How To Embrace The Power of Habit In Achieving Success

In a previous post, we emphasized the importance of creating daily habits to stay resolute on resolutions. The problem with most resolutions is that they often want to change a lot of things at once so we set goals that we rarely accomplish. We decide on making gigantic leaps instead of progressing slowly. Setting goals is very important in helping us build a purpose and avoid living without knowing where we’re going. Best Selling author Brian Tracy wrote “Living without clear goals is like driving in a thick fog”, in his book, Goals! “Clear goals enable you to step on the accelerator of your own life, and race ahead rapidly”. However, the problem with setting goals is that we are only happy the moment we accomplish them. We become sad if we fail to accomplish a goal. Setting goals gives us the impression that we can control the future, whereas this can’t be true unless we set easy to accomplish goals.

Doctor BJ Fogg, Stanford University behavior professor and author of the book called “Tiny Habits: the small changes that change everything” asserts that daily tiny habits can add up to constitute a greater goal. Dr. Fogg’s counter-intuitive system tells us that the gap between our goals and our actions is actually the sweet spot for change if we do that using systematic small daily habits: “Simplicity changes behavior”. He emphasizes two easy ways to achieve long-term behavioral shifts the first one is to change your environment, and the second is to create new habits. Dr. Fogg throws away this whole notion of motivation and its relation to achieving goals. He suggests that we don’t have to be obsessed with the importance of taking enormous actions in order to achieve our goals. Instead, he recommends small, but measurable shifts that, one by one, build up to our bigger goals over time. Fogg claims, “Tiny Habits limbo under the bar of low motivation.” Given that, you should be able to effectively and sustainably shift your habits with skill and practice instead of solely relying on motivation.

Setting goals is important but not enough, picking a daily habit can be the initial step towards developing a system of change that can become efficient and reliable over time. According to Dr. Fogg, You choose an existing habit as a trigger and do your ONE Thing immediately after. For example, if you have an existing habit to watch TV once you arrive home, you can set it as a trigger to work on your new goal every night after you watch TV.