If I can do it anyone can.....

As Stoptober has arrived, I felt it would be useful to shed some light on habit creation which hopefully could help ditching some bad habits. In fact, this will be useful for anyone who wants to start or stop a habit that they’ve already recognised change is needed.

I’d first like to point out that the information provided has been taken from Atomic Habits, written by James Clear.

How the book has helped me

·???????When changing a behaviour, I now look inwards as I know it starts with me rather than focusing on my desired outcome ?

·???????It helped me build healthy habits like going to the gym and running

·???????I focus on enjoying the process (system) rather than the end goal, which has led to increased job satisfaction and decreased stress

·???????It has provided more structure in my day which allows me to have a healthier balance between, family, work, health, and wellness.

·???????I notice more of what I achieve each day – every little thing good and bad which compounds over time as a positive or a negative effect on my life

Atomic Habits is a clear explanation outlining what it takes to create and sustain a great habit. If you haven’t read it, please do so. I have personally recommended this book to many friends. The feedback has been great, and I have been captivated by the practical guide and its supporting documents which you can find at James Clear

You’re already thinking I don’t have enough time to read, me too. I always found reading tedious. It’s likely linked with my early years reading out loud in the classroom which invoked feelings of nervousness and anxiety. I was a slow reader and didn’t always understand what I was reading. Fast forward to my 30’s, roughly 18 months ago I focussed on self-improvement and started to listen to podcasts and books via Audible. I couldn’t spare “free time” to crack a hardback book, except for lazing by a pool, and the little spare time I had was in between journeys. Therefore, I downloaded Audible and have since listened to multiple thought-provoking books that undoubtedly have had a positive impact on my life. So, if you drive, walk, take the bus, tube, or train to work, gym, or even do the school drop-off; why not use that time to listen to a book or podcast? For reference, Atomic Habits is 4 hours 56 minutes and even 15 minutes of good listening per day could change your life.

Full disclosure, I am by no means an expert, nor claim to be one. What I will share with you has benefited me in many ways and if you can take one thing from this, then it’s served its purpose.

1.?????Systems over goals

Many of us are obsessed with achieving the goal, e.g. losing weight, stop smoking, owning a house before you turn 30, passing an exam, earning ￡100,000 per annum, the list goes on. I’ve always advocated goal setting, there is however a bad side effect to goal setting which many oversee. For many, goal setting can take the fun out of the activity (we’ll revisit this shortly), and it can create anxiety for those who fall at the first hurdle. Goals are often unrealistic and often requires sacrifice that many won’t want to make.

To keep things simple - Goals are what people want to achieve but the system is about the process that leads to those results. If I reference this as a game of football, the purpose of a goal is to win the game, whereas the system allows you to continue playing the game. One thing that stuck with me is “when a goal is your only measure of success, then that measure becomes meaningless”. If you fall in love with the process, you don’t have to wait for that endorphin hit at the end of the process. Long-term thinking is goalless thinking. Ultimately, it's your commitment to the process that will determine your progress and likeliness of achieving your desired outcomes.

2.?????Habit’s build your identity

A habit is something that happens daily. You wake up, and for most of the population will pick up their phone to turn off the alarm. Many then go on to check emails, Instagram, and other social media. Is this a good habit? In my experience, I avoid doing so as you’re potentially setting yourself up to be disappointed from the moment you wake up (in the world of recruitment, the worst way to start your day is noticing you’ve had a candidate pull from a final interview for that morning, or accepting another offer). A better habit could be drinking a glass of water first thing, then jump in the shower. We all know the health benefits of doing so, but it’s far greater way to starting your day than checking your phone. We’ll talk about visual cues later, however for this to happen the bottle of water needs to be next to your phone when you wake up which gives you the visual cue to drink it.

James Clear would say “Habits are learned from your experience and your habits form your identity. The system of building habits is simple the process which will lead to you becoming the version of the person you wish to become”

No single action will transform you, going to the gym once doesn’t make you a healthy person. Like going to the gym, habits are like reps, the more reps (habits) you repeat the higher the probability of them sticking. If you’ve ever been to a gym, started off with a training plan written by a PT and consistently followed this plan for 3 months, you will not only notice a change in your physical appearance but you will also notice that you’ve become more automated and think less about the work you have to put in.

If your end goal is to lose weight, your focus should be on becoming a healthier person rather than watching the scales drop (after all muscle weighs more than fat so the weight might not drop). Your process is attending the gym, even if it is for 15 minutes, even on the days you don’t want to go. Going on a day when you don’t want to go, even for 15 minutes, gives you the validation of the person you aspire to become.

·???????If your goal is to run a marathon, your goal is to become a runner.

·???????If your goal is to read a book, your goal is to become a reader

·???????If your goal is to stop smoking, your goal is to become a healthier person

In the book James says, “The person you are right now and the identity that you embody is born out of you having proof of being that person.” ?For many Stoptober is all about quitting smoking therefore your identity is a smoker because you’ve built up a history of validating that you’re a smoker.

If your goal is to be a healthier person via the means of quitting smoking, then you need to build a repetitive history of replacing old habits with new habits, which therefore validates the person you aspire to become. We change bit by bit, day by day, and habit by habit. If there’s one thing that helped me more than most (especially on lazy days) was remembering how going to the gym or running even for 5 minutes, validates the person I want to become. Every time it was raining, and I didn’t fancy going for a run, even if I only ran for 5 minutes, I knew it was one step closer. If I repeated this every day for 5 minutes, 5 minutes would soon turn into 10-20-40, and so on. If you can gradually go several days by replacing the first cigarette in the morning with something else, then you’ve made a great start.

It wasn’t always like this though; I had run before and was good at it for a period. Like many, I stopped (I had a baby and grew a dad bod). When I started running again (a stone heavier) my goal was like previously, to equal 5k in 25 minutes. My return to running 5k ended in 32 minutes, beat myself up for days and didn’t run again for a short period. I then read this book which changed my perspective. By focussing on the process of running each day and forgetting my last measure of success and starting from day 1 again, made it so much more enjoyable. I felt healthier, and more balanced, and realised my time was dropping quickly. I’ve since beaten the 25-minute mark and have completed 5k in sub 21 minutes and feel great for doing so.

A main learn was if your goal is to benchmark against something you’ve achieved historically, then I’d avoid using that as your measure. Start from day 1 and focus on 1% improvement each day.

Let’s assume you have no history of the person you aspire to become. For example, you are overweight which has been the case for many years and finally, this year is the year you decide to shift some weight and become that healthier person.

You’ve not got proof of having a healthier identity that you embody. You have no visual cues to remind you of what you once looked like and therefore you need a system and a reward at the end of that system. For me, I was slimmer before and knew what I looked like meaning I knew I could get back there. Though to increase my chance of success, I stuck a reward at the end of the process, which was a holiday to Thailand. I knew that if I had to take my top off on holiday I was far more likely to succeed.

Similarly, if you’re seeking to stop smoking, a good incentive could be to accumulate the money you would have spent on cigarettes and treat yourself to something you’d not normally purchase. Preplanning that figure could be enough of a reason to stop in the first place, for others you might need to go a step further. To add some context here, let’s say a packet of cigarettes is ￡10.40 and you smoke 10 per day, every day, for a year, this equates to ￡1901. Maybe that holiday you’ve always wished for is within financial reach after all?

Build your environment

Behaviour can be dictated by the people in our environment. We are changed by the people around us, and their habits (good & bad) . Our most powerful sensory ability is our vision, which plays an important role in building context around us. The human body has 11 million sensory receptors and 10 million are dedicated to vision. It’s therefore important that you design the space around you in such a way that exposes you to positive cues and reduces exposure to negative ones. A good way to break this down is one space, one use. I forever found myself opening the laptop after dinner to continue working. Ironically, I worked from the kitchen table when working from home, and sub-consciously, I associated eating with work.

If you want to drink more water, make sure you buy a refillable water bottle and take it everywhere with you. I take mine to the gym, the office, home and I find myself consuming 3 litres of water each day (min). This contributes to my goal of becoming a healthier person (losing weight). The consumption of water fleshes out the salts in your body, keeps you more hydrated, helps you burn more calories, and can help suppress hunger which all contribute to weight loss. Therefore, if you’re reading this and fancy trying to lose weight then a great habit to create is water consumption. By having the water bottle wherever I go, provides me with the visual cue I need to drink, refill, and repeat (remember, repetition is an important part of the system).

If you’re seeking to curb a smoking habit, building your environment could be as simple as removing the cigarettes from sight, making them harder to find. Better still, give them to someone else to hide for you. If you’re relentless, you may even throw them away right at the beginning. In theory, if you want a cigarette and they’re not within your current environment, you’re up to 3 times less likely to go out of your way to buy them. To add my own experience of this, I made sure my gym was en route to work. Therefore, I had no excuse not to go. If I had to go 15 minutes out my way to go, I could be 3 times less likely to go.

So, if you want behaviours that are stable, predictable, and reliable then focus on designing the environment rather than leaning on motivation or control.

Repetition, not perfection

I’ve touched on this in an earlier paragraph. Have you ever procrastinated figuring out the best approach to do something that never subsequently got actioned? To master a habit, the key is to start with repetition and not perfection. Effortless practice to automate behaviour i.e the ability to perform a behaviour without thinking about each step, which occurs when the unconscious mind takes over. The key takeaway is a 2-minute rule which states when you start a new habit it should take 2 minutes or less. It seems daft when I write this, however at the beginning of my fitness journey when I thought I didn’t have time in my day to train, I started to do push up’s whilst cooking my meal. I get bored easily and the thought of standing over a hob cooking chicken bored me to tears. Instead, I started doing push-ups which led to the gym, running, and eventually a 10kg weight loss in 3 months.

Interestingly, smoking for some is a 2-minute task, which could be why creating that as a bad habit is so easy. A study suggests smoking is 20% physical and 80% mental. The mental addiction is your desire or need for cigarettes, how much you believe you enjoy smoking, and how ingrained it is in your life. Mental addiction is what causes irresistible cravings. That is why you can sleep through the night without cravings, but when your mind is awake, you can’t help but think about your next cigarette. Your mind constantly reminds you to smoke when you talk on the phone, finish your meal, or want to reward yourself. So, replacing a habit that takes two minutes that distracts your mind could be exactly what you need. Read a book, listen to a podcast, go for a walk but remember to build your environment and don’t do this in places where you would usually smoke. Finding a routine that suits you, that allows repetition i.e going for a walk at the time you would normally have your first cigarette, that doesn’t involve going past any shops or any triggers reminding you of smoking could be a great way to start each day. It provides the validation of the person you aspire to become and after a while you will think less, become more automated and maybe in time, crack the bad habit. Even 1% improvement every day compounds the results by 37 times in one year.

Shared responsibility

Human beings are a herd of animals, we want to fit in, bond with others to earn the respect and approval of the community. Ironically this is why so many people start smoking when they go to university as everything is new, routine’s and habits are out of sync and therefore smoking allows you to fit in with others and create bonds. We tend to initiate habits in 3 social groups 1) Close friends and family (if your parents smoke, you’re more likely to smoke) 2) the tribe or community you belong to (work) 3) the powerful people around you with status and prestige. It’s said a shared responsibility begins to reinforce your personality identity. Our behaviours are more attractive when they help us fit in. Therefore, it’s important to join a culture where your desired behaviour is normal. It may seem brutal, but if your friends or family smoke then maybe distancing yourself could be the start of your journey. From my own experience, I usually tell my partner or business partner on a Sunday that I’m going to the Gym at 6:30 am Monday. I do this as it’s easy to let myself down but harder to let others down. Tell your friends and family you’re quitting smoking could be a good start.

The above information is all credit to James Clear and his amazing research. The above is a small insight into his world of thinking and I’d encourage everyone to read Atomic Habits. I’ve enjoyed this to the point of reading it again with additional note-taking. This is a new habit. Moving forward, I want to create a book library with notes to reflect on (If only Audible had a function to add notes electronically, this could save a lot of manual effort!).?