MOST OF MY WORK IS INSPIRED BY THE BOOKS I READ AND THE BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY THAT GOD HAS BROUGHT TO MY LIFE ( La mayor parte de mi trabajo se inspira en los libros que leí y el Hermoso Viaje que Dios ha traído a mi vida)
WANT TO BREAK A BAD HABIT? FOCUS ON THE 3 “Rs”
I’m passionate about writing about habits, and I recently came across an excellent article by Joanie Faletto. It’s a well-crafted piece of writing I couldn’t resist sharing on my blog due to its valuable insights and impactful message.
Got a bad habit? Welcome to the club. It’s so easy to hit the snooze button, reach for chocolate when stressed, or allow Netflix to keep feeding you episode after episode. What’s not so easy is changing those undesirable habits for the better. The key to stamping out your late-night fridge raids is the same formula that started it in the first place.
Running on Routine
A whopping 40 percent of your life is routine, so you’d better ensure your habits are good. The anatomy of any habit is made up of three parts. As described by the author and self-proclaimed ideas advocate James Clear, there are three R’s: reminder, routine, and reward. The Stanford Ph.D. and creator of the Fogg Method productivity hack calls the reminder the trigger, and journalist and author Charles Duhigg calls it the cue. Call It what you want, but your good and not-so-great habits all come down to this three-part dance.
Duhigg’s bestselling book, “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business,” points to these phases as steps in a habit loop. Think of the loop in an example: You hear the phone ring (reminder), you answer the phone (routine), and you talk to the person on the other end (reward). Huge chunks of your day-to-day life take direction from this loop without you needing to pay any mind. How convenient, until you realize your bad habits are all bundled up there, too. Well, crap.
Ch-Ch-Ch-changes
Duhigg says the key to changing bad habits is swapping out the middle R: routine. For example, if you’re trying to quit smoking cigarettes, good luck just shrugging off the urge (reminder) for a smoke after your lunch break. Instead, answer that reminder with a different routine. If you usually eat lunch at your desk, try eating in the kitchen or cafeteria instead to set up a new reminder that isn’t associated with the routine of smoking. Duhigg insists that believing in the change is vital, and redirecting the reminder is the way to achieve the change.
Clear recommends weaving your new habits into your everyday life to start new, good habits. Do this by tacking it onto something familiar that will act as a reminder. That way, you don’t have to rely on the faulty old human brain to remember your goal. Our brains are known to be unreliable, but habits are almost on autopilot in the brain’s basal ganglia. A habit’s reminder creates an automatic domino in the brain without requiring you to give it any thought. While this means old habits die hard, it implies good habits can last forever.
I love this work, and I hope you learn something from it.
I will post wherever I think is remarkable in the never-ending process of becoming better at managing habits in our lives.
I hope you enjoy it.