By Creating Habits, You Make The Rules
Live By Your Own Rules.
We may say we have “good” habits and “bad” habits, but the truth is, we automate our lives because it’s part of our biological evolution. Your body doesn’t think, it feels. So when you’re doing something that feels good, your body will find ways to get that “good” more often and in an automatic way. Smoking cigarettes feels good, but it’s not good for you. Eating candy tastes good, but it’s not good for you. Reading a book can be frustrating, but it’s good for you. Going on a run can be painful and annoying, but it’s good for you. No matter how logical your mind is, your habits don’t have to make logical sense. So use this to your advantage.
Your Mind Controls Your Habits.
A “runner’s high” is a real thing. There is a feeling that you get from running that feels better than the running feels bad. These good feelings have a huge impact on our ability to form habits. The question is, what habits do we have, what habits do we want to form, and what habits do we want to get rid of or replace. By using unique tricks, we can convince our bodies to develop habits that become automatic routines in furtherance of accomplishing our goals. Some of these tricks are easy, some of them take time.
Habit Trick: “Pairing”.
In Gretchen Ruben’s book Better Than Before, she talks about a lot of different ways habits can improve your life (or could be ruining it). One of her recommendations she titles “Pairing”. Pairing, as described in the book, is “coupling two activities, one that [we] need or want to do, and one that [we] don’t particularly want to do, to get [ourselves] to accomplish them both.” She goes on to explain in the book about someone she suggested this strategy to who created a rule. They took the habit they wanted to do (watching shows) and paired it with something they needed to do but didn’t particularly want to do (going to the gym).
In the book she describes this person’s new commitment to hitting the gym regularly. She says that she was able to set a rule, only watching shows while working out. And because of that rule, the habit of going to the gym is desirable because she gets to watch her shows. By pairing the two habits together, she gets the collateral benefit of exercise while she watches her shows.
Rules Of Your Life.
There are people who are obsessed with habit formation and routines. (I am one of them.) I believe that habits are essentially the rules of your life. What I mean by this is as follows: I like to get up early so that I can accomplish more in my day, and also get the added benefit of some alone time before my family wakes up. So, I set a rule for myself: I wake up early every day. To ensure that I meet that rule, I made it a habit. Now, I don’t even think about it, and frankly I enjoy it, I just get up early and that is that. By looking at my habits as the physical act of living life by my own rules, I’ve eliminated all effort and energy in the decision making process for those areas of my life.
This doesn’t mean that I have rules for everything, but definitely for the important things. Another example is that I want to exercise EVERY DAY. Not “try” to exercise every day, but I actually MUST exercise every day. It’s a rule, and I’m not breaking my own rules. So, instead of waking up every day and asking myself; where, when, how, or what I’m going to do for exercise, I created a habit of doing the same type of exercise every day. (Now you’re going to say: “Nico, you have to mix it up, you have to do different exercises you can’t just do the same thing every day!”) Ok, yeah, I get it. The thing is, I do vary my exercises. I didn’t say that my rule was that I ONLY work out once every day. I just said that I have to work out every day.
So, if I know I’m going surfing today, or playing golf, or going to gym class with a friend, then I don’t worry so much about my routine workout. (I typically do the routine workout anyways because it’s such an ingrained habit, but that’s just a bonus.) So again, this isn’t about begin stubborn, it’s about setting a rule and sticking to it.
Don’t Think About It, Automate It.
By identifying the areas of your life that you want to set as your rule of life, you can then build habits around those rules. The key here being, once it’s a rule, there’s no thought. Maybe you have trouble not drinking during the week. Maybe your spouse, or your neighbors, or your friends are always down to go grab a beer/wine after work, to wind down or just to be social. I’m not judging, just using this as an example, but every time you drink you lower your inhibitions. You’re also more tired the next day, so everything you do is going to be that much harder.
If you are living your life, and you get home from work and it’s a beautiful afternoon and your neighbors are outside and offer you a beer, in that moment it’s hard to say “No thanks, I’m not gonna drink tonight.” Not because it’s hard to say, but because temptation is a bitch. BUT, if you make a rule, you eliminate the decision beforehand. If you’re trying to replace the habit of drinking during the week with not drinking, just make a rule. “I don’t drink during the week anymore.” There’s no question as to why, or what’s the reason, it’s a rule. Now that you have the rule, you live by it. “Want a drink?” “No thanks, I’m not drinking during the week anymore. But let’s crack a bottle of wine this weekend for sure!”
Rules Are Easy For The Rule Maker.
Here’s your challenge, go and think about the things you want to do or stop doing in your life. Picture the best version of your life, what you do on a daily basis, what your goals are, and how you accomplish those goals. Then, write down all the rules that you would have to follow to make that dream your reality. Now, take those rules, put them on your phone or on your wall or wherever you will remember them. Live by them. Next thing you know, your rules are now your habits, which then become your routine. Now you’re living your life by your own rules, and it’s the life you want to live!
