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The book was sparked by Duhigg’s fascination with the wit of a U.S. army major in Kufa in Iraq, who nipped riots in the bud by persuading the small town’s mayor to keep food vendors out of large and growing gatherings – when people couldn’t fuel their anger and energy with kebabs, as they usually did, they just left. Tons of research and 8 years later, Duhigg published the go-to book about habits.

Here are your 3 must-takeaways:

Habits work in 3-step loops: cue, routine, reward.

You can change your habits by substituting just one part of the loop, the routine.

Willpower is the most important habit, and you can strengthen it over time with 3 things.

Ready to science the heck out of your habits? Let’s go!

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Lesson 1: Habits work in 3-step loops: cue, routine, reward.

Roughly 40% of what you do happens on autopilot.

Habits are your brain’s way of saving energy, so given you spend around 6 of your 16 waking hours doing things you’re not aware of, it might be worth understanding what happens here.

Duhigg discovered that at the root of all habits, like drinking your coffee every morning, lies a simple 3-part loop.

The cue is what triggers you to do the habit, for example sitting down at your kitchen table to have breakfast every morning at 7 AM.

The routine is the behavior you then automatically engage in, which, for drinking coffee, might be to go over to your coffeemaker, turn it on, and press the “large cup” button.

Lastly, you’ll receive a reward for completing the routine, such as the rich smell of your coffee, it’s hearty taste and getting to watch the steam rise from the cup as it sits on your kitchen table in the sunlight (I really love coffee, can you tell?).

Note: My friend Sam Thomas Davies created an excellent blog post with a beautiful visualization of the loop.

Your brain’s activity only spikes twice during this loop. At the beginning, to figure out which habit to engage in, and at the end, when the link between cue and routine is reinforced (here’s a graphic from the book).

Wait, reinforced?

Aha!

That’s how habits are built and the stronger this link gets, the harder it becomes to change them. But you can still do it.

Lesson 2: You can change your habits by substituting just one part of the loop, the routine.

Naturally, the more often you reinforce a habit, the more embedded in your brain it gets.

In case of the coffee, you might crave it the second you sit down at your kitchen table, and when you can’t have it that day, because the machine broke, you’ll probably get very grumpy and buy one later at work.

The trick to changing a habit then, is to switch the routine, and leave everything else in tact.

Duhigg calls this the golden rule.

If you’re trying to get off caffeine, the tweak is incredibly simple: switch to decaf (like my “friend” Replacing Rick).

You’ll still have the entire experience from A to Z, but instead of pressing a button you’re now pouring hot water over decaf coffee powder, and voilà, you won’t miss caffeine for even a single day.

Lesson 3: Your most important habit is willpower, and you can strengthen it over time in 3 ways.

Not all habits are created equal and Duhigg says willpower is by far one of the most important ones, as it helps us do better in all aspects of life.

Having been to the moon and back in terms of willpower research, I don’t want to tell you to eat right, sleep enough and exercise regularly. My friend Colin is much better at that.

Instead, here are 3 uncommon ways in which you can grow your total willpower capacity over time:

Do something that requires a lot of discipline. For example a tough wake-up regimen or strict diet will make you constantly practice delaying gratification and thus give you more willpower to exert throughout your day.

Plan ahead for worst-case scenarios. Even just thinking about your boss yelling at you before it ever happens will help you not loose your cool when it does.

Preserve your autonomy. Yesterday I learned that autonomy was a major part of living a passionate life. Today I learned that if you take it away, your willpower also goes down the drain. When you’re assigned tasks by someone else, which you must do, your willpower muscle tires much quicker.

Focus on improving these important, big aspects of your life over minor hacks, and you’ll develop great self-discipline in the long run!

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The Power of Habit Review

Duhigg has managed to combine the scientific research with his own ideas and personal experiences in such a way that the book tells many extremely compelling stories, while teaching you everything you need to know about habits. If I could have you read only one book this year, this would be it – although Duhigg has published a new book in 2016, Smarter Faster Better, hmmm. Nah, go with The Power Of Habit!

« Buy the book on Amazon || Read the summary on Blinkist »

What else can you learn from the blinks?

Why habits stick and how that changed the toothpaste industry

How Alcoholics Anonymous has helped 10 million people kick the booze

What a keystone habit is and how Paul O’Neill 5x-ed the value of an entire company with it

Why no one cared to put out a fire in the London tube in 1987

How Target helped a Dad find out his teenage daughter was pregnant

The 3 factors from which big movements develop

Why a gambling problem is always your own fault, but murdering your wife in your sleep might not be

Who would I recommend The Power Of Habit summary to?

Nietzsche might not be known for a spiritual teacher or philosopher since he has always stood against the church and Christianity. However, in his masterpiece “Thus spoke Zarathustra” he presents three stages humans can go through in order for their spirits to flourish.

It is the metaphor of human evolution: how the spirit becomes a camel, a camel a lion and at last the lion a child.

The first stage of the metaphor: the stage of the spirit also called the sheep stage.

The journey of soul flourishing starts with the spirit, invisible and unremarkable, it ultimately refers to humans whose lives are limited by certain approach to existence. A person equivalent to the spirit is a person who lives fearfully complying blindly to norms dictated from above, surviving a life they completely have no power over. It might as well be noticeable that this behavior is sheepish. People at this stage are not accomplishing much else than just surviving the days and for that they can never be the masters of their fates.

To grow and evolve the spirit has to get by change and times of discomfort, transcending the sheepish compliance. By transcending this paradigm, the soul rises above the challenges with courage and insight.

You as a person might be at this stage, fearful of what the future holds for you, completely enable to justify your existence or stand up for yourself, you might also feel uncomfortable just as the word “change” is mentioned. A lot of people are exactly like you, afraid to conquer the world too!

By staying with me as I take you on this journey of soul flourishing you might stand out and move to the next step.

The first metamorphosis - the spirit into a camel:

The spirit decides to overcome itself.

We as human beings tend to need to prove our existence so we seek out the heaviest and most burdensome insights for ourselves to dwell in them as a rite of passage. The spirit eagerly searches for the weightiest loads to forbear.

Camels can carry great weights and survive the desert; they are beasts of burden and they voluntarily take the weightiest in order for them to justify as to what they are not intimidated by discomfort. Thy demand the maximum out of themselves.

Camels represent our lives at some extent we obey the rules and comply to them, we are on a quest to please the system and everybody, we forbear the most burdensome weights and we are not to complain because we agreed somehow to stand them.

Most of the weights we carry are societal norms, we accept the duty and do not question it, we tend to prove that we are capable of being a somewhat “nice person”.

Although the camel has raised above the spirit, it is not much different than the spirit for it doesn’t question or challenge the rules imposed upon him.

For a camel, life is a set of evidences and unless it realizes the pointlessness of living in the jail of rules only then it can rise above himself.

The second metamorphosis - the camel into a lion:

The camel has realized that he was living in a cage he had never considered escaping, a cage of rules and values he has never questioned before.

Now, it has become all clear that it’s absurd to imprison oneself in a prison of nothing but what people, systems or any other structures decided are going to be rules and values.

Now the camel has become a lion. A lion inspires power, a lion is not afraid to reject codes imposed upon him, he is always in the ongoing fight for his freedom and liberty. The lion realizes that what he once held as an evidence in his mind on what true and wrong are is nothing but a reflection of what others led him to believe.

The lion then starts destroying what other have built and assigned to him.

When the camel has arrived to the desert and transformed into a lion, the lion then wanted to appropriate the desert and make it his own. But despite the illuminated perspective of the lion he is still under the control of existing structures, in fact his desire to defeat what was forced onto him is nothing but a reaction.

In other words, the freedom he seeks is negative in nature, it is a reaction against the PRISON. In order for the lion to truly be free, he has to completely let go of the idea of an existing jail. Raising above himself, the lion has to completely start all over and build up his own existence free from any matter that might hold him prisoner be it a somewhat structure.

Nothing can stop a lion from creating his own values and enforcing his own rules and be totally free and liberated.

But, If the jail did not exist, the lion would have never fought for his freedom. In real life most adults have been obsessed with freedom and fought for it at a certain point of their lives, mostly at the phase of adolescence when adolescents become aware of the existing structures that confine them, family for instance.

Now, the lion is left at a state of nothingness and unless he fills the blank canvas, he can become a child.

The third metamorphosis - lion into a child:

In order for the lion to become a child he has to let go of his negative reactions embrace life and see it as joyful game.

A child is innocence, a child is a new beginning. Unlike the lion the child does not react because it doesn’t seek approval and his freedom is not dependent on an existing prison.

Life is no longer a reactive struggle and that is why a child is never worried.

He: doesn’t stand for gender specification.

Perspective Some of the greatest leaders in history were known for their ability to frame their thoughts. A frame is what leads us whether to over-interpret or under-interpret an aspect of reality and it shapes the whole process of turning thoughts into valid actions, which means that for the speech to have an impact, the choice of a good frame is a great stepping stone. A good frame has to be simple so that it sticks, it may have villains but as long as it’s valuable this taps into its power. Let’s consider the example of an immigrant who has illegally crossed borders of a country; It took him/her some time to get used to his/her new life, but since then he/she could find a job, has got promoted many times and has had two kids. Now, we may look at his life in two different perspectives, first as an illegal immigrant which may lead us to think that he should leave the country. But if we looked at his life from another perspective that he has worked and contributed to this country we may think that what is missing is just some documents which emphasizes a bureaucracy problem that can be solved.

So, A stupid kid, or a kid who hasn’t yet found what he/she excels at? What if you were the immigrant, would you like to be called an illegal immigrant or an undocumented employee? And what if you were the kid? Either way whatever your choice is, it can be VALIDATED, but you should pay attention to your life and make sure you frame your life wisely so that you can align it with your core values and believe that you are ENOUGH. it all starts with understanding that:

“We’re all just walking each other home.” Ram DASS

Purpose

“When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic power.” Gary Zucav

So many people get lost in their lives not knowing their callings or purposes, they think there’s something they were born to do, some recognize it as passion some remain unable to figure it out. Indeed, Life Speaks to us in Whispers, the whisper gets loud and to get it we need to pay very close attention, HOW CAN WE IN THE MIDST OF ALL THIS SOCIAL NOISE? Purpose cannot be realized in social network for It can’t be defined on a common sense, but it feels right bringing you satisfaction in your own way of serving the world. If you don’t feel comfortable in some area of your life, just try to align your energy with it, if it wasn’t a stepping stone to another thing, then there is where you should be.

Validation Who has lived and hasn’t made mistakes? People get depressed, mad, angry, sad for different reasons the change of perspective and perception from a person to another leads them to judge their feelings. The greatest thing we can offer them is compassion, listening without trying to judge them for feeling bad about themselves and that is a sort of paying attention. When facing a situation with a depressed person people usually try to help them find a solution which is by good intention, but that is not what they need, what they need is VALIDATION a sense of value to what they feel.

“What I’ve come to understand from 25 years of doing the Oprah Winfrey Show Is that the truth of what a human being needs is to be validated. ” Oprah Winfrey

In other words, they need to find an answer for each of these questions: Could You hear Me? did You hear ME? Did what I said mean anything to You?

I let go, but the moment I got up, the unknown walked fast right to me until I forgot the names, then went back to nowhere as if nothing has happened; The sort of emotional chaos as memories come and go in the mind of a drunk heart and as I look for more ridiculous reasons to be depressed for so, that I can cry more.

The confusion it made me feel was exactly the same I felt the first time I realized that I was born with no options.

I don’t remember being born. I merged fast from a clit in my mother’s stomach 7 months after her celebrating pregnancy, that is how I knew I couldn’t stand not being noticed.

Few years after then, I was able to speak, so to ask those who surrounded me why they couldn’t see me all this time, but nobody has ever answered my question, later on I got whispered in ears signs I couldn’t figure out.

The unknown was one of the signs, a deep insight of life, death and what is in between, probably death was the wrong word since I had never put too much effort into living because life was happening anyways and I was the penny rolling up, undergoing the physical forces in a wide universe of probabilities.

The unknown also took a knife from the kitchen, pierced a novel near my bed and made a cut. The book carried a picture of mine I used to mark pages.

I witnessed every dimension of life beyond height, width, depth and time, and put all my nerve to gently ask questions:

Who are you?

Why did you show up in my life all of a sudden?

You are the formless, why are you so vulnerable?

I wasn’t expecting answers, but after a moment of silent despair I heard a voice too much like mine. In that moment every dimension fell apart; I ran through time trying to escape, but the space had a very powerful hold on me.

Nothing else ever seems to hurt like this, that who I thought was fictive, was a part of me, the child who dried every tear and got tired of asking the same question 19 years ago:

Why can’t t you see Me?

Rest in peace my true love.