“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
Atomic Habits by James Clear is my most recent read. The reason I love it so much is that it’s about the little things that make a big difference. The author talks about tiny little habits that you do every day, and how these tiny habits compound much like money in a mutual fund. You don’t really notice the difference when you are implementing them, but then one day, it happens, you reach that goal, or you win that race. Like tiny little changes in your diet, and exercise that you do consistently. Nobody notices until “WOW” one day, someone says “You look great, how much weight have you lost!”
The introduction of Atomic Habits is what really inspired me to continue reading. The author, during his sophomore year of high school, was hit in the face with a baseball bat, which crushed his skull, broke his nose and shattered his two eye sockets. He was put into a medically induced coma. They didn’t think that he would ever play baseball again, a game that James Clear truly loved. He worked hard to finally return and make it to the varsity team his senior year, even though he only played a handful of games. Clear went on to college and was selected as the top male athlete at Denison University and named wo the ESPN Academic All American Team. He attributes his incredible achievements to his focus on creating good habits.
The author explains that one of the secrets to creating successful habits is to make them irresistible. He explained that as humans when we experience pleasure, or when you anticipate pleasure you receive a release of dopamine. One of the ways to experience pleasure with a habit is to intertwine the habit with something you love to do. For example; maybe enjoy watching “The Wheel of Fortune” or any tv show for that matter, and you need to get in shape. You could set your exercise bike in front of the television and make it a habit that you will only watch television if you are riding your bike. It’s a win, win situation.
If you have a bad habit, and want to try to break that habit, one of the things that you can do is make that habit difficult to do. So, lets say you have a habit of going to Kwik Trip every night for supper, and you want to start eating better. One of the things you could do is change your route. When you leave work, take a different route home that doesn’t go past Kwik Trip. Seems simple right? Think about how you can make a habit difficult to do. We all want the path of least resistance, so if you can make it difficult to do, you’ll have a better chance of breaking that habit.
If you’re looking to build a better habit system, this is the book for you. You’ll learn the fundamentals of how small habits when done consistently can make a big difference. On top of it you’ll learn what to do to make those habits easy to accomplish by putting them on a path to least resistance. You’ll learn what “the valley of disappointment” is, and how so many people get discouraged. The book gives you tips on what you can do to break a bad habit too. The final chapter discusses the Cardinal rule of Behavior Change. What is immediately rewarded is repeated. If you can reward yourself for your hard work, there’s a better chance you’ll keep doing it. An easy read, a 5 star review, this book is for people that want to learn how to make a big difference in their lives by simply executing tiny changes consistently.
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