Atomic Habits

why you should read this book

Brushing your teeth after waking up in the morning, taking bath, going to work on the same route every day, always eating in that one hotel while returning, always going for a walk in that one garden, using your mobile and don't know how many such things we do in our life. Do it without thinking. Our mind always searches for comfort due to which it forms habits so that it does not have to think every time. But the consequences of these habits can be very good or very bad.

This book tells us about the reasons due to which we adopt any habit. It tells us why it is very difficult to break a habit and why it is difficult to adopt a good habit. Also, this book tells us how we can easily leave bad habits and adopt good habits.

- Why are small tasks not small?

- How are habits formed?

- How can a boring task be made fun?

1.Small actions can have huge consequences.

When you exercise every day, you will never become healthy in one day, but one day your health will definitely improve. Similarly, when you eat outside food every day, you do not realize that you are getting fat, but after a few years, when you look at your old photos, you realize that that food you eat every day has affected your health. But what impact it has had.

We do so many things every day which are either good or bad. We think that the result of that small work will not be anything special, but we forget that by doing that small work continuously, we can go far back or forward. For example, if one person always searches for information on the internet and one person always searches for entertainment, although it looks like both of them are using the internet, but after 10 years the difference between them is huge. .

So if you want to remain successful and healthy for a long time, then try to identify those daily habits of yours. Try to see whether that work is taking you forward or backward. See whether that work is good or bad. After this decide whether you should do that work every day or not.

For example, if you are doing some new work today, then ask yourself what effect it will have on you if you continue doing this work continuously for the next 10 years. In this way you can find out whether you should do that work or not. If you spend most of your income on buying nice gadgets or luxuries, then it is obvious that you are giving yourself comfort and even after 10 years you will be earning the same amount of money as you are earning today.

But if you spend most of your income on making yourself smarter or investing somewhere, then it is obvious that 10 years from now you will probably be earning a lot of money by doing very little work. .

2.We repeatedly do those things which give us some reward.

Just think about what tasks you do every day. Now think about why you do that work and how you will face problems if you do not do that work. Most of us have a habit of brushing our teeth after waking up in the morning. If you do not brush for two days, you will start having bad breath and you will not like it. In other words, brushing gives you a reward that requires you to repeat the task every day.

To prove this, some psychologists conducted an experiment on a monkey. They locked the monkey in a cage and placed a lever and a computer in front of it. When red colored lines were shown on that computer and then a lever was pulled, the monkey got fruits to eat. The monkey understood this with time and then he started looking at the screen attentively. As soon as he saw red lines, he would pull the lever and he would get fruits to eat. In this way, to get a reward, he started doing that work again and again.

To do any work, we need a why which tells us that the time has come to do that work. For example, some people resort to alcohol to get rid of their stress. Whenever they get stressed, it's their why that tells them it's time to drink. After this, for every work we do, we get a reward, to get which we keep doing that work again and again. When that person gets relief after drinking alcohol, then that person remembers alcohol after going under stress again.

In this way, almost every habit follows this pattern. There are some bad habits which by adopting give us comfort or fun for some time, but in the long run they are harmful for us. But still we keep doing those things to get the reward from those works. We are unable to stop ourselves from doing this. We will learn about its solution in the upcoming lessons.

3.To form new habits you will have to change your environment.

Now that you know how our habits are formed, let's use it to learn how you can easily adopt new habits. There are some things that provoke us to do a particular thing. For example, if you ever pass by a restaurant and smell the food, you go there to eat. That scent provoked you to do so.

This means that if you want to make any new work a habit, then always keep those things with you which encourage you to do that work. If you want to develop the habit of exercising every morning, then hang a health-related photo in your room so that as soon as you wake up every morning, you exercise to improve your health.

If you want to eat good and healthy food then always keep healthy food in your fridge. If possible, start living with healthy people so that seeing their health, you feel like becoming healthy like them and in this way you will always eat good food.

Apart from this, one way is to plan well for adopting that new work. For example, don't just tell yourself that you will take care of your health from now on. Rather, you should make a good plan to do this. You decide what you will do every morning after waking up, what food you will eat, if you ever feel like eating pizza, how you will stop yourself, what kind of people you will be with, what food items you will keep in your fridge. . This way you are fully prepared and now the chances that you will actually do that work have increased.

4.Give yourself a reward for adopting a new habit.

As we already said that for doing every task you get a reward. By using this you can create many habits within yourself. But if you want to be healthy then you have to eat healthy food, but eating healthy food does not make you enjoy. So how can you adopt this habit?

A simple way to do this is to combine that work with some work that you enjoy doing. For example, if you are fond of stories, tell yourself that if you eat healthy food every day this week, you can read a story on Sunday. Similarly, if you have to complete your work within time, then you tell yourself that if you do this, then you can watch a movie on Sunday.

When we think about the reward we get from some work, a hormone called dopamine is released in our brain which makes us feel good. That's why some people get into the habit of daydreaming because they keep driving themselves around in a Mercedes, dreaming with open eyes, and that's what they enjoy. We all have this quality and so just thinking about your next treat will make you feel good. But you will get that treat only when you complete your work. Therefore, to achieve it, your interest in that work will increase.

Psychologists experimented on rats to understand the importance of dopamine. They inserted electric rods into his brain and stopped his dopamine release. The result was that those rats stopped eating and drinking. He felt hungry, but did not get the comfort that he gets after eating food. Now because they are not enjoying doing that work, they have stopped doing that work. He died of thirst within a few days.

Therefore, if you promise to give yourself a reward when you complete a boring task, the thought of which makes you feel good, then you will complete that task easily.

5. We settle for things that are easy.

Our brain likes rest. That's why he always likes to do those tasks which are easy. So if you want to form a new habit, you have to make it so simple that you can easily adopt it. Similarly, if you want to give up a bad habit, you have to make it so difficult that you leave it.

First of all let's talk about giving up bad habits. For this you will have to do something which will make that work difficult for you. For example, if you want to use Facebook less, then delete its app from your phone and also sign out of it every time you use Facebook from the browser. In this way, to use Facebook, you would have to search it on Google and log in again and again, which made this task difficult. Now you will easily leave it.

Similarly, if you are thinking of waking up in the morning to go jogging, then always keep your shoes under your bed, keep your jogging dress somewhere in front of you and sleep, so that when you wake up in the morning, you just have to go running.

Another way to adopt a habit is to adopt the two-minute rule. Our brain likes small tasks because they finish quickly. So don't tell yourself that you will read a book every week, rather say that you will read just for two minutes or just two pages. In this way, you will keep doing these small tasks every day and a time will come when you will get used to it. For all this you have to start first. Without it you will never reach your destination.

6. Give yourself some reward when you repeat your good habits.6.

In earlier times, people were only concerned about food, shelter and keeping themselves safe. They used to roam in the forests for food and when they got food, they used to sit comfortably. But today we work thinking about the future. Circumstances have changed, but our mentality remains the same. We neither want to work in the long run, but are unable to do it.

For example, we drink alcohol because it gives us instant relief. But it will take the form of cancer after twenty years. We know this, but we still drink it because we get instant relief from it and that is our mentality. But we may see the benefits of exercise after 2 years. We do not get immediate benefit from it, hence we do not do that work.

This means that if we can somehow reward ourselves for repeating good habits, we will adopt them more quickly.

For example, a person had to travel to Europe and also had the habit of eating out. He wanted to get rid of this habit and eat healthy home-made food. Therefore, he opened an account in his home which he named Trip to Europe. Whenever he would stop himself from eating out, he would deposit that money in that account. In this way, he felt happy seeing that his dream was about to be fulfilled and to get this happiness, he started doing that work again and again. After some time he lost the habit of eating outside.

7. Put yourself on a contract and punish yourself for not repeating your good habits.

Benjamin Franklin kept a notebook with him since the age of 20 in which he used to write down the 13 virtues he had to adopt. If on any day he repeated all his good deeds, he used to tick them all, and on the day when he could not repeat some of his habits for some reason, he used to cross them out.

In this way, with time, they came to know to what extent they were adopting their good habits. On the days when they did all their work, they used to tick all the tasks on that day, which gave them a sense of relief. To attain that peace, he repeated those good habits of his every day and we do not need to tell you about his success.

Similarly, keep a tracker with you so that you can know which tasks you are doing and which ones you are not doing. You will also feel relieved when you see all your work completed and in this way you will be able to find out whether you will be successful 10 years from now or not.

Apart from this, keep yourself on habit contract. You sign a deal together with some of your special people. If any day you fail to repeat your good habits, punish yourself. Brian Harris is a Nashville entrepreneur who decided he wanted to lose weight by writing down what foods to eat and how to exercise. If he could not do all that work one day, he would give $100 to his trainer and $500 to his wife. In this way they started doing their work honestly.

When we feel that we will get embarrassed in front of those we love, we do not do that work. When Brian realized that he would be embarrassed in front of his wife and his trainer for not completing his work, he started doing his work every day. In this way, you can also adopt good habits by keeping yourself on a contract.

overall

We form new habits over time because we get some reward for doing that work. To get that reward we repeat that work again and again. If we reward ourselves for repeating a good deed, we will easily adopt that habit. In the same way, if we make it difficult for ourselves to repeat our bad habits, we will easily give up them.

To adopt a new habit, link it to an old habit.

Suppose you want to develop the habit of meditating. To adopt this habit, connect it to one of your old habits. Meditate every day after drinking strong coffee. Tell yourself that every morning after you drink coffee, you will meditate, or after meditating you will drink coffee.

 

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