I get inspired by the discipline and awe at the accomplishments of people a lot. I look at them and tried hard to understand what makes them different from me? Perhaps you ask the same question. We all have the same drive and desires to be something more that what we are. So what gives? Why am I still reading book, watching videos on habits?
Its a pattern for me. I feel inspired, and for many days I feel motivated to do something to perform the actions that I want to build in myself. For example, I wake up at 5:30 to do push ups and sit ups. eventually my body catches on and I am able to wake up easily. Eventually something in life also happens. I get sick, we go away on a trip or something happens the night before. The chain is broken. Eventually, I fall back into the same patterns. It’s a cycle of wanting, doing, failing.
Obviously unsatisfying #
“Consistency is key”, they say. But something was not working. Just like Gretchen Wiener’s attempts to make fetch happen, it wasn’t happening. The habit was not sticking. The habit was not satisfying. Any behavior change, your mind will fight. Your brain realizes the dissonance between its reference point about who you are and your desire to who you want to be. I’ve learned from Atomic Habits a rule about behavior change: “what is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided”. Therefore, in order to make a habit stick you need to feel immediately successful, even if it’s in a small way. This is the key to consistency. Making it satisfying immediately increates the odds that the behavior will be repeated next time.
How to make it stick #
In order to be more consistent, I’ll need to make it immediately satisfying. The trick here is to pick a reward that is also a vote for who you want to be. It would be a bad move to reward myself with snacks of junk food after a workout if my goal is to be a healthy person. This is where a having an good understanding of our goals and values are important. Let’s say for example I wanted to be a healthy person and a be a good father. Here is my habit: “I will workout every day, for every workout I will put a $1 into a savings account labelled ‘Tickets to Amusement Park’”.