Atomic Habits Part 4 — Understanding Rewards

Transcribed from the podcast “Self Improvement Daily”. Written and presented by Brian Ford.

Rewards are crucial to the habit formation process because we need to know which habits are worth keeping. The experience at the end whether positive or negative, reinforces the behavior you just did so that you can later decide if you want to do it again. And this makes sense evolutionarily. A great example is sex — the reason sex feels so good is because sexual reproduction is the objective and mechanism of natural selection. So those animals that were rewarded for doing it more often were more likely to have more offspring carry their genes in the next generation.

The core concept is — what is rewarded is repeated, what is punished is avoided.

But now here’s the tough part. Our brains are still in survival mode and immediately attribute rewards to their triggers to see if it should repeat it. Take smoking — the rush of nicotine provides a reward, but in the long run smoking that cigarette does more harm than good. So there’s an interesting distinction that needs to be addressed when trying to build a new positive habit — what is immediately rewarded is repeated, what is immediately punished is avoided.

So to make a positive habit, which usually presents a delayed reward, more frequent, it needs to be more immediately satisfying. His suggestion is to associate the positive behavior with a natural immediate reward. For example after finishing a glass of water to hydrate, have a sugary grape. Or after meditating, acknowledge it on a goal tracking sheet. Both of those immediate rewards build a strong enough association to encourage the behavior again.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and follow to never miss a tip again! Or if you prefer to listen, all tips are available by audio here. They can also be found on every major podcasting site by searching “Self Improvement Daily”.