Habits make our lives. We all want to develop good habits. And somewhere along the way we may have developed some not so very good habits which we want to get rid of. We want to spend less time scrolling on social media, we want to party less, we want to give up smoking. Or we may want to start new habits. We want to start eating health, we want to start exercising or go for a walk, we want to read regularly. But we struggle to change ourselves. We feel a lack of motivation or we feel we will start on a tomorrow which never comes or we experience self-doubt or we feel there is no support from the family. The reasons are many.
James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits, gives a very simple method to imbibe habits: Cue →Craving → Response →Reward. This can be expressed as the four laws of behaviour change which form the Habit Loop.
1. Make it Obvious
2. Make it Attractive
3. Make it Easy
4. Make it Satisfying
If we can satisfy these four criteria, we can gradually change our habits and miraculously transform our lives. And before we delve into these four laws, let me share what I think is the starting point. The way to start is to truly reflect on what is it that we are trying to achieve. Why do we want to change? Why do we want to imbibe this new habit? And this reason has to be an emotional WHY. Then our investment in time and effort just happens.
WHAT IS YOUR EMOTIONAL WHY
Meeta wanted to exercise every morning for 15 minutes. And her morning routine was so hectic that she seldom found that 15 minutes. No matter what she did – getting up early, or getting a maid to do some of the chores, or anything else – she could not find those 15 minutes. Some other priorities just cropped up. When she decided to speak to me to make a breakthrough, the first question I asked her was – WHY? Why do you want to exercise for 15 minutes? And after peeling all the layers, it emerged that she wanted to keep her joints and muscles flexible. The emotional part was that she wanted to age gracefully. This meant she wanted to do stretches. And many of those can be done anywhere and anytime. Why restrict it to 15 minutes and why insist on a morning routine? We collaboratively decided that she could do these stretches anytime during the day (Make it attractive. She would set 3-4 alarms during the usually not so busy periods during the day (Make it Obvious). And do a few stretches on her hear or stand up and do them (Make it Easy). And then at the end of each week, she would treat herself (Make it satisfying) and this would motivate her to continue.
Reflect on
1. What is the one change that you truly want?
2. Why do you want the change?
3. What is stopping you from making the change?
4. What has that cost you? How does that make you feel?
5. What has been the benefit of not making the change? How does that make you feel?
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