
4. Make the habit satisfying
People are more likely to repeat a habit if the experience was satisfying.
However, people often look for immediate satisfaction even if most satisfactions in society are delayed and even if a fundamental truth for success states that delayed gratification leads to greater rewards.
So to build a successful habit, you need to ensure to receive immediate gratification once in a while.
Review
Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones, James Clear shares his traumatic story of how he recovered in his youth from an accident and how he realized, through this experience, that small good habits can help you overcome setbacks and fulfill your potential.
Moreover, it shows you that if the reason for building a habit is strong enough then you can bear anything to succeed.
Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones should be called “How to develop the best habits the best way possible”. Every single sentence made for a great quote.
This book has been eye opening in understanding my habits and their in the affirmation of my identity.
Very insightful, it makes you analyze your present, think about the meaning and the impact of your actions on your future life. To develop new habits is very much a self-awareness exercise.
In addition, James Clear provides fundamental principles that you can rely on. He teaches you how to provoke good habits and destroy bad ones, to shift your focus from your goals towards building a structure, system and habits to achieve said goals.Â
I recommend it for anyone who is struggling to get it together and don’t know where to start. For anyone seeking to rework their habits, it is imperative to get an accountability partner, track your habits and measure your progress.
Let me know below what you think about this book!
Favorite quote(s)
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.
Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.
All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny
decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots
entrench themselves and branches grow.A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.
Our preference for instant gratification reveals an important truth about success:
because of how we are wired, most people will spend all day chasing quick hits of
satisfaction. The road less traveled is the road of delayed gratification. If you’re willing to wait for the rewards, you’ll face less competition and often get a bigger payoff. As the saying goes, the last mile is always the least crowded.
Ratings 4/5
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