How to quit bad habits and start new ones part 1
What are Habits?
You've probably heard of the word 'habits' right? I mean it's being thrown around everywhere nowadays. But what are habits? Simply put habits are things you do regularly in your everyday life, it could be a simple as how you hold your fork to anything such as how you run or sleep. Many of the actions we take, especially subconscious ones are habits. The body does this as if it were to consciously think about every little details of our life it would get overwhelmed, so habits are like actions on autopilot.
Casting Votes
Today I want to share with you a simple mind trick, like a change in perspective that has helped me quit bad habits and form new ones. It's called 'Casting votes' and I learnt it from the book 'Atomic Habits' and its a method which highly effective people use to maks sure their habits are on point. This method tells you that for each action that you do you are casting a vote, like you do in politics when you support a politician it's the same like saying to your brain 'I support this action'. Let's take diet for example, that piece of chocolate that's been calling your name, you know you should not eat it cause its unhealthy and you have better healthier alternatives instead, each time you pick an item over the other there is a message that goes to your brain saying 'I am this type of person who eats this type of food'. Now there's a common misconception the you build habits by doing them for 21 days, while yes that is true they have also found out that you build habits by how many times you do them, by repetitions, this goes hand in hand with the voting as each rep acts as a vote. Each time you perform and action you are reinforcing that habit, that's why when people are recovering from addiction they don't immediately stop, they reduce the intake first and eventually the intake is so small that the person can go without it. They reduce the reps until it's not a problem anymore.
Winner and loser actions
I don't know where I heard it from but last time I came across this new change in mentality so to speak, it's called 'Winner and Loser actions'. You see, in our heads we automatically class people, good, bad, ugly, attractive and so on, if you were to ask yourself, 'Is this guy a winner or a loser?' You would only need to think for a split second cause you already know, and then you only have to look at his actions to confirm. You see, lets say I wanted to wake up early tomorrow and go train, if I do it then that's a win, if I don't then it's a loss. Ask yourself, 'Would this action make me a winner or a loser?' or 'What would a winner do?'. They say fake it till you make it, that's true and I'd also like to connect it to a quote Emerson who famously said 'Do the thing and you will have the power'. Make sure your actions say you're a winner and not anything else.
Summary :
- Look at habits like a voting game
- You don't build habits overtime, you build them through repeating the habit
- Do actions which make you a winner
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