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Video 5 in our series on James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits.

Transcription

Awareness, habit stacking, and the secret to self-control.

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo. Welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

And there you have one of the largest, the longest titles ever had here on the show. I want to fit it all in there. Because I’m covering a bunch of random areas from this book, Atomic Habits by James Clear.

They’re not so random, they’re all within this one section of the book, called The First Law makes it obvious.

So in the last episode, we talked about how there are four different laws, four different steps in the loop in the habit loop when you’re trying to build a habit or trying to break a habit.

These are the same four steps no matter what. And if you can break apart those steps, you can get rid of a bad habit, if you can build those steps from the bottom up, you can create a good habit. And so the first law is to make it obvious.

So he’s got it here make it obvious and he’s got a handful of chapters going into that I just wanted to point out some very simple ideas in these that they’re simple but powerful.

One of the things he talks about is that I’ll just read it to you this is a great, great point, he says this is one of the most surprising insights about our habits, you don’t need to be aware of the cue for a habit to begin.

So the queue, this is an aside, there’s me talking, the queue is that beginning thing, it’s the beginning thing that starts you in the process of going into to doing your habit.

There’s something that that happens during a certain time of day, or it’s or it’s seen something or smelling something that lead you into the process of that habit that you just can’t break.

He says, You don’t need to be aware, you can notice an opportunity and take action without dedicating conscious attention to it.

This is what makes habits useful. And that’s really, it’s really true because it’s the awareness. It’s when you it’s not it’s below your awareness.

It’s almost subconscious, but it’s definitely below your immediate awareness.

That’s when habits are the most powerful good habits and bad habits, bad habits are even worse, where you’re in the middle of that, you know, you’re sitting there smoking, like I don’t even remember lighting up is how did this happen, you know, and I don’t smoke, but I know that’s how it works.

Because it works that way with all habits. And you find yourself in the ER like driving, driving to work, you know, the car kind of gets there on its own.

Sometimes you go and you don’t remember getting in the car, and you don’t remember putting your seatbelt on, you don’t remember doing all these things you do every day.

You’re there and you’re like, wait a second, how do I get here, you know, your mind can be used somewhere else because your body is in the process of the habit. I mean, your brains directing it all. But at the same time.

It’s how habits work and it’s why they’re useful.

It’s also why they can be horribly destructive.

But one of the things you really have to do with is, is he talks about habit scorecard.

So if you can just sit back and watch on a daily basis, all the different habits that you have good and bad. And he says that he says really interesting thing, he says there’s no need to change anything at first, the goal is to simply notice what’s going on.

Observe your thoughts and actions without judgment or internal criticism. Don’t blame yourself for your faults. Don’t praise yourself for your successes.

If you just be aware of your habits and be aware of what’s going on, then he gives you ideas of how to go about labeling them and figuring out which ones are good and which ones are bad. And how to go about building better ones.

As time goes on the process of behavior change, he says, always starts with awareness. And that’s absolutely true. I’ve seen over and over again, awareness is a powerful thing.

That if you do nothing else, if you’re looking to lose weight, I want you to do nothing else. Don’t change your diet, don’t change your exercise, anything else.

You don’t have to do anything else consciously except weigh yourself and write it down. Once a day, every day in the morning, you weigh yourself, you write down the number, weigh yourself and write down the number.

That simple process creates awareness about that number. And that number will go in the direction you want it to do if you’re looking to gain weight, you can gain weight, if you wind to lose weight, you will lose weight without even worrying about it. It will automatically start to occur to some extent.

You’re not obsessing over it. You’re just doing it watching the number.

It’s the awareness that makes it powerful is the awareness paying attention to how when you’re eating paying real really close attention to when you’re eating, all of a sudden, you’ll start making different choices, all of a sudden, you won’t eat as quickly. You won’t eat as much.

The awareness is the key there.

It’s very, very interesting, but absolutely true.

Another thing he talks about his habit stacking, which is one of those things that I’ve done through the years, and he talks about if you have one habit, and you stack another habit on top of a habit that’s already there.

It’s easier to get it into play it like follows along, you end off with one or you start with one and the cue, it leads to the next clue, and it builds on itself.

I found this early on when I was living on my own, and I would forget to shave, or I wouldn’t want to shave, because if I waited too long to shave, and my face was too dry, I’d cut myself, it’s just all there’s a number of things, I had skin issues and everything else when I was younger. And I found that I always got a good shave it hot is right out of the shower.

I said, Well, what if I was in the shower, could I do it then. So I took a little mirror with me in the shower, and I started shaving myself in the shower.

All of a sudden I’d had no issues being shaved. And also I shaved every day because it was connected to the habit of taking the shower every day. And honestly, I started later on, I knew somebody that was brushing their teeth in the shower.

So I started brushing my teeth in the shower, all of a sudden, I never forgot to brush my teeth, I at least brush my teeth once a day because I was doing it in the shower, along with that process of habits that are already there. It’s a habit stacking is a very, very powerful tool. He spent some time talking about that.

The final thing that he he discusses that I think it’s just really great is the is the idea of self control. The idea the concept of discipline and self control. And so many of us get caught up with that idea.

Like I’ve mentioned before, that even the word discipline just kind of It bothers me it’s a, it seems like an over the top word, it seems like you’re forcing something or whatever else. And self control can has been tied to the word discipline on on a lot of levels.

But he says it doesn’t have to require this enormous willpower. He says heroic willpower and self control. In other words, you can spin that discipline people spend time in less tempting situations.

So anything that leads into bad habits, a person who’s called discipline is a person that just stays out of those situations, change your environment is his main key.

Change your environment and you can do away with good habits and encourage, do away with bad habits and encourage good habits.

It’s an environmental situation.

So that’s pretty cool. I really really liked that part.

All about the queue is one of the most important parts this is what starts off every situation when you’re building the habit so it’s a great section of the book. Definitely want to check out atomic habits.

I don’t get paid anything for it. It’s just a fabulous book. So I’m spending some spin in some episodes talking about it. So hopefully you found that enjoyable. You can also check out my book, 9 ways to Amazon proof your business.

I am a business investor. So this is this is my concepts on how to go about making yourself competition proof. You get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com AmazonProofBook.com

That’s all I have for today. You have a good one. We’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.