Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

The habits that are valued in your cultures become desirable habits because they are continually rewarded. Humans are herd animals and are strongly influenced by the people around us. For example, Laszlo Polgar believed that “A genius is not born, but is educated and trained” (Chapter 9, 1). Practice and good habits were more important than innate talent. Polgar tested his theory on his own children, raising them to be chess prodigies. He homeschooled his children and filled their house with information about chess and pictures of famous players. All three of his daughters excelled at chess. The middle child become a world champion by the age of 14 and a grandmaster a few years after that. The youngest child, Judith, became the youngest grandmaster of all time and was the top ranked female chess player for 27 years. All of the children loved playing chess because they grew up in an environment where they were praised for succeeding in chess. Clear uses this example to show that the Polgar children excelled at chess because they were praised for succeeding at it, which created a positive feedback loop.

Individuals are strongly shaped by cultural expectations, which become barometers of your own success. There are three different levels of influence. The close, the many, and the powerful. First, you are influenced by those who you are in close proximity. This includes your families, friends, and coworkers. To build better habits, put yourself in contexts where your desired behavior is considered normal.

Friendship and community help us build sustainable habits. Humans are more likely to be influenced by larger numbers of people. This can be positive, such as joining a running club. At the same time, group norms can also encourage bad habits to fit in. Changing habits is more attractive when it means that you fit in with the crowd. People also imitate the powerful. Humans are drawn to prestige and status and often copy the behavior of successful people. 

The inversion of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it unattractive. Cravings are manifestations of deeper motives, including winning social acceptance, achieving status, and conserving energy, to name a few. For example, Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking reframes cues associated with smoking. Rather than smoking being a form of stress relief, Carr demonstrates that smoking does not relieve your nerves, it destroys them. Throughout the book, phrases like this are repeated to undermine smoking. In doing so, he shows that smoking does not solve the problems that cause us to turn to smoking. Carr makes smoking unattractive by reframing the habit to be unattractive.

Your current habits are not necessarily the best way of achieving your goals, they are just the ways that you have done it in the past. One of the best ways to build new habits is to associate behaviors with positive outcomes. For example, saving money can be understood as a sacrifice. However, saving money can also be associated with more freedom in the future. This mindset shift helps you save money. Creating motivation rituals is another productive practice. This can be stretching, putting on a song, or repeating a mantra. The intention is to get you into the right mental state. Once you have located the cause of your bad habits, you must reframe how you feel about these habits to make bad habits unattractive and good habits attractive.