Habitus 2.0 

Hello beautiful people, hope you guys are doing well!

So, I am finally here with my Habitus series part 2 wherein I will discuss a few tips that will make your habit making journey easier and fun.

DISCLAIMER: This series will go on for a while wherein I will be discussing a few tips each week in detail and give you guys a week to test those tips out for yourselves and at the end of the week I replenish the tips jar again!

TIP OF THE WEEK:

Incorporate the habits that you want to inculcate as a part of your identity…

Now that you know what to do let’s understand the working behind this: according to James Clear there are two types of habits :

Outcome based habits - focus on what you want to achieve

Identity based habits - Who you wish to become

Most of us always build outcome based habits for instance- I will workout because I want to be skinny and if I workout I will be skinny but there is a problem in this system.

Every system of action has a system of beliefs on which it works and if those beliefs don’t align with the actions it ultimately leads to failure. Let’s take up the previous example again, you want to be skinny but your identity is someone who loves their sedentary lifestyle, then you may try and push yourself for a few day but ultimately you will fall back to your old habits

You might start with motivation but in the long term you will stick with it only if it becomes a part of your identity.

Now that we have figured out the problem let’s come to the solution and as you guys already must have figured, it is to align your identity to you goals.

You need to change your mindset from I want this to the type of person who is this.

A few things that can help in this process are:

Have pride in that part of your identity that you are trying to build, for instance if you are proud of your abs you will make sure that you never skip workout to maintain those muscles, this is to keep you going after you have achieved a milestone but what about beginners?

The next solution is for the people who are in early stages of building their habits, in that case, you will need to change your identity.

Now let’s talk in depth about this process and the science behind it

Our identity emerges out of our habits and to be more precise our habits are how we embody our identity. The more you repeat a behaviour, the more it is reinforced in the identity. Therefore your present identity is made up of the proofs of the behaviours from the past.

James Clear gave a two-step process in changing our identities:

Decide the person you want to be

Prove it to yourself with small wins.

The words small in the wins is very important to understand, in movies there is a moment in the life of protagonist where he realises something and post that event he transforms himself into a whole new person but in reality life cannot be transformed in one moment or in one day, it takes persistent efforts and a lot of determination and willpower. So, instead of focusing on being productive or being perfect all the time we focus on being perfect majority of the time and appreciate the small wins instead of waiting for the big ones.

So, all in all, in order to form habits and keep them on in long run you need to align them with your identity. It can be done by either associating that behaviour with your pride and for beginners changing your identity by the two step-process.

Even though this mindset won’t make the process of doing that behaviour any easier for you in you initial days but after giving your mind enough proof it will become a part of your identity and that is when the tables turn. Initially you will need to push yourself but if you keep focusing on your mindset along with it you will not need to force yourself for long but with the wrong mindset sustaining the habit will become a problem for you.

I hope you enjoyed today’s blog and I wish that you try these tricks and let me know in the comments, your experiences. I will see you guys next week with some new tips till then stay optimistic, trust the process and keep up the hard work!!