David Foster Wallace gave his famous commencement address speech at Kenyon College in 2005. It is still available on YouTube.
In it, Wallace steps up to the mic and starts off with a joke: There are the two young fishes swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them as says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?”
And the two young fishes swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
After that, Wallace explains the immediate point of the fish story, “The most obvious, important, realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”
Just like that, it is tough to realise bad habits. Changing them is obviously tougher but identifying them is also not an easy task. But after changing bad habits, it is absolutely incredible and awe-inspiring how easy things become! Bad habits, when start, it is not a big deal, but over the time it becomes, it snowballs into much bigger problem that impacted your entire life. And remember- No matter how bad life seems, habits can always make it worse!In my last blog (Which got some really good response and I’m grateful for it!) we talked about habit formation. You need three things to make any habit.
Cue-Routine-Reward.
In this blog, I’ll explain how habit loops are formed and what can be done to intervene it before it spirals down your life. First, there is cue, a trigger that tells your brain to start a routine, which ends up satisfying you with a reward. Over a part of time, same thing happens for ‘n’ number of times, due to which this loop becomes – ‘Automatic’ this forms our very own habit loop. Now, this is the part where you need to be extra careful. This can make your life or break your life. It’s just a game of 21 days. It is tougher to wake up every day and work to change your one habit which has been with you since quite a long amount of time. But the trick is, it’s get easier. Change is constant but at the same time, Change is tough to change! There are various techniques to change your habit, and one of them is considered as the BEST to change your habit. I call it visualization of your new habit. Suppose I’ve to make a new habit of forming a exercise habit, I’ll visualize it and most probably write it in outmost detail. For eg. I’ll do a 20 minutes exercise session on (DAY) at (TIME) in (PLACE). Visualize your habit before doing it. It works wonders. It was proved in 2001 researchers in Great Britain .
Another technique that caught my attention while reading ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear is to start attaching new habits to old habits. For eg if my old habit is to meditate after brushing my teeth and I want to inclucate reading in my morning routine, then my approach should be,
” I’ll brush my teeth, meditate for 10 minutes and I’ll immediately start reading.”
The best way to change your bad habit is to change it to a good habit. This is what a every famous group ‘Alcoholic Anonymous’ is based on. Most of the parties are part of a Saturday night. Saturday in fact is a cue to refresh yourself. So, the foundation of the group is, “When you’ve a cue to drink, start talking or start a group therapy.” Here habit of drinking is replaced by habit of sharing. But the larger portion is about what will keep us engrossed for life time or for atleast 21 days to intervene with any habit? Well psychologists came up with ‘Goldilocks Rule’ or ‘Yerkes -Dodson law.’ They found out to achieve a ‘flow’ a task must be 4 percent beyond your current ability. Rule states: Something on the perimeter of your ability- seems crucial for maintaining motivation. Well changing habits forms exactly what you need to be motivated for other aspects of life.
- Ojas.
