Chapter 10: How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits
by John Allen · 41 things on Twos
- Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper, underlying motive.
- Conserve energy
- Obtain food and water
- Find love and reproduce
- Connect and bond with others
- Win social acceptance and approval
- Reduce uncertainty
- Achieve status and prestige
- A craving is just a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive
- Twos needs to latch onto an underlying motive of human nature
- Reduce uncertainty
- Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires
- Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just methods you learned to use
- Once you associate a solution with the problem you need to solve, you will keep coming back to it
- Every time you perceive a cue, your brain runs a simulation and makes a prediction about what to do in the next moment
- Cue: You see that the traffic light turned green
- Prediction: If I step on the gas, i'll make it safely through the intersection and get closer to my destination, so I should step on the gas
- You see a cue, categorize it based on past experience, and determine the appropriate response.
- Every action is preceded by a prediction
- Life feels reactive, but it is actually predictive
- You are endlessly predicting what will happen in the next moment
- Our behavior is heavily dependent on how we interpret events will effect us
- The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them and these predictions lead to a feeling
- A craving is the sense that something is missing. It is the desire to change your internal state. This gap between your current state and your desired state provides a reason to act
- Event the tiniest action is tinged with the motivation to feel differently
- You can make hard habits more attractive if you can learn to associate them with a positive experience
- From: I have to wake up early for work
- To: I get to wake up early for work
- Many people associate exercise with being a challenging task that drains energy and wears you down. You can just as easily associate it with time to build energy and get fast
- Saving money increases you purchasing power next month
- To take it a step further you can create motivation rituals
- Associate your habits with something you enjoy and use that cue wehe
- Athletes use pre-game rituals to help them get into game-mode
- Authors put in headphones to help them focus
- Find something that makes you truly happy and then create a short routine that you perform every time before you do the things you love
- Like taking three deep breaths and smile
- Then perform this routine whenever you need it
- Once a habit has been built, the cue can prompt a craving, even if it has little to do with the situation
- The key to finding and fixing the causes of your bad habits is to reframe the associations you have about them.