Becoming 1% better every day means focusing on the one tiny action you can take today to get one step closer to where you want to be tomorrow. It means sticking with these tiny actions, day in and day out because you know they’ll compound into something significant. Instead of focusing on a huge, overarching goal that seems impossible to reach, you focus on your everyday habits instead.
"Your identity is determined by your habits"
If you were able to get each day better, you’re going to be 37% better by the end of year. Everybody wants a transformation. Everybody wants a radical improvement, one rapid success but we fail to realize that small habits and little choices are transforming us every day already. There are four stages of habit transformation. And I’m going to take you through each of them;
Noticing
Many people think that they lack motivation but what actually they lack is clarity. They think they need to get motivated and get more will power to get executed. They think that if they get a feel then they’ll do it but instead they don’t have a plan to do something. They just wake up every day thinking I wonder if I’ll feel motivated. Instead, you can take the decision making out of it by explicitly stating when, where, and how, you want to implement the habit. Give your goals a time and a place to live in the world. Let’s get a plan and write down what you should be doing.
Achieving goals can be really hard and tough. Here’s a quick exercise to notice what’s holding you back. Let’s suppose it’s six months from now. Imagine you’re not able to achieve your goal. Write the story of how it happened. What caused it to fail? Once you have all the plan in front of you, you’ll be able to make better choices about how to develop a plan.
Wanting
One of the most overlooked drivers of your habits and human behavior is your physical environment. This is the interesting insight about our desires, your environment often influences them. Thankfully you don’t have to be the victim of your environment, you can be the architect of it. Many of our desires are simply shaped because we have an environment that shapes us that way.
Doing
The important insight here particularly for habits is that in the beginning you just have to hone the skill. Any outcome that you wish to achieve is just a point along the spectrum of repetitions. Optimize for the starting line and not for finishing line. So often when we think about goals, achievements, habits, we think about the milestones. How much weight we want to lose, how much money we want to earn, how many subscribers we want to have; it’s all about the finish line. But instead, if we optimize for the starting line and make it easy as possible to get started, the outcome will just come as a natural result.
Liking
The only reason we repeat behaviors is because we like them. You need to experience rewards along the way. If we don’t enjoy the experience on the way, we’re unlikely to stick to it. You need to figure out to bring the reward into the present moment.
The best way to change long-term behavior is short-term feedback. Sticking to long term behaviors have delayed consequences. So, you need a way to enjoy them in a moment.
By measuring your own progress, you get an immediate reward in the moment. We often fear that in order to achieve something new, to become someone new; we have to abandon everything that we are but that’s not how it works. Change can happen plank by plank, habit by habit and gradually you can become someone new with consistency. The actions you take provide evidence for who you’re. Each moment in life matters but what happen after a span of time in a broad spectrum, things you do once or twice fade away, and things or habits you do continuously will eventually describe what you believe about yourself. Every action you take is actually a vote for the type of person you want to become. True change is not behavioral change, it’s identity change. Your goal is not to read a book, it’s to become a reader. Your goal is not to run a marathon, it’s to become a runner. Your goal is not to write a book, it’s to become a writer.
Habits are not only the method through which we achieve external measure of success like losing weight, earning more or meditating and reducing stress. They are also a path through which we achieve internal change and actually become someone new. So, if you can change your habits, you can change your life.
