Atomic Habits an Easy Proven Way to Build Good Habits Break Bad Ones Pdf

Atomic Habits: An Easy Way To Break Bad Habits and Build Good Ones

Breaking bad habits is a lot difficult, but James Clear has done it and shares his five easy ways you can follow to leave behind your bad habits and build good ones.

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Is it hard for you to change your bad habits?

James Clear was also exhausted by his bad habits, and it sapped the good out of his life. But he never gave serious thought to changing his habits to adopt good habits and break the bad ones until he suffered serious injuries in a high school baseball game.

One day he was playing a baseball game in his school and got a hit in the face with a baseball bat that sent him into a coma. Had there been another person instead of James Clear, he would have lost hope in life altogether. But James was highly hopeful and wanted to play baseball again.

During the recovery processes, he went through painful physical therapies and faced the horrors of life boldly. He made an attitude of living a healthy life again that allowed him to walk again on his feet. Once he achieved that, he committed to reclaiming his healthy life by following tiny atomic changes in his habits.

These atomic changes made him able to achieve the greatest milestones in his life. He followed the tiny habits for a long time with dedication and commitment.

He hit the gym regularly and went to sleep early. The pattern of early sleep and early rise, coupled with working out for quite a time, paid him off.

Clear made into a college baseball team and earned himself a position in the ESPN Academic All-America Team during his college duration.

Having gone through painful experiences, Clear realized the transformative power of bringing atomic changes in his habits. He expresses everything he has learned down the road about the habits in his best-selling book — Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.

He learned how to break bad habits and build good ones by bringing tiny changes in your day-to-day life. If you like to transform your life for a better future, follow these five key ideas of the Atomic Habits to get remarkable results.

Bookcover from Goodreads

1. Habits Are The Compound Interest of Personal Growth

We often overlook the significance of following tiny habits. We think they are too small to affect us in any way. But the fact is that every habit and action, no matter how small or big it is, affects us — either in a positive way or negative ones.

Habits work against you or work for you. You can't run from its effects in any way. If you add a small good habit into your life and practice it daily in a small quantity, it will stick in your life and increase in proportion because time magnifies everything.

The same goes for a bad habit.

I started smoking when I was in my master's. Initially, I kept it one per day and thought I would keep it like this.

My friends often argued with me that the amount of intake would increase with time, but I denied it. They were all right.

The amount increased to 8 cigarettes per day in two to three years, and that was alarming. I wanted to leave it, but there was no way out. So, I followed the atomic habits and put a cut on them one by one. Following the strategy presented by Clear in his famous book, I made it doesn't feel good for me. I brought it to one consciously by repulsing the urge for it.

I am quite near to quitting smoking in 2021 and starting a new life in 2022.

What I learned from my experience and James Clear's book is to look into your atomic habits. If you want to weed out the bad ones, remove them slowly. Because abrupt changes disrupt you more, and you come back to it more intensely. So, remove them slowly and gradually. Commit yourself to the process, and you will win.

"Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress."

"Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement."

"Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run."

"Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy."

2. Work on Your System Instead of Setting The Goals

Setting the goals is easy. You can select a lot of goals every day and forget about them. It cost nothing to set lofty goals if you are not working on achieving them.

Clear says that instead of setting goals, which is easy, work on your system because the system is the means to your goals.

If you want to win the game, focus more on improving your system of life. Make yourself fit for achieving endless goals. If you have a weak body and mental system, setting goals won't bring you any good.

If you work on your system and make it fit, achieving any goal will be easy, and you will win the game always.

After reading this book, I realized that I was failing in achieving my goals because I was only setting the goals and trying to reach them with the faulty system. James Clear opened my mind by telling me how to work on my system first and then achieve an endless cycle of goals.

"If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead."

"The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It's not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement."

"An atomic habit is a little habit that is part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results."

"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."

3. Focus on Who You Want to Become And Not on What You Want To Achieve

Identity plays an important role in our lives. You need to know who you are and who you want to become instead of what you want to achieve. Instead of achieving something, focus on becoming the person you wish to be.

For achieving our goals, we often change the wrong thing in the wrong way. For example, there are two scenarios, in one, you want to lose weight while in the other, you want to become a person who exercises regularly with consistency.

Focusing on losing weight alone is a good thing, but it does make your identity, and hence, has bad connotations. Concentrating on becoming the person who regularly exercises with commitment and consistency is working on your self-image.

Both the scenarios have a subtle difference, but they affect your life a lot in different ways. In one, you want to achieve a goal, and once achieved, you will discontinue the practice. While in other, you will become the person you wish to be, which will make your identity.

In becoming the desired personality, you will achieve a cycle of goals and adopt long-lasting habits that will become your identity.

To become the person, Clear suggests three layers of development: keep the outcomes on the surface level, follow the process consistently, and it will become your identity.

"There are three layers of behavior change: a change in your outcomes, a change in your processes, or a change in your identity."

"Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe."

"With outcome-based habits, the focus is on what you want to achieve. With identity-based habits, the focus is on who you wish to become."

"The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity."

4. Make Good Habits Obvious, Attractive, Easy, And Satisfying

Getting rid of bad habits isn't easy. But building good ones is also a lot difficult if you don't make good habits obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.

Yes, you can form an identity by willpower, but willpower alone is enough because sometimes you feel down. Your surroundings influence your habits.

If you want to stick to your good habits, manipulate your surrounding to make your good habits attractive, easy, obvious, and satisfying.

You make your habits obvious by knowing the outcomes you are getting in the process. The changes it brings in you should be clear in your personality and the goals you are achieving.

You can make your good habits attractive by adding a fun factor to them. If you are running, choose a place that provides mental solace like a beachside, riverbank, or natural greenery. Add your favorite music to the list to listen to on the run track. This pattern will make your habit more attractive to you.

At first, forming a habit consumes a lot of energy by deliberately focusing on it. But when you repeatedly do, it becomes automatic and easy. It becomes that part of your personality and routine. Once it becomes automatic, it becomes easy. So, repeat the habit consistently until it becomes easy. Remove the hurdles in the way. Join the nearest gym or find a beautiful run track that is easily accessible.

Make your good habits satisfying. You can do it by rewarding yourself. You can also get rid of bad habits such as smoking, coffee, and drinking. When you feel the urge, replace it with satisfaction, such as when you skip smoking, collect the pennies you spend on one cigarette daily and keep it safe. After a year, the price for your daily consumption can make a good sum that can afford a nearby trip or a small party. Keep the satisfaction of good habits insight and the dreads of the bad habits too.

"The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible."

"A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic."

"Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward."

"With enough practice, your brain will pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it."

5. Environment Plays a Stronger Role Than Motivation

Yes, motivation is overrated. It's the environment that plays a significant role in determining your personality. Environment matters more in shaping your behaviors.

If you want to adopt good habits and remove bad ones, bring changes in your environment. But the changes should be slow and invisible. Create cues in your environment that trigger positive responses automatically.

Here, the new environment means to change the outer surrounding alone and bring changes in your internal environment that support your exterior changes.

You can do it by skipping a meeting with friends and peers who are involved in bad habits. Enjoin people who participate in positive activities or in the habits you want for yourself.

Skipping an old environment and gradually entering a new environment has a powerful effect on your behavior, habits, and overall personality. All this happens through a process, and you slowly emerge as the new person and build the identity you wished.

I followed this gradual change of environment have gotten rid of a lot of bad habits. As I said, I decreased the amount of smoking, wasted time with friends aimlessly, quit watching porn to keep myself busy in productivity activity of writing and reading, and started a regular walk.

All these activities have greater positive effects on my physical, psychological, and financial health. I earn through writing now that was missing before. I keep myself fit through walking, which I couldn't manage with old friends sitting somewhere and watching movies and TV. My mental health improved because now I think that I have utilized my time in productive activities.

Follow this, and it has a much greater impact on your life.

"Small changes in context can lead to large changes in behavior over time."

"Gradually, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behavior. The context becomes the cue."

"Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior."

"It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues."

The Message of The Book in Short

1. Atomic habit is the product of the consistent effort of tiny and easy-to-do practice that becomes part of your routine that is the incredible source of power and a component of the personal growth system.
2. You get caught in a cycle of repetition of bad habits not because you don't wish to change but because you don't have the right system.
3. Changes that seem insignificant and unnecessary at first would give your amazing results with positive changes if you practiced them for years consistently.

All the quotes are taken from the book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones By James Clear.

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Source: https://baos.pub/atomic-habits-an-easy-way-to-break-bad-habits-and-build-good-ones-aaa956fd910b

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