Starts with you

Well, I have been reading “Atomic Habits” book for a few days. And the idea I read there made me rethink How I have done all the things so far while trying to build a new habit and eventually failed.

Here is the idea: “Feedback Loop”
Which means all things you do( actions ) determine your Identity and Your Identity determines your actions.

Seems a bit confusing huh? Let me explain. Ultimately it is true. But there is actually a little unbalance between “Identity” and “Action” . IDENTITY is more important.

Before diving into all the details, let’s identify those 2 terms. They are actually pretty simple words to understand. But it is good to identify them beforehand.

• Action means ( in terms of habits ) to do same thing daily or regularly.
  Why?
• Identity means your beliefs and who do you determine and see yourself as.

Let’s illustrate simple example: Imagine you set a goal such as read a book a day. And first day you start, the next day, after that, 1, 2, 3 and bum you drop and stop reading a bot at all. OH MY GOD. What is happening? Where are the all my motivations? It feels like all of them just fade away in just 3 days. And you start confusing, but after that forget about it and continue to your old self who are not reading a book at all.

Okay guys, you are just witnessed to the dying of someone’s dream.

What did you do wrong at all? YES, you haven’t determine your goal properly. The goal you set such as “reading a book a day” was a little bit superficial and obviously, doesn’t say anything about you.

When you set a goal, you should consider yourself inside it. Instead of “Reading a book a day”, you could write down “Being a Reader”. At first it seems like they are almost same thing. But there are huge differences between those goals. First one about a book, and the second one is about YOU. And when your goal is to try to change yourself, it helps you change from inside. And, for example, you start act like a reader. You ask yourself: “What would a reader do right now? — Grab a book or open their pdf reader, or bring their book with themselves. ”You start thinking. “Wait a minute Since I am a reader I should grab a book right now”.

Hope it all starts make sense now. But we are forgetting something. Yeah, including yourself inside the goal is crucial for a great start. But for keeping those goal alive you should do something in order to prove yourself that you are actually a reader. Because, our brain can’t live out with just words. You should do actions and create your own proof. With little or more proofs, you are starting to be the one in your goal.

“Being a reader” was just an example. You can implement it to anything. For instance: “Being an athlete”, “Being a Senior Developer” etc. These kind of goals pushes you to find out what would that person do and change your beliefs which are in the deep down even in your roots.