Many of us have jobs, homes, friends, partners, maybe even families, lives that would be considered perfectly fine and even successful by the standards of our society & culture.
Still, we feel that something is off.
We feel that somehow, we do not really belong to this place, to this body, to this life of ours.
We are alienated: living a life that everyone wants, but it never occurred to us to ask ourselves if WE wanted this life.
Too often, when going to bed without being numb by drinking, we cannot get to sleep. Our mind is racing and can’t seem to shut down.
But in reality, it’s not our mind but our soul that is speaking to us on those nights.
It’s asking for a profound change, for a correction of trajectory towards a more authentic and personally meaningful life path.
Some of us retreat fearing this voice coming from the deepest corners of their souls.
Or As Nietzsche would put it:
“They fear their higher self, because when it speaks, it speaks demandingly.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Others want to listen to it, but don’t know where to start with such a radical change.
Where do you start with changing your life?
This is far from being an easy question to answer, but one potential starting point could be the implementation of life long habits that help us align our lives with who we really are and reach our valued goals.
What Are Habits
Habits are the things that you do everyday without thinking about it: brushing your teeth, taking a shower, driving to work through the same the route, smoking.
Hell even taking your little shark for a walk, or a swim, or both.
It’s those actions that we’ve done so many times in the past until it became engraved in our subconscious.
In other words, habits are the actions that we do automatically, without really involving our conscious awareness.
Once set, habits start to have a life of their own: They have a trigger, an associated behavior and a reward.
Why habits Exist
Habits exist purely for efficiency’s sake: When a behavior/action is done several times, your brain starts to migrate this behavior from your consciousness to your unconscious mind where these behaviors can be automatically carried out.
This frees up your attention and consciousness from processing repeated actions and provides the space and energy for your brain to focus on more complex tasks at a given time.
In fact, could you imagine doing anything in your life if every time you drove your car you had to consciously think about how to drive?
Why Habits Are Important
Our habits are at the core of who we are and who we will become. They make up our entire lives.
What you do repeatedly do today (i.e habits) will create who you will become tomorrow.
- Do you workout and eat healthy everyday? You will become a healthy in shape person.
- Do you read everyday? You will become a knowledgeable person who has a wide understanding of many topics.
Your actions & habits create your identity, and that’s powerful.
It means that you do not have to stay the same person, or the same piece of shit you’ve been in the past, you can change who you are!
You have control over your actions & habits, and hence, you have control over who you can become.
Now that we determined the what & why of Habits, let’s go through the “How” with 3 key steps.
Step #1: Choose A Habit To Implement
Do you frequently see those articles where they tell you:
- “These are the best habits to have in your life”
- “Working out every morning changed my life, and it can change yours”
Well ditch those.
Because the best habits you can implement are the ones based on your personal core values and what you truly care about, not based on someone’s else opinion.
Why?
Because you would need an internal intrinsic motivation to push through and perform the habit everyday for the first few months until it becomes automatic, and that motivation can only exist if you truly care about and value the habit you are implementing in the first place.
So in order to choose a habit to implement, you have to first consult your top values, and see if there are any habits related to those values you can pick up.
This assumes of course that you know who are, what you care about, and your core top values. If you don’t, no issues, you can start here.
Let’s go through a few examples to get the jist out of this:
Examples of Habits based on Values
- Value 1: Curiosity,
- Habits Associated: Reading a book everyday, etc.
- Value 2: Creativity
- Habits Associated: Painting everyday, writing everyday, etc.
- Value 3: Health
- Habits Associated: Working out everyday, eating healthy everyday, etc.
- Value 4: Gratitude
- Habits Associated: Keeping a gratitude journal you write on everyday, etc.
So take your 1st top value, identify what habit you can implement that would allow to continuously fulfill that value, ready, set, go!
Step #2: Find Your Trigger
The first component of a Habit is a trigger: This is the triggering event that your unconscious mind will begin to associate with the habit.
There are many ways you can set your trigger, but we’ll focus on a specific type here.
Trigger = End of something you do everyday.
Make a list of things you do everyday: This will at least (hopefully) include waking up in the morning, having lunch, having dinner, and going to bed at night.
Now, the idea is to link your new habit you want to establish to the end of an activity that you already do everyday.
For example, you want to start a reading habit.
You know you have a cup of coffee everyday at home in the morning.
That’s a perfect trigger: You can choose to set “having a cup of coffee” as the triggering event to “start reading your book”.
Now, every time you have your coffee, you start reading your book.
When you do this a few times, “having your coffee” will not just be “having your coffee” anymore. It becomes way more than that. It becomes a trigger, a reminder for you to engage in another activity, in this case, reading your book. And not just any reminder, but reminder that happens everyday, and at around the same time, and that’s the power of triggers.
Step #3: Perform the behaviour
This is the core of the habit: To perform the actual action/behaviour itself. This is the actual reading a book, going for a run, journaling (whatever other habit you can think of) part.
There is one main question associated with this step we should consider:
For how long should I perform the behaviour every time I do it?
The best strategy for this is to define a minimum amount of time “T” for the duration of your habit.
On any given day, when you engage in your habit and do it for T minutes, you can then tick it off from your to-do list and consider yourself done and feel happy about it.
You can do it for more than T minutes if you’d like on some days, but T minutes is the minimum you have to go with in order to consider yourself successful in implementing your habit on any given day.
A quick tip: Do really set T to the lowest value possible for any given habit.
This will ensure that doing the habit for T minutes would look easy for you on any day, and you will not bail on it because of a lack of a motivation, since it’s just a quick T minutes session!
And it’s important to not bail out because consistency (i.e doing the habit everyday, regardless of the duration) is the most important aspect of habit implementation. That’s how habits get ingrained into your system, by doing it consistently.
Step #4: Set Your Reward
Now, the last component of a habit is the reward that you would get right after completing the behaviour.
This serves to reinforce the habit formation through the dopamine circuit in your brain: You receive a quick dopamine boost in your brain through the reward each time you perform the habit.
Next time you do the habit, your brain will anticipate the reward and performing it will be easier.
Now, what kind of reward should you use for your habits?
There are two types: External rewards and intrinsic rewards.
- External rewards are those things that pleasure you and don’t have anything to do with the habit you are implementing.
For instance, you could set your reward after your running habit to be having breakfast, dinner, something sweet, an episode of your favourite show, whatever.
- Intrinsic rewards, however, are those rewards that come from performing the habit itself, they are intrinsic to the habit.
For instance, your habit is running, and you feel refreshed relaxed and good everytime you finish running. There’s your reward!
It’s definitely better to find intrinsic rewards to your habits, but just in case there aren’t any, you can still manually set extrinsic rewards to keep you motivated on implementing the habit.
Step #5: Repeat
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat!
That’s the secret ingredient of any habit formation: Consistency.
You need a few months of repeating the habit everyday for it to move from your conscious to your unconscious mind and become automatic.
It doesn’t matter if you engage in your habit for 1minute, or for 1hour everyday, what matters is that you do it on a consistent basis.
That’s what builds momentum. That’s what would make you become everything you want to be: The small steps that you do everyday.
“First we make our habits, and then our habits make us”
To sum up, whatever you want to become in this life can be translated into a set of habits. You just have to pick a habit aligned with your values, choose your trigger, reward, and repeat for a few months, and then voila: You got yourself an autonomous behavior in your life, a pattern that takes place everyday without the need for any willpower or motivation, and not just any pattern, but a pattern that is important to you and based on something you truly care about.
A pattern that shapes your life, allowing you to grow, to change, to evolve.
So why stay forever the same when you can become whatever you want?
Stay in the loop