If you are looking to make significant change in your life, this is the book for you. It is THE BEST book I've read thus far on habit forming and behavior change, and I've read a lot of them. The author, James Clear, maintains that we typically focus on outcome-based habits, like weight-loss, when we should be focusing on identity-based habits, like beliefs and biases. Basically, instead of focusing on what we want to achieve, we need to focus on who we want to become.
Clear breaks down habit formation into four easy steps (The Habit Loop):
Cue - Triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. Cues indicate you are close to a reward
Crave - initiated by the cue to change your current state
Response - The actual habit you perform
Reward - Satisfies your craving
He then transforms these four steps into a practical framework that we can use to design good habits and eliminate bad ones. He refers to this framework as The Four Laws of Behavior Change:
Make it OBVIOUS (cue)
Make it ATTRACTIVE (crave)
Make it EASY (response)
Make it SATISFYING (reward)
Invert these laws to learn how to break a bad habit:
Make it INVISIBLE (cue)
Make it UNATTRACTIVE (crave)
Make it DIFFICULT (response)
Make it UNSATISFYING (reward)9
With this book, you will learn how to:
Build a system for getting 1% better every day.
Break your bad habits and stick to good ones.
Avoid the common mistakes most people make when changing habits.
Overcome a lack of motivation and willpower.
Develop a stronger identity and believe in yourself.
Make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy).
Design your environment to make success easier.
Make tiny, easy changes that deliver big results.
Get back on track when you get off course.
And most importantly, how to put these ideas into practice in real life.
Atomic Habits is filled with meaningful anecdotes and practical strategies and processes to assist in creating new habits and breaking old ones. Once you purchase the book, you will also gain access to a Habits Cheat Sheet, a Companion Reading Guide, and a Habit Tracker. to supplement your reading and organize your progress. You can also sign up for James Clear's weekly emails that will inspire you along the way. I highly recommend reading this book and putting these processes into play. It will change your life!
Quotable quotes from Atomic Habits:
All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.
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