Use ATOMIC HABITS to Change Your LIFE! | James Clear (@JamesClear) | Top 10 Rules

you don't have to be the victim of your environment you can also be the architect of it when life doesn't challenge you I think it's important to challenge yourself the other the ultimate meta habit is reading because if you build a habit of reading you can solve pretty much any other problem need motivation watch a top ten with believe nation what's that believe nation it's Evan I believe in you and this channel is designed to be a part of your daily success routine so let's get your motivation to attend and get you believing in you grab a snack and chew in today's lessons from a man who went from being a star athlete in high school to failing his first venture as an entrepreneur to now being an expert on habits and self-development he's James clear and here's my take on his top ten rules to success let's kick it off with rule number one build good habits one of the phrases I use I have us in the book is that habits of the compound interests of self-improvement so it's like the same way that it's part a compound interest you know cruise through finance you're the effects of your habits multiply over time and so often these choices that you make they're these little 1% improvements for you or against you each day and they're very easy to overlook on a daily basis right like what what really is the difference between eating a burger and fries or a salad and chicken for lunch you don't taste a lot that's actually a crucial point that I cover in the book which is that habits that are immediately satisfying or more likely to be repeated and so pretty much any behavior produces multiple outcomes across time right like if you eat a doughnut right now it's tasty and sugar good but in the long run you gain weight and so the the immediate outcome is favorable the long-term outcome is unfavorable with good habits just off on the reverse I'd like you go to the gym right now and it takes effort you sweat you have to work hard it's not your time for Netflix and chill to go train the immediate outcomes unfavorable but the ultimate outcome you're in shape and you you know a year or month or whatever right is favorable and so the challenge for building good habits and breaking bad ones is often finding a way to pull the long-term consequences of your bad habits in the immediate moment so you feel a little to the pain right now and want to avoid it and the long-term rewards of your good habits into the immediate moment so you have a reason to repeat it again in the future each behavior casts a vote for the type of person that you want to become and if you cast enough votes for that type of identity you start to believe that about yourself right like if you go to church for 20 years you believe that you're religious you study Spanish every Tuesday for 30 minutes you believe that you were studious so in that way your habits provide evidence of your desired identity and I think that that is probably the ultimate reason that habits are so importantly it's true like how this can help you earn more money or be more productive or lose weight and all that stuff is great but in addition to the external results that habits provide they also shape your sense of self they like are the at the engine or Avenue through which you learn to believe things about yourself like sometimes people will say stuff like fake it till you make it but fake it till you make it is asking yourself to believe something without evidence for it and you can do that for a little while you could do it for a day or week but eventually I mean there's a word for beliefs that don't have evidence behind though it's a delusion right and if you're deluding yourself then eventually you give up on that but the power of doing a better habit each day or casting one little vote for that type of person is that now you have evidence to root your belief in so now last months Yeah right like yeah I mean now you have a lot of evidence that you're a podcaster or a good interviewer you know like you do this over and over again each time you cast a vote for believing that about yourself and you don't just yarn delusionally believing that you're good interviewer it's because you've shown up and done it hundreds of times right and so I think that that's true for any habit large or small that they provide evidence of the desired identity or the the type of person that you are rule number two put in the reps there's this professor at the University of Florida he's retired now he was a photography professor his name is Jerry Koosman and at the beginning of the semester he would have this film photography class named bring the class in and he would split him into two groups instead everybody on this side of the room you were going to be graded on the quantity of work that you do this semester and everybody on this side of the room you were gonna be graded on the quality of work that you do this semester and he's further explained it by saying that for your film photography you're gonna be responsible for having a hundred pictures if you do a hundred photos over the course of the semester that'll be an A if you do ninety it'll be a B if you do a TW C and so on so it's quantity for this group you only have to produce one photo but it has to be the most perfect photo that you can make the best photo that you can make an interesting an interesting thing happened at the end of the term all the best grades came from the quantity group not from the quality group and what ended up happening was that while people were busy experimenting making mistakes learning how to you know play with composition and so on they would come across a really great photo and while the quality group is busy theorizing about what perfection would look like and how to take the perfect photo and not actually honing their skills they ended up only making something mediocre or average and the important insight here especially for habits in the beginning the most important thing is just to shut up and put your reps in just make sure that you hone the skill right and you can start to think of it the way that I like to think of it is that any outcome that you wish to achieve is just a point along the spectrum of repetitions so if you have few reps two more reps and you can imagine an easy goal moderate goal a hard goal the more reps that you put in the more that you more like you you are to achieve that goal so maybe a point a is you know a stake fitness squatting a hundred pounds point B is squatting 200 points C is clotting 300 maybe you need to put in a hundred reps or a thousand reps to get to point A maybe it's five thousand to get to point B maybe was ten thousand to get to point to see rule number three challenge yourself so occasionally and this is true for everybody if you live long enough life will come for you at some point right like something's going to happen so occasionally life will stress you but when life doesn't challenge you I think it's important to challenge yourself because otherwise you're just living in this optimal environment air conditioning and you know everything else is super easy you can get all the information in the world at your fingertips you never have to like if you think about how crazy just eating is in the modern world so previously when we lived in tribes you you had to expend energy to get calories at a minimum you were foraging for berries but otherwise you probably had like run something down and kill it or part of a group hunt or all kinds of other things now you can get calories without expending any all you have to do is just tap like ubereats on your phone or something it'll show up at your door and you can just sit on the couch which is of course like a recipe for poor health but also just it's the game has completely changed now we've transcended a lot of our evolutionary programming and natural situations and so you need to be careful about designing that to serve you rather than to work against you because it can very easily nudge you in the other direction rule number four exercise and read I think there are a few core habits that are gonna serve everybody and certainly serve me well so exercise is a huge one I don't do it daily but I exercise I train four times a week yeah and I feel like if I didn't exercise I don't know that I would be an entrepreneur like I don't know if I could handle the psychological rollercoaster without the physical yeah the release the you probably feel that it's like an athlete too you know like I for being an athlete for so many years I feel like I need to push myself physically in addition to mentally a visit just mental it doesn't do it for me I don't have a physical outlet so exercise exercise is one the other the ultimate Metta habit is reading because if you build a habit of reading you can solve pretty much any other problem you know you won't learn how to be a better podcaster you can read about that you want to write how to meditate you can read about that you want to learn how to make more money you can read about that and so what you need is to develop a habit of reading and then whatever problem you're facing at the time you can you have a method for solving them rule number five have a plan one of my favorite studies is about exercise and they had three cohorts in this study so they have first cohort they said I just want you to track how often you work out over the next few weeks right so that's the the standard cohort the control group second group is that we want to track off and you exercise we're also gonna give you a motivation motivational speech presentation talk about the benefits of heart health why habits are good for you and so on so this is a motivated group alright the third group they got the same presentation so they're equally motivated and then they did one thing differently and that one thing was they filled out this sentence they said during the next week I will particular least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise on this day in this - at this time in this place right they specifically stated their intention to implement the behavior so implementation intention here's what happened first group one out of three of them worked out second group motivation did nothing as soon as they left the researchers facility the next day they were motivated it's like reading a book or watching a YouTube or listening to a motivational speaker and then you forget all about it twenty minutes later but the third group the group that has a specific plan for how they were gonna implement the behavior nine out of ten of them worked out so you can increase your odds of success two to three acts just by having a specific plan and this is the insight many people think that they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity they think that they need to get more motivated that they need willpower in order to execute on a habit if I just felt like writing if I just felt like meditating I felt like working out then I would do it but in fact they don't have a plan for it so they wake up each day thinking I wonder if I'll feel motivated to write today wonder if I'll feel motivate to workout today but instead you can take the decision-making out of it by explicitly stating when where and how you want to implement the habit it sounds easy to say let's just start a plan let's you know write down exactly what you should do and then maybe you'll fall through on it but of course we all know that there are challenges that arise it's not quite that easy so here's a little strategy that I like to use to make sure you can come up with a better plan of action and it's called a failure pre-mortem so the way that it works is you think about the habit the project the goal whatever the most important thing is that you want to work on and I want you to imagine fast forward six months from now and you failed and then tell the story of why you failed what happened what challenges did you encounter what was it that took you off course when I do this with businesses sometimes we're called to kill the company exercises everybody just sits around thinks about ways to kill the company in the next six months and once you have all that stuff laid out on the table in front of you you can start to make better choices about how to develop a plan you can start to have if-then plans so not only do I want to exercise for 20 minutes on Monday at 5 p.m. but also if I do not exercise because I have to take my kid to practice or whatever then it's Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. I will go in right you're gonna have ways to adjust for these challenges rule number 6 get rid of bad habits I think we actually have like three options for breaking bad habits so the first option is to reduce exposure so something like you know if you want to stop spending so much money on electronics then don't follow all the latest tech review blogs you know like your if you want to lose weight don't follow a bunch of food bloggers on Instagram you're constantly being triggered by that and having like overcome the Proms now that doesn't always work but if you can cut a habit off at the source then a lot of the time like the craving won't arise naturally so in atomic habits in the book I talked a little bit about this woman who she smoked while she was in college and she would always smoke while riding horses with a friend and so eventually at some point she quit smoking and she's also stopped seeing I like seeing that friend and graduated in college and so on and wasn't riding horses and then like 10 years later she got back on a horse for the first time and suddenly craved a cigarette and she was like what is going on here and it's your habits are often tied to a context they're tied to a situation or some kind of cue and so if you can reduce exposure to that cue then in many cases the craving won't arise so that's the first option for breaking bad habit the second option which kind of sucks but is like to sit with the craving long enough to like let this wave a desire ride itself out and so you basically just resist temptation it's possible it's easier if if your hand is forced if you use what I call a commitment device so brief story real quick Victor Hugo famous authors were like Hunchback of Notre Dame and a bunch of other things well when he got the book deal for Hunchback of Notre Dom he just procrastinating for like a year he hosts a bunch of house parties has friends over he went traveling for a little while yeah he got the book deal he did nothing no work and eventually his publisher got pissed off they were like you know can you please like actually work on this and so they set this all to made him for him and they said we're gonna we're gonna cancel the book in six months if you don't have it done by then and so he he got his assistant to come in put all his clothes into a chest and they locked him up and took him out of the house and the only thing he was left with was like this the shawl this like large robe so basically he had no clothes that were suitable for hosting guests or for leaving the house or like going on trips or anything else so more or less put himself on house arrest and what ended up happening was each time procrastination arose he was able to kind of sit with that feeling and let it ride because he didn't really have many other options they can get back to work on the book and it ended up working he got the book done like two weeks early but things like that where you can lock in your future action and it becomes really hard to go to your friends party or go out to you know travel to a different place or whatever just because you don't have the option if you can increase the friction then sometimes you can sit with the craving of a bad habit and let it ride out so that's your second choice and then the third choice is the one that you just mentioned which is you take the solution that the bad habit is providing the way that it's serving you and you find a new behavior that delivers that same outcome rule number seven develop expertise what makes you an expert on habits oh hey ston lots of other people that are talking about habits I think that and I've said this many times before I'm just going through this with everybody else I consider my readers my peers in the sense that we're all just trying things out the only differences I write about what I learned and shared each week and but we're all just learning along the way early on I had a feeling like that I was like who might have you know I'm just a guy who might about this and I had a friend tell me the way you develop expertise is by writing about it every week so I wrote a new article about habits every Monday and Thursday for three years and that was how I developed the expertise on the topic by writing about it did research you said here's what I found here's what I tried his what worked what didn't work it's a combination of me reading the scientific literature and reading the research and then trying to distill the practical insights from that and testing things out in my own life as a weightlifter a Travel Photographer a writer an entrepreneur and seeing what that looks like and then the two together and I think you need both like I don't want to be some new-age version of an academic who's in an ivory tower just like theorizing about ideas is different what it looks like to put ideas into practice right like imagine you're a peak performance coach and you show up to coach like an NBA team these guys like dude you need to step on the court if you know it right to see what it's actually like rule number eight change your environment you don't have to be the victim of your environment you can also be the architect of it you can decide to design something to make your good behaviors easier and your bad behaviors harder so when it comes to habits you want to practice your guitar more frequently put it right in the middle of your living room so you run across this all the time if you want to read more when you make your bed in the morning take the book you want to read put it on top of the pillow when you come back that night pick it up read a few pages go to sleep for me I used to buy apples all the time and then I would put them in the crisper at the bottom of the fridge and they would sit there for three weeks and go bad and I'd finally open it up and see them again you get mad and then eventually I bought a bowl and put it right in the middle of the counter and so then when I buy apples I put them there I see them every day and now I eat them all the time many of our desires are simply shaped because we have an environment that shapes us in that way so the moral of the stories I've never seen someone stick to positive habits in a consistent fashion in a negative environment maybe you can overpower once or twice maybe you can have the willpower to do the right thing on one day but if you're constantly fighting against those forces it's gonna be very hard to fall through rule number nine change your identity I think true behavior changes identity change and it's this shifting of your self-image your beliefs or the way you look at yourself because it's one thing to say that I want this and something very different to say I am this so people walk around with beliefs like that all the time not a language learner I'm not good at math I'm terrible with directions and not good at remembering someone's name yeah and once you have those type of once you adopt that identity it becomes very easy to just reinforce that over and over again and so these three levels that you mentioned outcomes process and identity all three matter but I think the key is that you want the direction of change to be in the right way through the right arrow so if you start with the outcomes if you start with the result then you're like oh I really want this thing and here's my plan for getting it and most people just never think about the identity that comes underneath that like they think I want to lose weight or I want to be skinny and if I follow this diet then I'll be skinny and then they they don't really give any thought to the beliefs behind their behavior but if you start the other way around if you start at the identity and you say all right who's the type of person that could lose weight well maybe it's the type of person who doesn't miss workouts then you faucet you start with that identity say okay I want to become the type person who doesn't miss workouts here are the habits I need to build and then whatever results come just come naturally so most people focus on the results and build a plan and let the identity come naturally but that rarely works because their beliefs like conflict with your actions but if you start with the identity and you build the habits to reinforce that then the results just could come on their own and rule number 10 the last one before a very special bonus clip is be systems oriented most people are familiar with the story The Good Samaritan stopping along the side of the road to help help a fallen person help someone in need well Princeton their theology school decided to run this experiment they brought in a bunch of theology students they said all right we're all familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan we're gonna break you up into groups and you're gonna go teach in different rooms across campus you're gonna teach this story and so they started talking about you know how they're gonna deliver the presentation and so on they had a couple different cohorts the one cohort they said all right just go ahead and you know go off and and deliver the presentation so they went off to their rooms the second one though they did something interesting they sent the group off but on their way to the well they sent the group off and they said by the way we're running a little bit behind right you you don't have very long to get there it takes about ten minutes you only got five so we kind of need to hurry you're probably already gonna be late so they're in a rush they know they're gonna go give this presentation on the way they planted an actor on the on the campus and this actor is laying on the grounds hurts moaning in pain and so they screamed twice and then they cry out and every single group went right past the person in need to go give a presentation about helping a person in need right the one person even stepped over the guy who was in pain in order to get there now the point of this and what I'd like to start talking about now is the danger of being goal focused and goal oriented these people had a goal right to deliver a presentation and they were so one-sided so narrow minded so focused on that goal that they miss the bigger picture in the perspective of what they should have been doing in the first place and I think that this can be a danger of goals often and so instead I would like to encourage us to focus on systems systems rather than goals here are some examples if you're a coach your goal is to win a championship but your system is what your team does a practice each day if you're a writer your goal might be to write a book maybe even write a best-selling book but your system is how you write each week the schedule that you follow if you're an entrepreneur your goal could be to build million-dollar business or a 10 million dollar business but the system is the sales and marketing process that you have the systems are what actually make the difference there would drive the results and what I've seen having goals is great having a vision having a dream is nice it's important to know where you're going and where you're headed it's important to have some clarity of focus to know that we're moving in this direction but once you know that having to go on paper makes very little difference and committing to the system and showing up every day drives a lot of results now I've got a really special bonus clip from James on how to change the way that you think that I think you're gonna really enjoy but before that it's time for the three point landing questions time to move from just watching another video to actually taking action in your life or your business and if you're feeling bold leave your answers in the comments below here we go question number one what will you change in your environment to better serve you number two what will you change to your identity to better serve you and number three what bad habit will you eliminate today myth of how many days it takes to set a habit because there's 14 days 28 days 60 days here right if you do something every single day and maybe it changes for each person but what's the science or the the statistics say about how long it takes to form a positive or negative habit I guess so 21 days is the thing you hear all the time 30 days hundred days there right now 66 days is making the rounds as the latest saw in another book what was that book well there was one study done that found that 66 days was the average for how long it takes and as a rule of thumb I don't think it's terrible like you should remind yourself yeah this is gonna be months of work it's not just going something quick but even within that study the range is quite wide so if you did something simple like drink a glass of water at lunch each day it would take like three weeks if you did something more difficult like go for a run after work every day that would be like seven or eight months but I think actually that question to begin with is sort of a there's like a broken mentality the wrong question yeah it is because if you ask that question the implicit assumption is when do I have to stop working or when is this done and is it automatic after a certain period of time well the honest answer to how long it takes to build a new habit is forever because of you to stop then it's no longer habit it's a constant choice and a decision right I think people often look at habits as like a finish line to be crossed but it's actually a lifestyle to be lived and if you look at it as a lifestyle change then you're saying okay okay what's something small and sustainable I can stick to right what's something that can actually last over time raise your standard Apple at the core is core values is that movie that people have passion and change the way people now one drop of myself work depends on your acceptance of me if you like this video check out the top 10 I did on Tim Ferriss the link is right there next to me I think you'll enjoy it continue to believe and I'll see you there you have to I believe let small bad things happen constantly to have any agenda of your own

Channel: Evan Carmichael

Views: 334,886

Rating: 4.9002657 out of 5

Keywords: entrepreneur, how to use the power of habits to change your life - james clear - top 10 rules, how to use habits, how to change your life, james clear, james clear atomic habits, james clear top 10 rules ofr success, bestselling author, success motivation, james clear motivation, james clear advice, success advice, james clear interview, james clear speech, the power of habit, change your habits, how to build good habits, atomic habits, use atomic habits to change your life

Id: nRwDVD4Q26E

Length: 22min 57sec (1377 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 03 2018