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After all, when your behavior and your identity are fully aligned, you are no longer pursuing behavior change. You are simply acting like the type of person you already believe yourself to be.
Many people walk through life in a cognitive slumber, blindly following the norms attached to their identity.
“I’m not a morning person.”
This is why you can’t get too attached to one version of your identity. Progress requires unlearning.
More precisely, your habits are how you embody your identity.
When you write each day, you embody the identity of a creative person.
The more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior.
Your identity is literally your “repeated beingness.”
The more evidence you have for a belief, the more strongly you will believe it.
As the evidence grew, so did my identity as a writer. I didn’t start out as a writer. I became one through my habits.
Each habit is like a suggestion: “Hey, maybe this is who I am.”
Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity.
The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.
Each time you encourage your employees, you are a leader.
Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
Now your focus shifts from writing a book (outcome-based) to being the type of person who is consistent and reliable (identity-based).
feedback loops.
Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits.
it’s important to let your values, principles, and identity drive the loop
Your identity is not set in stone. You have a choice in every moment. You can choose the identity you want to reinforce today with the habits you choose today.
Habits can help you achieve all of these things, but fundamentally they are not about having something. They are about becoming someone.
“Habits are, simply, reliable solutions to recurring problems in our environment.”
Habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience.
“Will habits make my life dull? I don’t want to pigeonhole myself into a lifestyle I don’t enjoy. Doesn’t so much routine take away the vibrancy and spontaneity of life?” Hardly.
Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. In fact, the people who don’t have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom.
Without good financial habits, you will always be struggling for the next dollar. Without good health habits, you will always seem to be short on energy. Without good learning habits, you will always feel like you’re behind the curve.
Building habits in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future.
cue, craving, response, and reward.fn1
It is a bit of information that predicts a reward.
Without some level of motivation or desire—without craving a change—we have no reason to act.
Every craving is linked to a desire to change your internal state.
The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward.
If a behavior is insufficient in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit. Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start. Reduce the craving and you won’t experience enough motivation to act. Make the behavior difficult and you won’t be able to do it. And if the reward fails to satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future. Without the first three steps, a behavior will not occur. Without all four, a behavior will not be repeated.
This four-step process is not something that happens occasionally, but rather it is an endless feedback loop that is running and active during every moment you are alive—even now.
I refer to this framework as the Four Laws of Behavior Change,
Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself: How can I make it obvious? How can I make it attractive? How can I make it easy? How can I make it satisfying?
We can’t always explain what it is we are learning, but learning is happening all along the way, and your ability to notice the relevant cues in a given situation is the foundation for every habit you have.
you don’t need to be aware of the cue for a habit to begin.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Every detail is identified, pointed at, and named aloud.fn1 This process, known as Pointing-and-Calling, is a safety system designed to reduce mistakes.
Many of our failures in performance are largely attributable to a lack of self-awareness.
There are no good habits or bad habits. There are only effective habits. That is, effective at solving problems.
Generally speaking, good habits will have net positive outcomes. Bad habits have net negative outcomes.
“Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?”
If you feel like you need extra help, then you can try Pointing-and-Calling
Hearing your bad habits spoken aloud makes the consequences seem more real.
Strategies like Pointing-and-Calling and the Habits Scorecard are focused on getting you to recognize your habits and acknowledge the cues that trigger them, which makes it possible to respond in a way that benefits you.
The sentence they filled out is what researchers refer to as an implementation intention, which is a plan you make beforehand about when and where to act.
Broadly speaking, the format for creating an implementation intention is: “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.”
An implementation intention sweeps away foggy notions like “I want to work out more” or “I want to be more productive” or “I should vote” and transforms them into a concrete plan of action.
