I’m midway through Atomic Habits. It comes highly recommended and whenever you see a book where 87% of the internet agrees it is 5/5 stars… it just doesn’t get any better than that.
In brief, it breaks down the creation of a single habit into its biological steps. From cue to craving to response to reward — it’s a simple science once you understand it. And once you understand it you will start noticing individual habits and break down each of the 4 phases. Once you can do that you can begin to rewire them. It’s awesome.
In terms of results, I found myself applying them to getting back into strong cardio fitness. All the previous attempts at running started with goals. I would start strong and keep increasing my distance but eventually, I would falter and fall off the wagon. Restarting was difficult as I would find excuses and I would regress into my former self. In brief, I experienced continued success until I hit my first failure. One failure turned into a series of sporadic failures then running as a goal-oriented subject lost its luster. I found myself back at square one not too long after. The key thing is that despite my early success, one failure is all it took to open the door for a chain reaction of subsequent failures.
When I tweaked just one idea everything changed. I pulled an inception on myself. Goals are good for direction but a process is good for progress. Best of all an identity is an anchor point that will last: I am a runner. And just like that, I’ve been running consistently for the past month. I don’t always need to beat my last distance nor do I have to run everyday. Now I simply crave running, it is no longer a chore to check off my list.
One of the sneaky aspects of changing habits starting with identity is it opens up options. Setting goals can be very specific (run 5 miles). But simply being a runner meant I strapped on my shoes and as I took off for my run I would decide which route I wanted. In other words, simply being a runner expanded my options and gave me consistent gains without tying me down to attaining a specific goal which would result in a success or failure. Forward progress mattered above all else. And for days where I had hoped to run but did not, I did not chalk it up as a failure because it only made me crave a run the next day.
So far I’ve been working at this for about a month. The real litmus test is to see how long it lasts and how many new habits I can rewire. I’ll be sure to revisit this towards the end of the year for an update. So far so good!
