How to change your Habits

What is Habit

Habit is doing work perfectly without awareness. 40% of the actions people perform each day are not actually decisions but habits.

Some Examples of Habits

Habits can be good or bad but you need to evaluate what result you are getting at the end.

Is it Satisfaction or Regret

How Habits Works

Stage 1 : Cue — It’s a trigger which sends signal to brain to work on task automatically

Stage 2 : Routine — It’s a Physical/Mental task which you perform

Stage 3 : Reward — End of the task, you feel good and inform the brain to repeat this task.

Example

Habit of Smoking

Stage 1 : Feeling Bore

Stage 2 : Routine — Smoke Cigarette

Stage 3 : Reward — Satisfaction of smoking

How to Change Habits

You need to be aware about the situations when habit trigger automatically
You can’t directly remove the habit, you need to replace it new new empowering habit
You need to perform a response when Cue trigger

Example

Replaced Habit of Smoking with New Habit

Stage 1 : Feeling Bore

Stage 2 : Routine — Talk to People(Friend/Relative etc)

Stage 3 : Reward — Satisfaction

Tips for making of new Habit

2 Min Rule

If you want to do Exercise then start with 2 minutes and gradually increase the time each day.
If reading a book is difficult then start reading 2 minutes and gradually increase the time each day.

Make it Difficult

You are more vulnerable to your habits if they are easy to get.
If you are addicted to Facebook then try to remove the application from your phone or put the phone to another room.

Habit Stacking

Merge the new Habit with Old Habit
If you want to make a habit of reading books, then your strategy could be like : I will eat dinner after reading a page.

Cardinal Rule

What is immediately rewarded is repeated.

What is immediately punished is avoided.

How to Change your Habits