Today marks day 10 of reading Atomic Habits, in this chapter review, we will learn about making bad habits unattractive.
The book itself is very highly rated on amazon https://amzn.to/3x4K7Sa (affiliate link to book), boasting a 4.7 star rating over 157,532 reviews. The book also claims to have sold over 15 million copies as of Oct. 16, 2018 and has sold over 20 million copies as of Mar. 4, 2024.
This chapter follows up Chapter 9, where we learned about the major effects that society has on us.
Chapter Summary:
- “The inversion of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it unattractive.” Previously we talked about making tasks we want to do attractive, this of course, is the opposite, trying to make tasks we don’t want to do unattractive.
- “Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive.” This plays into the next paragraph, of having hidden, deeply rooted desires, that we aren’t always fully aware of and if we aren’t aware of them, then we won’t ever have the chance to change them.
- “Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.” It’s a bit crazy and kind of unsettling when you realize how much of your desires are still based off ancient problem solving that the body is conditioned to do. Previously in the book, it was mentioned how people gravitate towards fattier/saltier foods, because there use to be a time where we weren’t sure when our next meal would be, so consuming these foods would keep us going for longer.
- “The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling.” This is precisely why we are attracted to habits that we associate with positive emotions and unattracted to habits that we associate with negative emotions.
- “Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive.” If we allow ourselves to become aware of the benefits of not doing a bad habit, then the habit becomes less attractive. One of the benefits of not doing drugs may be gaining the respect of your family, saving money, bettering your health, etc. The more you focus in on these rather than on the instant-gratification, the more likely you will be to not do it.
- “Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings. Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.” It’s an interesting strategy associating a difficult thing with a positive reward. I sometimes do this when I really don’t want to do something, like video editing, I will attach a reward like playing some video-games, or watching a YouTube video. I do think it’s better to use this in only dire situations, as if you always need a reward for doing the difficult task, that means if for whatever reason, you can’t receive that reward on a given day, you almost guarantee the fact that you won’t do said difficult task.
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