Weekly Tools and Tips to Improve Any Relationship
Have you ever thought about your habits and how much they really influence your life? If you’re like me, you might have never given it much thought.
However, I recently had the opportunity to do this and can safely say I was surprised to come to the realization that more often than not, it’s been my HABITS which have had the greatest impact on my life in almost every facet. For example:
My habits surrounding study and school were ultimately what determined much of my educational success and opportunities—or lack thereof.
My habits surrounding eating and exercise have determined much of my health—or lack thereof.
My habits surrounding friends and family have determined much of my relationship happiness—or lack thereof.
And finally…
My habits surrounding my work efforts and side hustles have determined much of my financial success and personal satisfaction—or lack thereof.
You get the idea.
Of course this is an over-simplification, but, in short, I basically came to the conclusion that I can make all the goals I want and have all the dreams in the world, and even have great connections and opportunities… BUT, if I don’t have the HABITS to back up those dreams and ambitions and leverage those connections and opportunities, I won’t have nearly as much success in accomplishing my goals and realizing my dreams.
Can you relate? Have you ever experienced how the right or wrong habits have powerfully influenced you or someone you know in positive or negative ways?
If you take some time to reflect back on your life and/or the lives of others, hopefully we can agree that forming good habits is critical in creating the life we want.
That just leaves one little problem: Forming good habits is hard, right?!
Definitely!
But there is good news: It also turns out that if we have the right tools and are self-aware enough to create the types of SYSTEMS that set us up for success, forming good habits is much easier.
So, along the lines of helping you create a better system for yourself, I wanted to share with you a four-step process on forming habits from a fantastic book called Atomic Habits by James Clear and encourage you to think of these things from a Color Code lens.
Quickly, before we begin, a disclaimer: Obviously, it goes without saying that for the real meat and potatoes of Atomic Habits, you’ll need to pick up a copy of the book—and I highly recommend it. But, for the basics, you’ve come to the right place.
Okay, so let’s dive in!
The very first thing to understand is how habits are formed:
Let me introduce you to Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward.
Cue: A cue is what triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. Cues come in the form of time, location, events, emotional states, other people, and even smells or memories. They can be conscious or subconscious. We can create new cues or build off of existing ones. We can even create or manipulate cues to influence others—this is why big companies spend millions on advertising.
Craving: Cravings are the motivational force behind every habit. The reason is, habits are pretty much just dopamine-driven feedback loops for our brains. Also, it’s important to note that it is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfilment of that reward—that gets us to take action.
Response: This is what we do with the craving—or the actual habit we perform. It can be a thought or an action, and usually our brains will attempt the “easiest” routes first. The reason is the human brain is always searching for more efficient ways to do things and to automate as much as possible. It’s also why habits can be formed subconsciously for good or bad depending on how motivated we are and how easy or difficult the habit is to perform.
And finally:
Reward: The reward part of the habit loop serves two functions: 1) It is about satisfying the craving first and foremost. And, 2) The reward teaches our brain what actions are worth remembering for future reference.
And there you have it! The Habit Loop. Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward.
In his book, James Clear takes each part of this habit loop and goes into great detail with the following outline to help his readers know how to form a new habit successfully.
Let’s go over each one a bit and hopefully give you some ideas on how you can use these tools and your self-awareness of Color Code to create habits more easily.
“If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment.” -James Clear
When forming a new habit, you want to set yourself up for success as much as possible, and it all starts with the cue. The easiest way to do this is by something Clear calls “habit stacking,” where you take something you ALREADY DO and then just add the desired habit right after the fact. For example, you would tell yourself after (current habit), I will (new desired habit). This actually works really well. It might be a little too much information, but when I wanted to learn to speak Italian, I trained myself so that every time I had to use the restroom, I would do a quick Duolingo lesson directly after. It worked like a charm and by far has generated the most success I’ve experienced in learning Italian.
The other important thing to do to maximize cues is create an environment that will launch you into the desired behavior. For me, since I am a Yellow and easily distracted by shiny objects, I know if I have my phone with me in the mornings while I try to work, I can pretty much be guaranteed to check social media instead of do what I am supposed to be doing. So one thing I’ve done to combat this is I put my phone on the “do not disturb” setting (which only lets emergency calls come through), and I place it in a difficult-to-reach location far away from my desk. I am not allowed to check my phone until AFTER I have accomplished whatever I have assigned myself that day. This might not be realistic for you, but it’s an example of how I designed my environment to help me counteract my natural limitation of being easily distracted.
In his book, Clear suggests using something called “temptation bundling” to make your desired habits more attractive. “After (current habit), I will (habit I need). After (habit I need), I will (habit I want).” For example, if you don’t necessarily love going to the gym, but you love Starbucks coffee, you can say “After I put on my shoes, I will go to the gym, and after the gym, I will get a coffee on the way home (no sugar of course). 😉 The idea is to do something SIMPLE and EASY. Don’t say, “I will go on a trip to Hawaii if I go to the gym every day for 6 months,” but you could say, “I will put a dollar into a Hawaii jar each day and look at pictures of Hawaii for 10 minutes.” Whatever will motivate you to look forward to doing the new habit instead of dreading it is the goal.
From a personality perspective, this boils down to being self-aware enough to know what sort of things would be motivating to you and what sort of things would get in the way of designing this craving. Remember, this ISN’T the reward, it’s the CRAVING your brain will associate with the reward that comes at the end.
In his book, Clear says, “If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection.” I’m looking at you, Blues. 😉 He goes on to suggest (STRONGLY) the “Two Minute Rule,” which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do, and it shouldn’t feel like a challenge.” The actions that follow can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy. What you are looking for is a “gateway habit” that naturally leads you down a more productive path. “The one push-up challenge” is a perfect example of how this works. It’s easy to convince yourself to do one measly push-up, and then since you’re already down there, you end up doing a few more, and before you know it, you’ve got yourself a habit! You get the idea. The point is not to do the one thing. The point is to master the habit of showing up—so make that as EASY as possible. Another example is for writers who struggle to, you know, write. Clear would suggest setting a goal of writing one sentence or one page a day instead of a goal of writing five or ten pages a day. Then, once you’ve mastered the art of showing up every day to write that one sentence, you can build from there.
From a Color Code perspective, knowing your needs, wants, strengths, and limitations is really helpful in crafting this part of your habit loop, because Color Code can make you aware of possible sticking points and leverage points you can use to your advantage.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “What is rewarded is repeated, what is punished is avoided?” A satisfying reward is the last piece of the puzzle in setting up a successful new habit. The trick is to make it an “instant gratification” type of reward—or at least seem like it—because that is what humans are hard-wired to desire, even though we all know intrinsically that delayed gratification is a better approach.
For example, it can be really hard to stick with habits like, “no frivolous purchases” or “no alcohol this month,” because nothing happens when you skip happy hour drinks or don’t buy that pair of shoes. Instead, you want to make avoidance visible. Clear suggests doing this by opening a savings account and labeling it for something you want—maybe “Leather Jacket.” Whenever you pass on a purchase, put the same amount of money in the account. Skipped your morning latte? Transfer $5. Passed on another month of Netflix? Move $10 over. It’s like creating a loyalty program for yourself. Do you see the difference? This way you can make a long-term goal feel rewarding every single day.
And from a personality perspective, knowing what is satisfying to you probably comes pretty naturally, so no need for Color Code here. 🙂
And there you have it! The four steps to make creating any new habit easier!
One final note on personality and habits that’s worth mentioning:
In one of the later chapters of the book, Clear compares the Olympic athletes Hicham El Guerrouj—a famous long-distance runner, and Michael Phelps—a world-class swimmer, and points out that if they were to flip sports, it would be nearly impossible for them to succeed. One of the main reasons being that both Guerrouj’s and Phelps’s height and body type are optimized for their respective sports. He uses this analogy to make the point with habits that it is much easier and feels much more fulfilling to know that you are improving yourself around things that you genuinely enjoy doing and are gifted at. I think that’s where becoming self-aware with tools like Color Code and others can be very helpful, so I encourage you to keep “knowing thyself” as Aristotle suggested.
Anyway, that’s it for me! If you’re interested in creating better habits and having more success reaching long-term goals, consider picking up a copy of Clear’s book and look for ways you can apply Color Code insights to it.
As for me, now it’s time to learn some Italian 😉
Here’s to you and your… HABITS!
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Joe England has known about the Color Code ever since 1994 when his Grandpa caused quite a family controversy by “quick coding” everyone. Luckily, Joe could see the value in what Grandpa Don was going for and years later, when the opportunity arose to work for the Color Code in marketing and product development, Joe jumped at the chance. He is a Yellow, enjoys Swedish Fish, travel, surfing, snowboarding and being a dad.
