Show me your habits and I will show you your future. Yes, the inevitable truth is that you quite literally become your habits. This leaves you with a choice. On one hand, you can play by the rules of habit formation and take control of your daily routines. With this path, every small consistent action compounds over time to create change so significant that you yourself could not believe it.
On the other hand, you can stay on autopilot as you have always been and let your habits control you. This path is dangerous. It leads to wasted potential and unfulfilled dreams.
You'll find yourself stuck in the same cycles, where days blur into weeks, months, and years without any real progress. This guide is a gift to those who choose Path 1. In the next few minutes, you will finally get the keys to unlock the power of habits. We are going to dive deep into the biology of habit formation, and you are going to learn about practical steps that you can start using today. On top of all of that, I will also address how to eradicate these bad habits that have been plaguing you for years.
So, let's sit tall, breathe deeply, and absorb everything this video has to offer. First, you have to understand the difference between episodic and procedural memory. Episodic memory involves recalling specific events or experiences, while procedural memory focuses on retaining the step-by-step sequence necessary for achieving a desired outcome.
Procedural memory is like following a recipe. When you bake a cake, you go step-by-step. At first, you need the recipe to guide you, but with practice, you remember the process. Now here comes the key part. Relying more on procedural memory has been shown to be extremely beneficial for the formation of habits.
How can you leverage that? Well, all it takes is a simple visualization exercise. The next time you want to adopt a new habit, imagine yourself doing the specific sequence of events required to execute that habit. For example, if you would want to start journaling, you could picture yourself setting aside time in the evening, perhaps after dinner or before bed, to sit down at your journaling spot.
Imagine the surrounding environment, and then visualize yourself opening your journal and grabbing your pen. Feel the texture of the paper under your fingertips, and the smooth flow of ink as you begin to write. Picture yourself reflecting on your day, recalling significant events.
Lastly, see yourself closing your book and finish visualizing. You get the point. You can give this technique a boost by broadening the time frame, and positively anticipating the period before and after the habit execution. This way you leverage a mechanism called reward prediction error, by which dopamine motivates behavior.
The expanded time frame enhances the overall reward prediction error associated with the habit, making it more likely to be reinforced and repeated in the future. But if you really want to master habit formation, then you need to make yourself familiar with task bracketing. Task bracketing sets a neural imprint, kind of like a fingerprint in the brain, that shows your brain that a particular behavior has to happen at a specific time, so much so that it becomes reflexive.
The good news is that there is a way to build up task bracketing. This way. You can orient your nervous system in the direction of this task bracketing process, and in turn, shift your nervous system towards the execution of a given habit.
The key lies in inserting habits in particular phases of the day, because it turns out that some phases of the day are associated with beneficial chemicals and neural circuits for habit formation. For this phased-based habit plan, the day is divided into three phases, with the first being 0 to 8 hours after waking. In this interval, you should place the habits, which you struggle with particularly. It is best to do these high friction behaviors in phase 1 because of the naturally increased levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine.
Also, by doing these habits in this particular phase of the day, you are creating task bracketing. Your nervous system will be able to predict when you will go against high friction, which will help you immensely. Phase 2 is about 9 to 15 hours after waking, and the perfect interval for habits that require less effort to overcome resistance, making it a good time for practicing habits that are not overly demanding. This is because levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and cortisol tend to decrease during the second half of the waking period, while serotonin increases, which diminishes your ability to overcome high resistance.
Doing low friction habits at this time is also, again, leveraging task bracketing by associating certain behaviors with certain neurochemical states. The last phase, which is phase 3, happens about 16 to 24 hours after waking and is the time period. where you reap the benefits of doing the high friction behavior in phase one. Here, you really lock the behavior into the nervous system through Hebbian mechanisms like NMDA receptors.
How does this happen? Through neuroplasticity. And where does neuroplasticity occur?
During sleep and deep rest. So, optimizing your sleep is the key for habit formation and to ultimately make the execution of habits easier. I uploaded a video about how to enhance sleep, so you might want to check that out.
Now you might be wondering if I consistently practice a particular habit during phase one and then transition to other habits. during phase 2, eventually reaching a point where those habits feel effortless. Should I maintain them in the same phase of the day?
The answer is that once a behavior has become reflexive, in the best case, you should move it around randomly for a bit. This way, you can make the habit context independent, which means that it has migrated from the hippocampus, where memories are formed, to the neocortex, where they are stored. Okay, we have talked extensively about how to form a desirable habit.
But how can you break the already strongly established bad habits? To effectively break these contraproductive habits, you need to engage in the process of long-term depression. Here, I am not talking about the psychological depression, but rather the weakening of connections between two neurons, which happens if one neuron is active and the other is not active within a specific time window.
Even if the connection between the neurons started off strongly, if they are not activated together within the defined time frame, the connection will weaken. In other words, You can break bad habits by disrupting the synchronization of neurons involved in the behavior. This begs the question of what you can do to disrupt the existing neural circuits.
The next time you realize you are doing a bad habit, engage in a positive habit immediately after. As I said before, by introducing this new element and thereby disrupting the nature of neural circuits responsible for the bad habit, you make it easier to rewrite the script. For example, when you find yourself reflexively going on your phone to scroll on social media. You could do something like breathwork for a few minutes. However, if you want to completely dismantle bad habits, then there is a much more fundamental but powerful approach you need to try out.
Understanding the triggers behind your bad habits is the first step toward dismantling them. Every habit is prompted by specific cues, which can range from emotional states, such as stress or boredom, to environmental factors like certain locations or times of day. Social contexts, like being around particular people or in specific social settings, can also serve as triggers.
For instance, you might find yourself snacking more when watching TV at home or smoking when hanging out with certain friends. Start by practicing mindfulness to become more aware of your actions and the moments leading up to them. This helps you observe your thoughts and feelings without judgment, which makes it easier to spot patterns.
Ask yourself what you are feeling or experiencing just before the habit kicks in. Are you stressed, bored, or happy? Identifying the emotion or situation is crucial. Pay attention to where you are and who you are with when the habit occurs, and note any consistent factors or settings. To get this to the next level, maintaining a habit journal can be incredibly helpful.
Each time you engage in the habit, note the date and time, your location, your emotional state, whether you were alone or with others, and what you were doing just before the habit occurred. To illustrate, imagine you're trying to quit smoking. Your journal entries might reveal that you smoke more when you're stressed at work, when you're out with certain friends, or during your morning coffee.
Recognizing these triggers is game-changing because it allows you to develop strategies to avoid or manage these situations differently. According to Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, habits are formed through a loop of cue, routine, and reward. By identifying the cue, you can begin to understand the routine and the reward, which is essential for breaking the cycle. Studies have actually shown that individuals who monitor their behaviors and triggers are more successful in changing unwanted habits. Respect for being one of the few people who actually have the attention span to finish watching a video like this.
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