Hello everyone,sorry it took me sometime to continue my series. I was busy with other things. But here I am so lets continue. Alright today we are going to talk about How to build better habits in 4 simple Steps.
In order to follow these steps, you have to understand the "four laws of behavior change", which are as follow:
1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it satisfying
We will discuss each law deeply later, but for now just keep them in your mind, they're very essential to changing your habits. There is a four step pattern that is the backbone of every habit, We follow these patterns every time in the same order.
First there is the 'cue', which is a sort of trigger that initiates a behavior, It's a pattern that predicts a reward with the information it gets from its surroundings. Our mind is continuously analyzing the environment around us to look for hints of where rewards are located and cue leads to a craving.
Then there is a Craving which is the second step and it's sort of a motivational force behind every good or bad habit. A human needs some kind of motivation or craving to do an act, without any of these, we have no reason to act. A craving differs from person to person. Some people might crave something which others might not. For example, One person craves smoking because he believes that it will provide relief while another guy might not and finds that smoking is bad. People are not motivated by the same cues and a cue is meaningless until they are interpreted.
The third step is the response. The actual performance of habit is called response. If a particular action requires more physical or mental effort than you are willing to expend, then you won’t do it. Your response also depends on your ability. It sounds simple, but a habit can occur only if you are capable of doing it.
The last step of this pattern is *'reward'. They're the end goal of every habit. The first purpose of rewards is to satisfy your craving. Second, rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future. Feelings of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that helps your brain distinguish useful actions from useless ones. Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.
If a behavior doesn't follow these four steps, it will not become a habit. if you eliminate the cue and your habit will never start. If you reduce the craving, you won’t experience enough motivation to act. Make the behavior difficult and you won’t be able to do it. And if the reward fails to satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future. We can change these four steps into a framework which as i mentioned above ** ' The four laws of behavior change'**. It provides a simple set of rules for creating good habits and breaking bad ones. You can think of each law as a lever that influences human behavior.
We are what we repeatedly do, Excellence is then not an act, but a habit. -- Artistotle
