Why we do what we do and how to change
by Charles Duhigg.
I just finished this book: 'The Power of Habit' and it's really mind blowing.
Everybody has habits, good and bad ones. We don't think about how they were born or created, but always we would like to change our bad habits.
Habits can be described as for example riding a bicycle, driving a car, smoking, nail biting.... everything we do actually can be described as habit.
But have you ever thought about it how our habits started to exist?
Well I have, and that was the reason why I bought this book. For years and years I've been smoking cigarettes, even if i know they are bad for my health (like everybody knows). But that doesn't stop us from keep on smoking, right?
When I started to read this book, I had one goal in mind: how to stop smoking and change this bad habit.
Every habit starts with a cue, which kickstarts a routine, which in turn gives back an award.
The clue is if you want to change a habit or create a new one, you should find your trigger(s) - cue('s) which kickstarts your routine and gives you the reward you want. Remark, the reward is not always what you expect.
Like in my example, smoking cigarettes, the cue or trigger can be a couple things: boredom, stress, social environment, food, situations, when drinking and friends. The routine, or in other words, my answer on these trickers was to light up a cigaret. The reward I received is different for every cue, e.g. for boredom I felt less bored and had 'something' on hands, for stress it 'calmed' me down (by the way, you know that if you smoke a cigaret you actually get more stress? Read the book 'Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking' by Allen Car), for social environment it gave me a sense of belonging to a group, after food it gave a feeling of closure (but I soon realize that I don't have it when I'm with not smokers).
Once I had figured out my cues/triggers, I knew that at that time I was vulnerable to smoke a cigaret, and that I had to do something. So what I did is created different 'routines' whenever I felt the urge to light up a cigaret.
Anyway to make a long story short, the book is a must read for anybody who want to quit a bad habit or anybody who wants to start a good habit (like exercising in the morning or meditating or .... you name it).
Here you can find 2 easy charts on
How to CREATE a habit:
How to CHANGE a habit:
