Atomic Habits

by James Clear

The book tells how to cultivate habits.

The author states the following. As changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years. We all deal with setbacks but in the long run, the quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits. With the same habits, you’ll end up with the same results. But with better habits, anything is possible.

The backbone of this book is the author’s four-step model of habits–cue, craving, response, and reward–and the four laws of behaviour change that evolve out of these steps.

The Fundamentals – Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference

1 The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits

• The relentless commitment to a strategy make a Cycling Coach outstanding than others (referred as “the aggregation of marginal gains”, which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do). The whole principle of this coach is if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.

• As these and hundreds of other small improvements accumulated, the results came faster than anyone could have imagined.

  But when we repeat 1 percent errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalising little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results.

  Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choice determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits–not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.

• Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time you enemy.

• Forget about goals, focus on systems instead.

  What’s the difference between systems and goals? Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.

  Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.

  A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.

  • Problem #1: Winers and losers have the same goals.

  Goal setting suffers from a serious case of survivorship bias. People who end up with winning–the survivors–and mistakenly assume that ambitious goals led to their success while overlooking all of the people who had the same objective but didn’t succeed.

  Nobody has the goal of losing, but only winners prove with the goal.

  • Problem #2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.

  When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and outs will will fix themselves.

  • Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness. Goals create an “either-or” conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment. Do not link goals with happiness, instead link with the process. When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.

  • Problem #4 Goals are at odds with long-term progress. A goal-oriented mindset can create a “yo-yo” effect. Many runners work hard for months, but as soon as they cross the finish line, they stop training. The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. Have a long-term thinking, and do not be goal-oriented.

• If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system. Focusing on the overall system rather than a single goal, is one of the core themes of this book.

  The atomic habit refers to a tiny change, a marginal gain, a 1 percent improvement. Atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results.

2 How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)

Few things can have a more powerful impact on your life than improving your daily habits. However, once your habits are established, they seem to stick around forever–especially the unwanted ones.

• There are three layers of behaviour changes:
  • The first layer is changing your outcomes/results.

  • The second layer is changing your process, changing the habits and systems

  • The third and deepest layer is changing your identity, changing the beliefs, the worldview, the self-image, etc.

  • Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe.

  • Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.

• The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. True behaviour change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity. i.e.

  • The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader/

  • The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner.

  • The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician.

• The Shaping Identity is a double-edged sword. The deeply a thought or action is tied to your identity, the more difficult it is to change it.

• A two-step process to changing your identity.

  1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
  2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
  • The more you repeat a behaviour, the more you reinforce the identity associated with the behaviour.

  • The more evidence you have for a belief, the more strongly you will believe it.

  The process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.

  • Small habits can make a meaning full difference by proving evidence of a small identity.
• Use the feedback loops. Once you have a handle on the type of person you want to be, you can begin taking small steps to reinforce your desired identity. Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits.

• To cultivate a habit. The first step is not what or how, but who.

3. How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps

Scholar, Thorndike, described the learning process, “Behaviours followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated”

• Why the Brain builds habits?

  Whenever you encounter a new situation in life, the brain has to make a decision. Neurological activity in the brain is high during the period.

  As habits are created, the level of activity in the brain decreases. When a similar situation arises in the future, you know exactly what to look for. There is no longer a need to let the brain think and make decision and analyse every angle of a situation.

  In short, habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience.

  Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks.

  Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. In fact, the people who don’t have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom, because the brain is always overloaded.

  When you have habits dialed in and the basics of life are handled and done, your mind is free to focus on new challenges and master the next set of problems.

• The process of building a habit.

  Four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.

  1. Cue triggers your brain to initiate a behaviour.
  2. Cravings are the motivational force behind every habit.
  3. Response is the actual habit you perform, which can take the form of a thought or an action.
  4. Rewards are delivered by Response. There are two purposes of reward. (1) Reward satisfy your craving. (2) reward teaches us which actions are worth remembering in the future.
  • The author would illustrate those four steps in details later.
  • The four steps make a loop, and reinforce the process. The cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue.
• The four laws of behaviour change.
  1. The 1st Law (Cue) <– Make it obvious.
  2. The 2nd Law (Craving) <– Make it attractive.
  3. The 3rd Law (Response) <– Make it easy.
  4. The 4th Law (Reward) <– Make it satisfying.
  • For bad habits, do the reveres. Make the cue invisible, make craving unattractive, make response difficult, and make reward unsatisfying.

The 1st Law: Make it Obvious

4. The Man who didn’t Look Right

• With enough practice, your brain will pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it.
• Once the habits become automatic, we stop paying attention to what we are doing.
• The process of behaviour change always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.

5. The Best Way to Start a New Habit

• The 1st law of Behaviour Change is make it obvious.

• Two most common cues are time and location. Create the Implementation Intention, which is a plan you make beforehand about when and where to act. That is, how you intend to implement a particular habit. Like “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y”. Or, I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [ LOCATION].

• Many human behaviours follow a chain reaction cycle. You decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing (Bayesian). No behaviours happen in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behaviour.

• Habit Stacking. Inspired by the above, when it comes to building new habits, you can use the connectedness of behaviour to your advantage. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day, and then stack your new behaviour on the top. In a word, linking one behaviour with the other.

• Tie your desired behaviour into something you already do each day. Once you have mastered this basic structure, you can begin to create larger stacks by chaining small habits together. The habit stacking allows you to create a set of simple rules that guide your future behaviour.

  In short, After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].

6. Motivation is Overrated, Environment Often Matters More

People Often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are. Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behaviour.

In this way, the most common form of change is not internal, but external: we are changed by the world around us. Every habit is context dependent.

By psychologist Kurt Lewin (1936): Behaviour is a function of Person in their Environment, B=f(P,E).

• In humans, perception is directed by the sensory nervous system. We perceive the world through sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. And other ways of sensing stimuli, some are conscious, but many are non-conscious. Receptors in your body pick up on a wide range if internal stimuli. One of the most powerful human sensory abilities is vision. A small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do.

• The environments where we live and work often make it easy not to do certain actions because there is no obvious cue to trigger the behaviour. What we do is to make it visually obvious. We shall change the environment.

• Environment design is powerful not only because it influences how we engage with the world but also because we rarely do it.

• Create the the Context of Cue.

  Over time, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behaviour.

  The behaviour is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them. Thank in terms of how you interact with the spaces around you.

  The power of context reveals an important strategy: habits can be easier to change in a new environment.

  Whenever possible, avoiding mixing the context of one habit with another. The inspiration is to split the Space to Work, and the Space to Study and Live.

  If your space is limited, divide your room into activity zones: a chair for reading, a desk for writing, a table for eating, etc.

7. The Secret to Self-Control

When scientists analyse people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all the different from those who are struggling. Instead, “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.

• Bad habits are auto-catalytic: the process feeds itself.

  One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.

  The practice is an inversion of the 1st Law of Behaviour Change. Rather than make it obvious, you can make it invisible (for the bad habit).

The 2nd Law: Make it Attractive

8. How to Make a Habit Irresistible

Scientists refer to exaggerated cues as supernormal stimuli, which is a heightened version of reality and elicits a stronger response than usual. They exaggerate features that are naturally attractive to us, and our instincts go wild as a result, driving us into excessive shopping habits, social media habits, porn habits, eating habits, and many others. Hereafter are some biological response.

• The Dopamine-Driven Feedback Loop

  Dopamine is not the only chemical that influences your habits, but it is the one that provide a window into the biological underpinnings of desire, craving, and motivation that are behind every habits.

  For years, scientists assumed dopamine was all about pleasure, but now we know it plays a central role in many neurological processes, including motivation, learning and memory, punishment and aversion, and voluntary movement.

  When it comes to habits, the key takeaway is this: dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it.

  The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.

• Use the Temptation Bundling to make your habits more attractive.

  Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

9. The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits

• The Seductive Pull of Social Norms: Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers.

  Those who collaborated and bonded with others enjoyed increased safety, mating opportunities, and access to resources.

  We imitate the habits of three groups in particulars:

  1. The close.

     As a general rule, the closer we are to someone, the more likely we are to imitate some of their habits. Our friends and family provide a sort of invisible peer pressure that pulls us in their direction. We soak up the qualities and practices of those around us.

     One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behaviour is the normal behaviour. Join a culture where (1) your desired behaviour is the normal behaviour and (2) you already have something in common with the group.

     Conversely, peer pressure is bad only if you’re surrounded by bad influences.

  2. The many.

     The normal behaviour of the tribe often overpowers the desired behaviour of the individual.

     Humans are similar. There is tremendous internal pressure to comply with the norms of the group. The reward of being accepted is often greater than the reward of winning an argument, looking smart, or finding truth.

  3. The powerful.

     We try to copy the behaviour of successful people because we desire success ourselves.

     High-status people enjoy the approval, respect, and praise of others. And the means if a behaviour can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive.

10. How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits

• Habits are all about associations. There associations determine whether we predict a habit to be worth repeating or not. The brain is continually absorbing information and noticing cues in the environment. Every time you perceive a cue, your brain runs a simulation and makes a prediction about what to do in the next moment.

  The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them.

  There predictions lead to feelings, which is how we typically describe a craving — a feeling, a desire, an urge. Feelings and emotions transform the cues we perceive and the predictions we make into a signal that we can apply.

  To summaries, the specific cravings you feel and habits you perform are really an attempt to address your fundamental underlying motives. Whenever a habit successfully addresses a motive, you develop a craving to do it again.

  Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings, and we can use this insight to our advantage rather than to our detriment.

• Reprogram Your Brain to Enjoy Hard Habits.

  Changing just one word: You don’t “have” to You “get” to.

  Transition from seeing there behaviours as burdens and turn them into opportunities.

  Re-framing your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks is a fast and light wight way to reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive.

  If you want to take it a step further, you can crate a motivation ritual. You simply practice associating your habits with something you enjoy, then you can use that cue whenever you need a bit of motivation.

  ​ Three deep breaths. Smile. Ped the dog. Repeat.

  ​ Eventually, you’ll begin to associate this breathe-and-smile routine with being in a good mood. It becomes a cue that means feeling happy.

  The key to finding and fixing the causes of your bad habits is to re-frame the associations you have about them. It’s not easy, but if you can reprogram your predictions, you can transform a hard habit into an attractive one.

The 3rd Law: Make it Easy

11. Walk Slowly, but Never Backward

When you’re in motion, you’re planning and strategising and learning.

Action is the type of behaviour that will deliver an outcome.

If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. You don’t need to map out every feature of a new habit. You just need to practice it.

Get start, try and protect, get exploration, not prepare for perfection.

• How long does it actually take to form a new habit?

  The more you repeat an activity, the more the structure of your brain changes to become efficient at that activity. Neuroscientists call this long-term potentiating, which refers to the strengthening of connections between neurons in the brain based on recent patterns of activity. With each repetition cell-to-cell signaling improves and the neural connections tighten.

• Repetition is a form of change

  An English philosopher George H Lewes noted, “In learning to speak a new language, to play on a musical instrument, or to perform unaccustomed movements, great difficulty is felt, because the channels through which each sensation has to pass have not become established; but no sooner has frequent repetition cut a pathway, than this difficulty vanishes; the actions become so automatic that they can be performed while the mind is otherwise engaged.”

• All habits follow a similar trajectory from effortful practice to automatic behavior, a process known as automaticity. Automaticity is the ability to perform a behaviour without thinking about each step, which occurs when the non-conscious mind takes over.

  

In practice, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes for a habit to become automatic. What matters is that you take the actions you need to take to make progress. Whether an action is fully automatic is of less importance.

12. The Law of Least Effort

• Habits like scrolling on our phones, checking email, and watching television steal so much of our time because they can be performed almost without effort. They are remarkable convenient.

• You don’t actually want the habit itself. What you really want is the outcome the habit delivers. The greater the obstacle — that is, the more difficult the habit — the more friction there is between you and your desired end state. This is why it is crucial to make your habits so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it. If you can make your good habits more convenient, you’ll be more likely to follow through on them.

• The less friction you face, the easier it is for your stronger self to emerge. The idea behind make is easy is not only do easy things. The idea is to make it as easy as possible in the moment to do things that payoff in the long run.

• Reduce the friction associated with good behaviours. When friction is low, habits are easy. Increase the griction associated with bad behaviours. When friction is high, habits are difficult.
• Prime your environment to make future actions easier.

13. How to Stoop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule

• The Two-Minute Rule. Even when you know you should start small, it’s easy to start too big. When you dream about making a change, excitement inevitably takes over and you end up trying to do too much too soon. The most effective way I know to counteract this tendency is to use the Two-Minute Rule, which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do”.

  A new habit should not feel like a challenge. The actions that follow can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy. What you want is a “gateway habit” that naturally leads you down a more productive path.

• For Example: You can usually figure out gateway habits that will lead to your desired outcome by mapping out your goals on a scale from “very easy” to “very hard”. For instance, running a marathon is very hard. Running a 5K is hard. Walking ten thousand steps is moderately difficult. Walking ten minutes is easy. And putting on your running shoes is very easy. Your goal might be to run a marathon, but your gateway habit is to put on your running shoes. That’s how you follow the Two-Minute Rule.

• focusing on just the first two minutes and mastering that stage before moving on the next level. Eventually, you’ll end up with the habit you had originally hoped to build while still keeping your focus where it should be: on the first two minutes of the behaviour.

14. How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible

• Usecommitment device, a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future.

• The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do. Increase the friction until you don’t even have the option to act.

• Onetime choices — like buying a better mattress or enrolling in an automatic savings plan — are single actions that automate your future habits and deliver increasing returns over time.

The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying

15. The Cardinal Rule of Behaviour Change

We are more likely to repeat a behaviour when the experience is satisfying. Conversely, if an experience is not satisfying, we have little reason to repeat it.

• The first three laws of behaviour change — make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy — increase the odds that a behaviour will be performed this time. The fourth law of behaviour change — make it satisfying — increases the odds that a behaviour will be repeated next time. It completes the habit loop.

• However, there is a trick. Your human nature live in what scientists call an immediate-return environment because your actions instantly deliver clear and immediate outcomes. Yet, you, per se, live in what scientists call a delayed-return environment because you can work for years before your actions deliver the intended payoff.

  The world has changed much in recent years, but human nature has changed little. The world becomes more Rewards-Delayed, but human nature needs Rewards-Immediate.

  The brain’s tendency to prioritise the present moment means you can’t rely on good intentions.

• Every habit produces multiple outcomes across time. Unfortunately, these outcomes are often misaligned. With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is enjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good.

  In other words, the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.

• Cardinal Rule of Behaviour Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.

• You need to work with the grain of human nature, not against it. The best way to do this is to add a little bit of immediate pleasure to the habits that pay off in the long-run and a little bit of immediate pain to ones that don’t/ Cultivate habits by artificially rewards yourself to the human nature.

  To select short-term rewards that reinforce your identity rather than ones that conflict with it.

• In summary, a habit needs to be enjoyable for it to last.

16. How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day

Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures — like moving paper clips or hairpins or marbles — provide clear evidence of your progress. As a result, they reinforce your behaviour and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity.

• Use habit track. Habit tracking (1) creates a visual cue that can remind you to act, (2) is inherently motivating because you see the progress you are making and don’t want to lose it, and (3) feels satisfying whenever you record another successful instance of your habit.
• What can we do to make tracking easier? First, whenever possible, measurement should be automated. Second, manual tracking should be limited to your most important habits. Finally, record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs.
• How to recover quickly when your habits were interrupted? Never miss twice. Try to not break the Chain.

17. How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything

• The more immediate the pain, the less likely the behaviour. If you want to prevent bad habits and eliminate unhealthy behaviours, then adding an instant cost to the action is a great way to reduce their odds.

• An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction. We care deeply about what others think of us, and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us.

• A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behaviour. It makers the costs of violating your promises public and painful.

  Just as governments use laws to hold citizens accountable, you can create a habit contract to hold yourself accountable.

Advanced Tactics: How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great

18. The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)

The secret to maximising the odds of success is to choose the right field of competition. In short: Genes don’t determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity.

• How your personality influences your habits:
  1. Openness to experience
  2. Conscientiousness
  3. Extroversion
  4. Agreeableness
  5. Neuroticism

  Our habits are not solely determined by our personalities, but there is no doubt that our genes nudge us in a certain direction.

  The Takeaway is that you should build habits that work for your personality. You don’t have to build the habits everyone tells you to build. Choose the habit that best suits you, not the one that is most popular.

• How to find a game where the odds are in your favour:

  1. In the beginning of a new activity, there should be a period of exploration. The goal is to try out many possibilities, research a broad range of ideas, and cast a wide net.
  2. After this initial period of exploration, shift your focus to the best solution you’ve found — but keep experimenting occasionally.
  3. In the long-run it is probably most effective to work on the strategy that seems to deliver the best results about 80 to 90 percent of the time and keep exploring with the remaining 10 to 20 percent.

  When you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out.

• How to getthe most out of your genes:

  The genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on. Once we realise our strengths, we know where to spend our time and energy.

In summary , one of the best ways to ensure your habits remain satisfying over the long-run is to pick behaviours that align with your personality and skills. Work hard on the things that come easy.

19. The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work

The way to maintain motivation and achieve peak levels of desire is to work on tasks of “just manageable difficulty”.

The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty.

• The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.

  When you’re starting a new habit, it’s important to keep the behaviour as easy as possible so you can stick with it even when conditions aren’t perfect.

  Once the habit has been established, it is important to continue to advance in small ways.

  

• How to stay focused when you get bored working on your goals

  The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.

  Variable rewards won’t create a craving, but they are a powerful way to amplify the cravings we already experience because they reduce boredom.

• Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way. Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose; amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life.

  The only way to become excellent is to be endless fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom

20. The Downside of Creating Good Habits

Habits are necessary, but not sufficient for mastery. What you need is a combination of automatic habits and deliberate practice.

\text{Habits} + \text{Deliverate Practive} = \text{Mastery}

• Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalised the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development.

• Improvement is not just about learning habits, it’s also about fine-tuning them. Reflection and review ensures that you spend your time on the right things and make course corrections whenever necessary.

• Perform annual review, in which reflect on the previous year, reflect on my progress by answering three questions:

  1. What when well this year?
  2. What didn’t go so well this year?
  3. What did I learn?

  Answer three questions in the yearly Integrity Report:

  1. What are the core values that drive my life and work?
  2. How am I living and working with integrity right now?
  3. How can I set a higher standard in the future.

  Never reviewing your habits is like never looking in the mirror. Periodic reflection and review is like viewing yourself in the mirror from a conversational distance. You can see the important changes you should make without losing sight of the bigger picture.

• How to break the beliefs that hold you back:

  The more scared an idea is to us — that is, the more deeply it is tied to our identity — the more strongly we will defend it against criticism.

  One solution is to avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are.

  “Keep your identity small”. The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life changes you. In other words, don’t be overconfident about your identity, Be acceptable to things.

• When you spend your whole life defining yourself in one way and that disappears, who are you now?

  The key to mitigating these losses of identity is to redefine yourself such that you get to keep important aspects of your identity even if your particular role change. I.E.

  • Instead of saying “I’m the CEO”, say “I’m the type of person who builds and creates things”

  • Not “I’m a great soldier”, Yes “I’m the type of person who is disciplined, reliable, and great on a team”

  Habits deliver numerous benefits, but the downside is that they can lock us into our previous patterns of thinking and acting — even when the world is shifting around us. Everything is impermanent. Life is constantly changing, so you need to periodically check in to see if your old habits and beliefs are still serving you.

• A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.

  Don’t let the Identity obstacle your belief. Be a Open Person.

Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail.

人之生也柔弱，其死也坚强。草木之生也柔脆，其死也枯槁。故坚强者死之徒，柔弱者生之徒。是以兵强则灭，木强则折。

《道德经》– 老子