For more information go to https://tinyhabits.com/book/
Dr BJ Fogg – Tiny Habits: the small changes that change everything.
How do habits form? It’s not how you think.
Research is showing that habit formation is not through repetition. It’s not 21 days or 66 days. Most habits start small, they find a place in our lives where they sit well (say, a habit of checking Facebook multiple times a day) and then they get nurtured by emotion.
It’s hard to stop a bad habit through willpower alone.
Willpower and discipline are needed for hard behaviours like getting an important task finished but willpower alone rarely succeeds in stopping a bad habit because it’s difficult to keep willpower going in the long term.
Instead, it’s suggested to use the ABC approach from the Tiny Habit method by Dr BJ Fogg.
Start with B = Behaviour
B is the behaviour or thing you want to become a habit. For example, it could be flossing.
Remember it’s a small change but then you take flossing and scale it back further to a super tiny change like “I’ll floss one tooth a day”.
A = Anchor
Then work out when that tiny habit fits in your life. What does it come after?
You are looking for something firm and rooted in your life that you can attach this tiny habit to.
So for flossing, you would anchor it to brushing your teeth, so that reminds you to floss.
C = the Celebration
Celebration is anything you do after you do the tiny habit to create a positive emotion inside of yourself to help self-reinforce the tiny habit.
A smile in the mirror, a fist pump that generates emotion which helps the new habit get wired in.
Why tiny?
Tiny is powerful and can be transformative. When you are forming new habits, you aren’t going to be perfect and if it’s tiny you aren’t stumbling very far if you don’t do it, it’s just a small setback and you get up and keep going.
Set the bar low and keep it low: two push-ups, tidy one thing… but if you want to do more, even on day one, that’s fine too.
Bad Habits
The tiny approach can get rid of bad habits. Look at the bad habit as a knot to be untangled and map it out. If it is unhealthy snacking, work on when you snack during the day, pick the easiest one to get rid of and you untangle that one and then the next. Stop the easiest unhealthiest snack first, like a biscuit with your coffee.
Major addictions and Bad Habits
Seek expert professional help for major addictions. It’s too important to self-help with these. Also, be wary of announcing your change of habit goals to the world. It might seem good to commit yourself publicly to be held accountable by all of Facebook, but it works better to get alongside people also trying to make the same change for their support and guidance.
It works!
Within 5 days, 80% of people start adding other new habits as well, not just the 3 they started working on, and 20% of people report they’ve made a big change within 5 days. Try it with something easy and tiny!
