Successful People and Drug Addicts Have One Big Thing in Common
Learn to use Habits to Light Your Own Fire
Habits. We all use habits to perform routine things in our lives, such as simply putting our shoes on. And successful people and drug addicts both leverage more substantial habits to run aspects of their life. There are some big differences in how they leverage the habits to produce different results.
Successful people use habits as life building blocks to empower themselves to achieve more. Unsuccessful people have not yet learned the process of creating these life building block habits. Drug addicts are controlled by triggers and substance consumption.
It’s not surprising this happens - our schools don’t teach this to us so the only way we learn it is by being born surrounded by people that know how to use habits as building blocks for their life design, or seeking out a mentor who can help you learn how to do this. If you are born into an environment where everyone around you and who created you is controlled by negative habitual routines, it’s going to be an uphill battle to learn this. But you CAN learn this. Take a look at Barbie the Welder for a little inspiration of someone born into a challenging environment, who now leads an intentionally designed life.
Once you realize what habits are and how to recognize yours and their triggers, then you can learn a process to create your own and use habits as a super-power. Using habits for personal strength is much more fun than letting a habit be a super-destroyer of your self or your family.
By nature, we are creatures of habit. We think in images, feel our way through our lives, and rely on feeling comfortable as the final decider of truth
So how can you make a habit your super-power? Let’s learn what a habit is, and then learn how to and intentionally create useful habits as part of a life design toolkit that helps you achieve your dreams.
When a trigger like a smell or a sound or a question occurs, the habit produces an immediate response
What is a Habit ?
The simplest way to think of a habit is a set of instructions that run automatically when the trigger that unlocks them is felt by our minds. Triggers can be many things. Triggers that activate a habit can be a smell, or a sound, or a question, taste, time of day, location, or looking at a symbol or photo. All of these things cause your brain to retrieve a “habit routine” and either say, or do what that “habit routine” says for you to do. Some examples:
Someone disagrees with you and your hand immediately flies up to your mouth and you bite your nails. The trigger was an emotion, and the habit is to self-destruct your nails.
Your cat licks your face. You wake up, go to the computer and start working on your novel. The trigger was the cat licking your face. The habit is to work on something you love to do.
Your boss at work criticizes something that you produced. When you get home, you drink yourself into a state where you no longer feel the impact of those words. The trigger was the feeling after you received criticism, and the habit was to drink.
While not “easy”, it is possible to become aware of triggers and the routines built into you. Once you do this, you can also learn to "name your own trigger” and implant your own routines in your mind as habits. You’re one step closer to “lighting your own fire” and achieving your dreams when you do this.
Creating a Habit
There is a mechanism in your brain called a habit loop. It consists of a trigger, a set of instructions, and a reward. When a habit is first created in your mind, the cue, the routine and the reward are associated together. This could happen over time as a matter of practice, such as learning to tie your shoes and get dressed when you are very young, or it could happen accidentally by looking at an image with words on it, liking it, sharing it, then experienced chemicals called endorphins that give you a reward when your friends like your post. In these examples, the associations between cue, routine and reward is automatically being created. That’s ok, but it’s not the only way. YOU can create your own habits.
Intention changes the Habit Loop into a Life Design Loop
Building on Your Habits for Life Success
Let’s build you up. Here are Five steps and five key triggers
Five Steps to Life Design
Here are five steps to active your life design loop and “light your fire”
You will decide to do something - set your intention or goal
You will decide what you need to do to make it happen
You will define when it will happen
You will design repetitive routines to get you there and associate them with your trigger of choice
You will trigger yourself daily until you achieve your goal.
It’s liberating. No “system” will be able to limit your chances anymore. Want some proof? Take a look at Chris Nikic’s 1% Better challenge. Through his habit of being 1% better every day, Chris achieved his Ironman goal.
Five triggers that make new habits stick
Here are five particularly powerful triggers that make your new habit “stick” - you can use others such as imagery, smell, or music as habitual anchors as well.
Time of day, week or year
Location
Preceding Event.- the cat waking you up
Emotional State
Other People
A Life Design Loop
So through the practice of setting an intention, and adding discipline and persistence, you can harness your internal habit loop. You can learn how to design and run your own habitual routines, and then use them to power your life with less energy spent overall. You will own your own system of being who you were meant to be. It’s fun.
