A Comprehensive Guide on Building Habits

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Our Brains have evolved into recognizing and rewarding our actions based on the feedback we receive.

That recognition-feedback-reward loop is called a habit

A habit can be broken down into 4 parts:

1. The Cue(The Trigger that notifies your brain to initiate a behavior)
2. The Craving (The shift in emotional state triggered by the cue)
3. The Response( What You Do In Response To The Craving)
4. The Reward ( The Satisfaction or the Lesson Taught)

Without The First Three, The Habit Never Happens

Without The Last One, The Habit Never Repeats Itself

To Create a successful habit, you need to fulfill all of these criteria. Let’s go over all of them now.

1. Make The Cue Impossible To Miss

The best way to ensure a habit occurs is to automatically tie it to something you do every day. Undoubtedly, you:

• Wake Up
• Have Lunch
• Go somewhere by car or bus
• Open Your Phone
• Go To The Toilet

By Tying the cue to the habit you want to one of these, you essentially guarantee that it becomes automatic and is guaranteed to stick on.

2. Make The Craving Irresistible

Here’s A graph of dopamine spikes during the 4 stages of a habit:

Image From James Clear

Fun Fact: The Reward System which is activated while receiving the Reward is the same as when you are anticipating it.

So, To make a habit attractive, you have to make your brain anticipate a positive experience, and the easiest way to do that is to highlight the benefits and hide the drawbacks.

Example: Going to the Gym

Benefits: Get Strong and muscular

Drawbacks: Tired all the time

In this example, You repeat in your mind the benefit of getting strong while neglecting to mention the being tired part.

3. Make the Response A cakewalk

There is something called the Law of Least Effort, which states:

“When Deciding between two similar options ( in terms of craving and reward), people will always naturally gravitate towards the one that requires the least work.”

We can use this law to our advantage by making all the other available options a pain in the ass so that the habit we are trying to create is always the preferred option.

For Example, I stopped going to the gym because it was too much of a hassle to go there, but after I made myself go straight to the gym first and then go home, my streak suddenly skyrocketed, because going to the gym was easier than not going to the gym.

4. Make The Reward Satisfying

Photo by Yuyang Liu on Unsplash

You are a lot more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience itself is satisfying.

With that, your goal is to tell your brain:

“This Feels Good. Do this Again.”

And the best way to communicate that is through instant gratification.

In a perfect world, the reward is the habit itself. But since we don’t live in a perfect world, the next best thing is to tie the habit to your identity.

To your brain, Identity is everything. Because of this, your brain will fight hard to maintain it. So, every time you perform an action that reinforces your identity, such as playing the guitar or going to the gym, your brain will instantly reward you.

Important thing To Keep In Mind

The secret to building a habit lies in the continuous improvement and practice of it. You will see zero to no improvement in the first month, then a huge spike in progress.

This article is part of a larger project of mine called the Life Handbook.

It Is heavily inspired by people like James Clear( The main Focal Point of this article), Dale Carnegie, Cal Newport, etc.

I planned to keep it to myself, but then I decided I should share my findings with my audience.

So, if you enjoyed this article and stuck around to the end, feel free to follow for more content like this.