In Mini Habits, Stephen Guise explained that anyone can cultivate good habits by performing small positive behavior every day, which he termed as mini habits.
As you may know from your previous struggles to make any change last, you need to stop fighting against your brain. For that, a mini habit is too small to fail and demands little or no willpower. Also, cultivating a good habit can be comparatively easier than breaking a bad habit.
1: Good Habits can save you.
If your life is a complete mess of bad habits, adding some good habits can save you.
When we change one particular area of our lives, other areas begin to change. For example, if you start exercising, there are chances, you eat well because you don’t want to waste your efforts, or you can start feeling better about yourself, or you burst less into others.
Hence, you can choose one area (Physical, Emotional, Spiritual, or intellectual) to improve just by starting a very SMALL behavior that your brain can’t resist.
2: Big Intentions are worthless if they don’t bring results.
“People have been shown in studies to chronically overestimate their self-control ability.”
When we go after any positive change, we go for big changes without knowing whether we are enough capable to pull it off, or just go into tomorrows-loop or delaying it for another perfect time.
The big intentions are worthless if they don’t bring results. Instead, you must perform a minimum task every day, that can bring some kind of results, compound over time.
For example, I can say I will complete a whole 300 pages book in a day, but I never do it because it feels overwhelmingly enormous task. Instead, I can read ten pages minimum (or one paragraph), and once I start, I can stretch it longer to 20 or 30 pages, but not less than 10. Similarly, doing one push or just getting into the pushup position starts a ripple effect which can turn into a full workout routine over time.
Most people make this mistake. They have big ambitions but overestimate their ability to make themselves do what it takes to change. Stephan said that it’s a mismatch between desire and ability.
Instead,
- Doing a little bit is infinitely bigger and better than doing nothing,
- Doing a little bit every day has a greater impact than doing a lot in one day. It helps to build a lifelong habit.
3: Blame the strategies, not yourself.
Most of the time, we are not problems, but our strategies. Therefore, instead of changing the strategies, we quickly blame ourselves for our failure.
As the author puts it, “if you fail using a particular strategy more than a few times, you need to try another one. It does not matter if it works for everyone else if it does not work for you.”
Failure is inevitable, but you can adjust your strategy to make change last. If you keep looking for a new strategy — in business or job or personal life — you will eventually find that strategy works best for you.
4: If you repeat it, you won’t forget it.
Repetition is the language of the subconscious brain.
As per one study by duke university, 45 Percent of our behavior is from habit, which can yield big benefits or big damage in the long run. Furthermore, whatever we choose to do every day, shaping ourselves — be it good or bad.
So ask now, what habits I want to build in the next five years, and what will be a mini habit to start with? You must stay conscious of what you do and how you do, so you can begin changes.
Remember, you can only kill the beast you can see.
Hi, I am Yaashaswi, and I write blogs on online business and how to grow it every day. So, if you are running an online business or plan to start one, then I invite you on my journey of building an online business.
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