Atomic Habits - James Clear Page 0,39

remarkable effort for decades. But these habits and behaviors maintained their attractiveness, in part, because they were valued by their culture. From the praise of their parents to the achievement of different status markers like becoming a grandmaster, they had many reasons to continue their effort.

Chapter Summary

The culture we live in determines which behaviors are attractive to us.

We tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of by our culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the tribe.

We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those with status and prestige).

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

The normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.

If a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive.

10

How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits

IN LATE 2012, I was sitting in an old apartment just a few blocks from Istanbul’s most famous street, Istiklal Caddesi. I was in the middle of a four-day trip to Turkey and my guide, Mike, was relaxing in a worn-out armchair a few feet away.

Mike wasn’t really a guide. He was just a guy from Maine who had been living in Turkey for five years, but he offered to show me around while I was visiting the country and I took him up on it. On this particular night, I had been invited to dinner with him and a handful of his Turkish friends.

There were seven of us, and I was the only one who hadn’t, at some point, smoked at least one pack of cigarettes per day. I asked one of the Turks how he got started. “Friends,” he said. “It always starts with your friends. One friend smokes, then you try it.”

What was truly fascinating was that half of the people in the room had managed to quit smoking. Mike had been smoke-free for a few years at that point, and he swore up and down that he broke the habit because of a book called Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking.

“It frees you from the mental burden of smoking,” he said. “It tells you: ‘Stop lying to yourself. You know you don’t actually want to smoke. You know you don’t really enjoy this.’ It helps you feel like you’re not the victim anymore. You start to realize that you don’t need to smoke.”

I had never tried a cigarette, but I took a look at the book afterward out of curiosity. The author employs an interesting strategy to help smokers eliminate their cravings. He systematically reframes each cue associated with smoking and gives it a new meaning.

He says things like:

You think you are quitting something, but you’re not quitting anything because cigarettes do nothing for you.

You think smoking is something you need to do to be social, but it’s not. You can be social without smoking at all.

You think smoking is about relieving stress, but it’s not. Smoking does not relieve your nerves, it destroys them.

Over and over, he repeats these phrases and others like them. “Get it clearly into your mind,” he says. “You are losing nothing and you are making marvelous positive gains not only in health, energy and money but also in confidence, self-respect, freedom and, most important of all, in the length and quality of your future life.”

By the time you get to the end of the book, smoking seems like the most ridiculous thing in the world to do. And if you no longer expect smoking to bring you any benefits, you have no reason to smoke. It is an inversion of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change: make it unattractive.

Now, I know this idea might sound overly simplistic. Just change your mind and you can quit smoking. But stick with me for a minute.

WHERE CRAVINGS COME FROM

Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper, underlying motive. I often have a craving that goes something like this: “I want to eat tacos.” If you were to ask me why I want to eat tacos, I wouldn’t say, “Because I need food to survive.”