The PT Challenge

As it happens, old habits do not die. They don’t disappear. When you stop practicing them, and instead discipline yourself to behave in a new way, they become weak and withdraw into your subconscious mind. Your new habits may override and replace the old habits, but you never eliminate them completely. They lurk below the surface, waiting to reemerge at a later time, when the stimulus that originally created them is repeated.

For example, when you were young, you learned how to ride a bicycle. Eventually you began driving a car. Many years, even decades later, you can get onto a bicycle and within a few seconds, you can be riding with the same balance and skill that you had programmed into your subconscious mind as a child.

Many people first learned how to drive a car with a standard transmission, a stick shift. Today most cars have automatic transmissions. You may drive one for years. However, if you were required to drive a car with a stick shift, even after many years, you would slip into the old habit of shifting gears easily and naturally in a
few seconds. The old habits never completely go away.

Taken From : Million dollar habits

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Where do you start in new habit pattern development? When people first learn about the importance of new habit pattern development, and how positive patterns of thought and behavior can have a wonderful effect on their lives, they often make the mistake of resolving to develop several new habits at once. They decide to
improve in every area of their lives simultaneously. They very excitedly draw up a list of new habits that they desire for their work, their financial lives, their business activities, their relationships, their family, their health and their personal organization skills. As a result, they very quickly hit a mental wall, and no improvement takes place at all.

Here is the rule in developing new habits: be patient with yourself. It has taken you an entire lifetime to become the person you are. It is not possible for you to change everything overnight. You should therefore select a single habit that you feel can be more helpful to you at the moment than any other particular habit. Write it down and create a positive affirmation, combined with a visual image, of yourself acting exactly as if you already had that new habit.

You then launch immediately, and never allow an exception. Talk to yourself positively and tell yourself that you already have this habit. Imagine yourself behaving as though you had already learned this behavior. Tell others. Give yourself rewards and reinforcement each time you engage in the new behavior. But only try to change one habit at a time.

Taken From : Million dollar habits

For example, procrastination is a problem that bothers almost everyone. Learning to overcome it is an exercise that will pay off for you all your life. To overcome procrastination, you can practice the seven steps described above.

First, make a decision to start in immediately on your most important task each day. Second, never allow an exception until the habit is firmly entrenched. Third, tell others that you are going to stop procrastinating in a particular area. Fourth, visualize and imagine yourself starting right in on a task and working at it non-stop until it is complete. Fifth, repeat over and over, “I start and work immediately on my most important task” Sixth, discipline yourself to persist every day until it becomes automatic for you to start in immediately on your top task. And seventh, reward yourself each time you overcome procrastination and complete an important job. Ever after, practice this process on any new habit you want to develop.

Make new habit pattern development a regular part of your life. Always be working on the development of a new habit that can help you. One new habit per month will amount to twelve new habits each year, sixty new life-enhancing habit every five years. At that rate, your life would change so profoundly that you would become a whole new person in a very positive way.

Taken From : Million dollar habits

First, make a decision. Decide clearly that you are going to begin acting in a specific way 100% of the time, whenever that that behavior is required. For example, if you decide to arise early and exercise each morning, set your clock for a specific time, and when the alarm goes off, immediately get up, put on your exercise clothes and begin your exercise session.

Second, never allow an exception to your new habit pattern during the formative stages. Don’t make excuses or rationalizations. Don’t let yourself off the hook. If you resolve to get up at 6:00 am each morning, discipline yourself to get up at 6:00 AM, every single morning until this becomes automatic.

Third, tell others that you are going to begin practicing a particular behavior. It is amazing how much more disciplined and determined you will become when you iknow that others are watching you to see if you have the willpower to follow through on your resolution.

Fourth, visualize yourself performing or behaving in a particular way in a particular situation. The more often you visualize and imagine yourself acting as if you already had the new habit, the more rapidly this new behavior will be accepted by your subconscious mind and become automatic. Fifth, create an affir mation that you repeat over and over to yourself. This repetition dramatically increases the speed at which you develop the new habit. For example, you can say something like; “I get up and get going immediately at 6:00 AM each morning!” Repeat these words the last thing before you fall asleep. In
most cases, you will automatically wake up minutes before the alarm clock goes off, and soon you will need no alarm clock at all.

Sixth, resolve to persist in the new behavior until it is so automatic and easy that you actually feel uncomfortable when you do not do what you have decided to do.

Seventh, and most important, give yourself a reward of some kind for practicing in the new behavior. Each time you reward yourself, you reaffirm and reinforce the behavior. Soon you begin to associate, at an unconscious level, the pleasure of the reward with the behavior. You set up your own force field of positive consequences that you unconsciously look forward to as the result of engaging in the behavior or habit that you have decided upon.

Taken From : Million dollar habits

How long does it take to develop a new habit? The time period can be any length from a single second to several years. The speed of new habit pattern development is largely determined by the intensity of the emotion that accompanies the decision to begin acting in a particular way.

Many people think, talk about and resolve to lose weight and become physically fit. This may go on for years. Then one day, the doctor says that, “If you don’t get your weight down and improve your physical condition, you are in danger of dying at an early age.”

Suddenly, the thought of dying can be so intense or frightening that the individual immediately changes his diet, begins exercising, stops smoking and becomes a healthy and fit person. Psychologists refer to this as a “significant emotional experience,” or a “SEE.” Any experience of intense joy or pain, combined with a behavior, can create a habitual behavior pattern that may endure for the rest of a
person’s life.

For example, putting your hand on a hot stove or touching a live electrical wire will give you an intense and immediate pain or shock. The experience may only take a split second. But for the rest of your life, you will have developed the habit of not putting your hand on hot stoves, or touching live electrical wires. The habit will have been formed instantly, and endure permanently.

According to the experts, it takes about 21 days to form a habit pattern of medium complexity. By this, we mean simple habits such as getting up earlier at a specific hour, exercising each morning before you start out, listening to audio programs in your car, going to bed at a certain hour, being punctual for appointments, planning
every day in advance, starting with your most important tasks each day, or completing your tasks before you start something else. These are habits of medium complexity that can be quite easily developed in 14-21 days through practice and repetition.

How do you develop a new habit? Over the years, a simple, powerful, proven methodology has been determined for new habit development. It is very much like a recipe for preparing a dish in the kitchen. You can use it to develop any habit that you desire. Over time, you will find it easier and easier to develop the habits that you want to incorporate into your personality.

Taken From : Million dollar habits

There is a large block of work in psychology called “expectations theory.” The conclusions they have reached are that people are motivated to act in a particular way by what they expect to happen more than any other factor or influence. In other words, you do the things you do because of the consequences you feel you will experience as a result. Expectations Theory explains small things, like what you do and say in a social situation, and large matters, such as capital movements in the international financial markets.

As we discussed in Chapter One, you can actually manufacture your own expectations. You can develop the habit of expecting good things to happen, no matter how they may appear at the moment. Your expectations then influence your attitudes and the way you treat other people. Your attitudes, expectations and behaviors will then have an inordinate influence on the way things actually work
out. In effect, you can control much of your own future by expecting things to happen in a positive way.

Unfortunately, negative expectations also become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you expect something to turn out poorly, this will affect your attitude and behavior. Your negative attitude then increases the likelihood that you will experience the negative consequences that you anticipated. If you repeat this often enough, you will develop a negative and pessimistic attitude. This way of thinking will become a habit.

Taken From : Million dollar habits

There is another model of habit pattern development called the “ABC Model.” These three letters stand for antecedents-behaviors- consequences. What psychologists have discovered is that the antecedents, what has happened in the past, stimulate only 15% of your behaviors. Fully 85% of your behaviors are motivated by what you expect to happen in the future, by the anticipated consequences.

For example, if you are preparing to give a presentation, or apply for a job, 85% of your motivation will be determined by what you expect to happen if you are successful. Only 15% of your motivation will be decided by what you have done in the past in similar circumstances.

Taken From : Million dollar habits

In Pavlov’s experiments with dogs, one of the first major experiments on the role of operant conditioning, a hungry dog was given a piece of meat and a bell was rung at the same time. This process was repeated several times, over several days. Each time the dog received the meat, the dog would salivate in anticipation of the food, and the bell would ring. After repeating this stimulus-response action several times, the dog would salivate automatically upon hearing the bell, even when no meat was present.

In the same way, you can develop conditioned responses to people and situations as the result of previous experiences, either positive or negative. For example, if there is someone in your life that you love and care about, the thought of that person, or the sound of that person on the phone, will immediately cause you to smile and feel happy.

If there is a person in your life, usually from your past, who has hurt you, and made you angry or unhappy, the very thought of that person, or even the person’s name, will immediately trigger feelings of anger or sadness. Many people become trapped by memories of unhappy experiences, which have become habitual responses, and are often unable to let them go.

Taken From : Million dollar habits

A habit has been defined as “a conditioned response to stimuli,” but where do they originate? A habit is developed as the result of your responding in a particular way to a particular stimulus, often starting early in life. It is very much like driving down the road and taking a fork in one direction or another. Whichever direction you go, good or bad, largely determines where you end up.

Fortunately, you are born with no habits at all. You have acquired them all from infancy. Different habits take different time periods to develop, if you desire them, or to overcome, if they are habits that you want to get rid of. As it happens, there is a proven system that you can use to accelerate the process of new habit pattern development.

Behavioral psychologists refer to “operant conditioning” to describe how people learn certain automatic behaviors. They sometimes refer to the “SBC Model” of new habit pattern formation. These three letters stand for “Stimulus-Behavior- Consequences.” First, something happens in your life that stimulates a thought or feeling. Second, in response, you behave a particular way. Third, as a result, you experience a certain consequence. If you repeat this process often enough, you develop a new habit.

Taken From : Million dollar habits