Atomic Habits – successful behavior change
By Danielle Johnson MS, RDN, CDN, CPT
I recently read a fantastic book, Atomic Habits by James Clear, that goes into vivid detail about why it’s so hard to change our behaviors. The author discusses what we can do to change our bad habits into good ones for long-term behavior change. It’s important for us to take accountability for our actions, and when we are unhappy with ourselves, we must be the ones to change those actions. I highly recommend reading the book to help make changes in your own life, but here is a short and simple summary from the book:
Breaking a bad habit:
Make it “invisible” – reduce the exposure, what triggers you to doing the bad habits you wish to discontinue? How can you reduce that exposure?
Make it “unattractive” – change your mind set by highlighting the benefits of eliminating the bad behavior
Make it “difficult” – make it harder for you to engage in the behavior
Make it “unsatisfying” – get an accountability partner to keep you in check (in a positive, helpful, kind way) and create a contract for yourself that you will abide by to avoid the bad behavior
Creating a good habit:
Make it “obvious” – become aware of your current habits, use habit stacking and set up your environment to make the habit obvious and achievable. Habit stacking example – when I clean up the dinner table at night, I will put leftovers into a container to take for lunch tomorrow.
Make it “attractive” – pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do, example – you want to watch TV, so you do a living room workout while watching your favorite show. Join a culture/community that already exemplifies the behavior you want to create for yourself. Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy right before engaging in a difficult new habit.
Make it “easy” – set up your environment to make your habit successful (setting up coffee the night before so its ready to go in the morning), optimize small choices that deliver outsized impacts, invest in technology that can help you
Make it “satisfying” – give yourself an immediate reward after completing the habit, make “doing the habit” FUN, use a habit tracker to track your streak of completion (serotonin boost!), when you forget to do a habit just immediately get back on track – avoid skipping twice!
Things to remind yourself of when trying to break old habits and create new ones:
Awareness comes before desire
Happiness is absence of desire
We chase the IDEA of pleasure
We find peace when we avoid turning observations into problems
You can overcome any “how” with a big enough “why”
Being curious is greater than being smart
Our emotions dictate our behaviors
First, we are emotional, then we are rational and logical
Response follows emotions
Suffering drives progress
Our actions reveal how badly we want something
Reward comes after sacrifice
Self-control is hard because it’s not enjoyable
We determine our satisfaction based on our expectations
We also determine our failure based on our expectations
Emotions not only come before behavior, but also after
Our desire gets us started and the pleasure keeps us going
Resource: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Danielle Johnson MS, RDN, CDN, CPT is a registered dietitian who works in the Bariatric Center of Excellence at Mather Hospital, where she specializes in surgical weight loss and medical weight management. She has a Master of Science degree in Integrative Nutrition and is earning her doctorate in Exercise Science and Sports Nutrition.