Habit Harvester

You have to ask: "Is this going to help me to get to where I want to go?"

A first practical step would be to write down five to ten bad habits that you know, that you can identify in your life, that you intentionally want to get rid of. 

Intention is important, because you have to intentionally, mindfully want to get rid of them.

It's our brain's way of saying: "I'm hungry, what can we do?".

It sees food, and then you eat food, and you feel good, and the brain is flooded with dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter generated in the brain whenever something good happens to us, and is usually associated with rewards: "Hey this is awesome, let's do it more often".

It is living in the moment for a moment and being conscious about what you are doing.

Ex: a lot of people, when smoking are in fact mindless. They are not even thinking about smoking, it's just a habit.

We should ask ourselves: "what is this thing that I'm doing? What is it doing doing to our relationship?"

You have to understand your habits and reverse engineer them.

How did I end up here and what is it doing to myself, my health, my wealth, my love and my halpiness.

It's a lot like positive reinforcement, only instead a reward, you get a tax or some kind of bad consequence for your actions.

Using the momentum effect -> start doing something, and then another -> "Hey this trigger is fulfilled. Let's go on to the next habit." Tip: you can also have a habit instead of a simple trigger.

Example of the trigger - habit - reward

"The trigger for me is waking up. The habit is reading, the reward is going to be breakfast."

Affirmations

It is better to say "I will eat healthy food", than "I will not eat junk food". Because the brain cannot process negativity. See the example below:

if I tell you not to think of an yellow squirrel, what is the first image that pops into your head?

If then statements

- if I create this habit, if I go on a run every day, if I start planning my meals everyday.

- then I will a have a healthier body, then I will have a six pack, then I will get better at talking to people, then my finances will increase.

THEY ARE LITTLE MOTIVATORS

1. Surround yourself with like-minded people who have similar habits
2. Remove triggers and anything that you think will lead to and eventual bad habit. You need to find those, you need to understand what causes them, and you need to just get rid of them.
3. Change your environment

~ It's not a number of days or years ~

~ It's every day from now on ~

They harden like concrete over time and they compound.