Your genes are operating beneath the surface of every habit. Indeed, beneath the surface of every behavior. Genes have been shown to influence everything from the number of hours you spend watching television to your likelihood to marry or divorce to your tendency to get addicted to drugs, alcohol, or nicotine. There's a strong genetic component to how obedient or rebellious you are when facing authority, how vulnerable or resistant you are to stressful events, how proactive or reactive you tend to be, and even how captivated or bored you feel during sensory experiences like attending a concert. As Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at King's College in London, told me,
“It is now at the point where we have stopped testing to see if traits have a genetic component because we literally can't find a single one that isn't influenced by our genes.”
Bundled together, your unique cluster of genetic traits predispose you to a particular personality. Your personality is the set of characteristics that is consistent from situation to situation. The most proven scientific analysis of personality traits is known as the “Big Five,” which breaks them down into five spectrums of behavior.
1. Openness to experience: from curious and inventive on one end to cautious and consistent on the other.
2. Conscientiousness: organized and efficient to easygoing and spontaneous.
3. Extroversion: outgoing and energetic to solitary and reserved (you likely know them as extroverts vs. introverts).
4. Agreeableness: friendly and compassionate to challenging and detached.
5. Neuroticism: anxious and sensitive to confident, calm, and stable.
All five characteristics have biological underpinnings. Extroversion, for instance, can be tracked from birth. If scientists play a loud noise in the nursing ward, some babies turn toward it while others turn away.
When the researchers tracked these children through life, they found that the babies who turned toward the noise were more likely to grow up to be extroverts. Those who turned away were more likely to become introverts.
People who are high in agreeableness are kind, considerate, and warm. They also tend to have higher natural oxytocin levels, a hormone that plays an important role in social bonding, increases feelings of trust, and can act as a natural antidepressant. You can easily imagine how someone with more oxytocin might be inclined to build habits like writing thank-you notes or organizing social events.
As a third example, consider neuroticism, which is a personality trait all people possess to various degrees. People who are high in neuroticism tend to be anxious and worry more than others. This trait has been linked to hypersensitivity of the amygdala, the portion of the brain responsible for noticing threats. In other words, people who are more sensitive to negative cues in their environment are more likely to score high in neuroticism.
Our habits are not solely determined by our personalities, but there is no doubt that our genes nudge us in a certain direction. Our deeply rooted preferences make certain behaviors easier for some people than for others. You don't have to apologize for these differences or feel guilty about them, but you do have to work with them. A person who scores lower on conscientiousness, for example, will be less likely to beorderly by nature and may need to rely more heavily on environment design to stick with good habits. (As a reminder for the less conscientious readers among us, environment design is a strategy we discussed in Chapters 6 and 12.)
The takeaway is that you should build habits that work for your personality.* People can get ripped working out like a bodybuilder, but if you prefer rock climbing or cycling or rowing, then shape your exercise habit around your interests. If your friend follows a low-carb diet but you find that low-fat works for you, then more power to you. If you want to read more, don't be embarrassed if you prefer steamy romance novels over nonfiction. Read whatever fascinates you. You don't have to build the habits everyone tells you to build. Choose the habit that best suits you, not the one that is most popular.
There is a version of every habit that can bring you joy and satisfaction. Find it. Habits need to be enjoyable if they are going to stick. This is the core idea behind the 4th Law (Make it satisfying).
How are 'Openness to experience' and 'Conscientiousness' related?
Conscientiousness is doing what you need to do.
Openness to experience is how critical you are to the experience of doing things.
The idea is that you should be both Conscientious and Open to experience means you do what you need to do without thinking too much about how it might feel. You do what you need to do without controlling every aspect of the experience of doing it.
On a side note, you can remember the Big-Five personality traits using acronym: OCEAN.
1. Openness to experience
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extroversion
4. Agreeableness
5. Neuroticism
The process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.* Breaking it down into these fundamental parts can help us understand what a habit is, how it works, and how to improve it.
FIGURE 5: All habits proceed through four stages in the same order: cue, craving, response, and reward.
This four-step pattern is the backbone of every habit, and your brain runs through these steps in the same order each time.
First, there is the cue. The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. It is a bit of information that predicts a reward. Our prehistoric ancestors were paying attention to cues that signaled the location of primary rewards like food, water, and sex. Today, we spend most of our time learning cues that predict secondary rewards like money and fame, power and status, praise and approval, love and friendship, or a sense of personal satisfaction. (Of course, these pursuits also indirectly improve our odds of survival and reproduction, which is the deeper motive behind everything we do.) Your mind is continuously analyzing your internal and external environment for hints of where rewards are located. Because the cue is the first indication that we're close to a reward, it naturally leads to a craving.
Cravings are the second step, and they are the motivational force behind every habit. Without some level of motivation or desire— without craving a change—we have no reason to act. What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers. You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides. You are not motivated by brushing your teeth but rather by the feeling of a clean mouth. You do not want to turn on the television, you want to be entertained. Every craving is linked to a desire to change your internal state. This is an important point that we will discuss in detail later.
Cravings differ from person to person. In theory, any piece of information could trigger a craving, but in practice, people are not motivated by the same cues. For a gambler, the sound of slot machines can be a potent trigger that sparks an intense wave of desire. For someone who rarely gambles, the jingles and chimes of the casino are just background noise. Cues are meaningless until they are interpreted.
The thoughts, feelings, and emotions of the observer are what transform a cue into a craving.
The third step is the response. The response is the actual habit you perform, which can take the form of a thought or an action. Whether a response occurs depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the behavior. 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. If you
want to dunk a basketball but can't jump high enough to reach the hoop, well, you're out of luck.
Finally, the response delivers a reward. Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward. We chase rewards because they serve two purposes:
(1) they satisfy us and
(2) they teach us.
The first purpose of rewards is to satisfy your craving. Yes, rewards provide benefits on their own. Food and water deliver the energy you need to survive. Getting a promotion brings more money and respect.
Getting in shape improves your health and your dating prospects. But the more immediate benefit is that rewards satisfy your craving to eat or to gain status or to win approval. At least for a moment, rewards deliver contentment and relief from craving.
Second, rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future. Your brain is a reward detector. As you go about your life, your sensory nervous system is continuously monitoring which actions satisfy your desires and deliver pleasure. 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 is insufficient in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit. Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start.
Reduce the craving and 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. Without the first three steps, a behavior will not occur. Without all four, a behavior will not be repeated.
THE HABIT LOOP
FIGURE 6: The four stages of habit are best described as a feedback loop.
They form an endless cycle that is running every moment you are alive. This “habit loop” is continually scanning the environment, predicting what will happen next, trying out different responses, and learning from the results.*
In summary, the cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop—cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward—that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits. This cycle is known as the habit loop.
This four-step process is not something that happens occasionally, but rather it is an endless feedback loop that is running and active during every moment you are alive—even now. The brain is continually scanning the environment, predicting what will happen next, trying out different responses, and learning from the results. The entire process is completed in a split second, and we use it again and again without realizing everything that has been packed into the previous moment.
We can split these four steps into two phases: the problem phase and the solution phase. The problem phase includes the cue and the craving, and it is when you realize that something needs to change. The solution phase includes the response and the reward, and it is when you take action and achieve the change you desire.
Problem phase
1. Cue
2. Craving
Solution phase
3. Response
4. Reward
All behavior is driven by the desire to solve a problem. Sometimes the problem is that you notice something good and you want to obtain it. Sometimes the problem is that you are experiencing pain and you want to relieve it. Either way, the purpose of every habit is to solve the problems you face.
In the table on the following page, you can see a few examples of what this looks like in real life.
Imagine walking into a dark room and flipping on the light switch.
You have performed this simple habit so many times that it occurs without thinking. You proceed through all four stages in the fraction of a second. The urge to act strikes you without thinking.
Problem phase
1. Cue: Your phone buzzes with a new text message.
2. Craving: You want to learn the contents of the message.
Solution phase
3. Response: You grab your phone and read the text.
4. Reward: You satisfy your craving to read the message. Grabbing your phone becomes associated with your phone buzzing.
~~~
Problem phase
1. Cue: You are answering emails.
2. Craving: You begin to feel stressed and overwhelmed by work. You want to feel in control.
Solution phase
3. Response: You bite your nails.
4. Reward: You satisfy your craving to reduce stress. Biting your nails becomes associated with answering email.
~~~
Problem phase
1. Cue: You wake up.
2. Craving: You want to feel alert.
Solution phase
3. Response: You drink a cup of coffee.
4. Reward: You satisfy your craving to feel alert. Drinking coffee becomes associated with waking up.
~~~
Problem phase
1. Cue: You smell a doughnut shop as you walk down the street near your office.
2. Craving: You begin to crave a doughnut.
Solution phase
3. Response: You buy a doughnut and eat it.
4. Reward: You satisfy your craving to eat a doughnut. Buying a doughnut becomes associated with walking down the street near your office.
~~~
Problem phase
1. Cue: You hit a stumbling block on a project at work.
2. Craving: You feel stuck and want to relieve your frustration.
Solution phase
3. Response: You pull out your phone and check social media.
4. Reward: You satisfy your craving to feel relieved. Checking social media becomes associated with feeling stalled at work.
~~~
Problem phase
1. Cue: You walk into a dark room.
2. Craving: You want to be able to see.
Solution phase
3. Response: You flip the light switch.
4. Reward: You satisfy your craving to see. Turning on the light switch becomes associated with being in a dark room.
By the time we become adults, we rarely notice the habits that are running our lives. Most of us never give a second thought to the fact that we tie the same shoe first each morning, or unplug the toaster after each use, or always change into comfortable clothes after getting home from work. After decades of mental programming, we automatically slip into these patterns of thinking and acting.
THE FOUR LAWS OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE
In the following chapters, we will see time and again how the four stages of cue, craving, response, and reward influence nearly everything we do each day. But before we do that, we need to
transform these four steps into a practical framework that we can use to design good habits and eliminate bad ones.
I refer to this framework as the Four Laws of Behavior Change, and 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. When the levers are in the right positions, creating good habits is effortless. When they are in the wrong positions, it is nearly impossible.
How to Create a Good Habit
The 1st law (Cue): Make it obvious.
The 2nd law (Craving): Make it attractive.
The 3rd law (Response): Make it easy.
The 4th law (Reward): Make it satisfying.
We can invert these laws to learn how to break a bad habit.
How to Break a Bad Habit
Inversion of the 1st law (Cue): Make it invisible.
Inversion of the 2nd law (Craving): Make it unattractive.
Inversion of the 3rd law (Response): Make it difficult.
Inversion of the 4th law (Reward): Make it unsatisfying.
It would be irresponsible for me to claim that these four laws are an exhaustive framework for changing any human behavior, but I think they're close. As you will soon see, the Four Laws of Behavior Change apply to nearly every field, from sports to politics, art to medicine, comedy to management. These laws can be used no matter what challenge you are facing. There is no need for completely different strategies for each habit.
Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself:
1. How can I make it obvious?
2. How can I make it attractive?
3. How can I make it easy?
4. How can I make it satisfying?
If you have ever wondered, “Why don't I do what I say I'm going to do? Why don't I lose the weight or stop smoking or save for retirement or start that side business? Why do I say something is important but never seem to make time for it?” The answers to those questions can be found somewhere in these four laws. The key to creating good habits and breaking bad ones is to understand these fundamental laws and how to alter them to your specifications. Every goal is doomed to fail if it goes against the grain of human nature.
Your habits are shaped by the systems in your life. In the chapters that follow, we will discuss these laws one by one and show how you can use them to create a system in which good habits emerge naturally and bad habits wither away.
Key Points
# A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.
# The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.
# Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.
# The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are:
(1) make it obvious,
(2) make it attractive,
(3) make it easy, and
(4) make it satisfying.
WHY IS IT so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good ones? Few things can have a more powerful impact on your life than improving your daily habits. And yet it is likely that this time next year you'll be doing the same thing rather than something better.
It often feels difficult to keep good habits going for more than a few days, even with sincere effort and the occasional burst of motivation.
Habits like exercise, meditation, journaling, and cooking are reasonable for a day or two and then become a hassle.
However, once your habits are established, they seem to stick around forever—especially the unwanted ones. Despite our best intentions, unhealthy habits like eating junk food, watching too much television, procrastinating, and smoking can feel impossible to break.
Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons:
(1) we try to change the wrong thing and
(2) we try to change our habits in the wrong way.
In this chapter, I'll address the first point. In the chapters that follow, I'll answer the second.
Our first mistake is that we try to change the wrong thing. To understand what I mean, consider that there are three levels at which change can occur. You can imagine them like the layers of an onion.
THREE LAYERS OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE
FIGURE 3: There are three layers of behavior change: a change in your outcomes, a change in your processes, or a change in your identity.
The first layer is changing your outcomes.
This level is concerned with changing your results: losing weight, publishing a book, winning a championship. Most of the goals you set are associated with this level of change.
The second layer is changing your process.
This level is concerned with changing your habits and systems: implementing a new routine at the gym, decluttering your desk for better workflow, developing a meditation practice. Most of the habits you build are associated with this level.
The third and deepest layer is changing your identity.
This level is concerned with changing your beliefs: your worldview, your self-image, your judgments about yourself and others. Most of the beliefs, assumptions, and biases you hold are associated with this level.
Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do.
Identity is about what you believe. When it comes to building habits that last—when it comes to building a system of 1 percent improvements—the problem is not that one level is “better” or “worse” than another. All levels of change are useful in their own way. The problem is the direction of change.
Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits.
The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.
FIGURE 4: With outcome-based habits, the focus is on what you want to achieve. With identity-based habits, the focus is on who you wish to become.
Imagine two people resisting a cigarette. When offered a smoke, the first person says, “No thanks. I'm trying to quit.” It sounds like a reasonable response, but this person still believes they are a smoker who is trying to be something else. They are hoping their behavior will change while carrying around the same beliefs.
The second person declines by saying, “No thanks. I'm not a smoker.” It's a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was part of their former life, not their current one.
They no longer identify as someone who smokes.
Most people don't even consider identity change when they set out to improve. They just think, “I want to be skinny (outcome) and if I stick to this diet, then I'll be skinny (process).” They set goals and determine the actions they should take to achieve those goals without considering the beliefs that drive their actions. They never shift the way they look at themselves, and they don't realize that their old identity can sabotage their new plans for change.
Behind every system of actions are a system of beliefs. The system of a democracy is founded on beliefs like freedom, majority rule, and social equality. The system of a dictatorship has a very different set of beliefs like absolute authority and strict obedience. You can imagine many ways to try to get more people to vote in a democracy, but such behavior change would never get off the ground in a dictatorship.
That's not the identity of the system. Voting is a behavior that is impossible under a certain set of beliefs.
A similar pattern exists whether we are discussing individuals, organizations, or societies. There are a set of beliefs and assumptions that shape the system, an identity behind the habits.
Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last. You may want more money, but if your identity is someone who consumes rather than creates, then you'll continue to be pulled toward spending rather than earning. You may want better health, but if you continue to prioritize comfort over accomplishment, you'll be drawn to relaxing rather than training. It's hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven't changed who you are.
~~~
True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you'll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity. Anyone can convince themselves to visit the gym or eat healthy once or twice, but if you don't shift the belief behind the behavior, then it is hard to stick with long-term changes. Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.
The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader.
The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner.
The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician.
THE TWO-STEP PROCESS TO CHANGING YOUR IDENTITY
Your identity emerges out of your habits. You are not born with preset beliefs. Every belief, including those about yourself, is learned and conditioned through experience.* More precisely, your habits are how you embody your identity.
When you make your bed each day, you embody the identity of an organized person. When you write each day, you embody the identity of a creative person. When you train each day, you embody the identity of an athletic person.
The more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior. In fact, the word identity was originally derived from the Latin words essentitas, which means being, and identidem, which means repeatedly. Your identity is literally your “repeated beingness.”
Whatever your identity is right now, you only believe it because you have proof of it. If you go to church every Sunday for twenty years, you have evidence that you are religious. If you study biology for one hour every night, you have evidence that you are studious. If you go to the gym even when it's snowing, you have evidence that you are committed to fitness. The more evidence you have for a belief, the more strongly you will believe it.
For most of my early life, I didn't consider myself a writer. If you were to ask any of my high school teachers or college professors, they would tell you I was an average writer at best: certainly not a standout.
When I began my writing career, I published a new article every Monday and Thursday for the first few years. As the evidence grew, so did my identity as a writer. I didn't start out as a writer. I became one through my habits.Of course, your habits are not the only actions that influence your identity, but by virtue of their frequency they are usually the most important ones. Each experience in life modifies your self-image, but it's unlikely you would consider yourself a soccer player because you kicked a ball once or an artist because you scribbled a picture. As you repeat these actions, however, the evidence accumulates and your self- image begins to change. The effect of one-off experiences tends to fade away while the effect of habits gets reinforced with time, which means your habits contribute most of the evidence that shapes your identity.
In this way, the process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.
This is a gradual evolution. We do not change by snapping our fingers and deciding to be someone entirely new. We change bit by bit, day by day, habit by habit. We are continually undergoing microevolutions of the self.
Each habit is like a suggestion: “Hey, maybe this is who I am.” If you finish a book, then perhaps you are the type of person who likes reading. If you go to the gym, then perhaps you are the type of person who likes exercise. If you practice playing the guitar, perhaps you are the type of person who likes music.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it actually is big. That's the paradox of making small improvements.
Putting this all together, you can see that habits are the path to changing your identity. The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.
Each time you write a page, you are a writer.
Each time you practice the violin, you are a musician.
Each time you start a workout, you are an athlete.
Each time you encourage your employees, you are a leader.
Each habit not only gets results but also teaches you something far more important: to trust yourself. You start to believe you can actually accomplish these things. When the votes mount up and the evidence begins to change, the story you tell yourself begins to change as well.
Of course, it works the opposite way, too. Every time you choose to perform a bad habit, it's a vote for that identity. The good news is that you don't need to be perfect. In any election, there are going to be votes for both sides. You don't need a unanimous vote to win an election; you just need a majority. It doesn't matter if you cast a few votes for a bad behavior or an unproductive habit. Your goal is simply to win the majority of the time.
New identities require new evidence. If you keep casting the same votes you've always cast, you're going to get the same results you've always had. If nothing changes, nothing is going to change.
It is a simple two-step process: 1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
First, decide who you want to be. This holds at any level—as an individual, as a team, as a community, as a nation. What do you want to stand for? What are your principles and values? Who do you wish to become? These are big questions, and many people aren't sure where to begin —but they do know what kind of results they want: to get six-pack abs or to feel less anxious or to double their salary. That's fine. Start there and work backward from the results you want to the type of person who could get those results. Ask yourself, “Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?” Who is the type of person that could lose forty pounds? Who is the type of person that could learn a new language? Who is the type of person that could run a successful start-up? For example, “Who is the type of person who could write a book?”
It's probably someone who is consistent and reliable. Now your focus shifts from writing a book (outcome-based) to being the type of person who is consistent and reliable (identity-based).
This process can lead to beliefs like:
“I'm the kind of teacher who stands up for her students.”
“I'm the kind of doctor who gives each patient the time and empathy they need.”
“I'm the kind of manager who advocates for her employees.”
Once you have a handle on the type of person you want to be, you can begin taking small steps to reinforce your desired identity. I have a friend who lost over 100 pounds by asking herself, “What would a healthy person do?” All day long, she would use this question as a guide. Would a healthy person walk or take a cab? Would a healthy person order a burrito or a salad? She figured if she acted like a healthy person long enough, eventually she would become that person. She was right.
The concept of identity-based habits is our first introduction to another key theme in this book: feedback loops. Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits. It's a two-way street. The formation of all habits is a feedback loop (a concept we will explore in depth in the next chapter), but it's important to let your values, principles, and identity drive the loop rather than your results.
The focus should always be on becoming that type of person, not getting a particular outcome.
THE REAL REASON HABITS MATTER
Identity change is the North Star of habit change. The remainder of this book will provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to build better habits in yourself, your family, your team, your company, and anywhere else you wish. But the true question is: “Are you becoming the type of person you want to become?” The first step is not what or how, but who. You need to know who you want to be.
Otherwise, your quest for change is like a boat without a rudder. And that's why we are starting here.
You have the power to change your beliefs about yourself. Your identity is not set in stone. You have a choice in every moment. You can choose the identity you want to reinforce today with the habits you choose today. And this brings us to the deeper purpose of this book and the real reason habits matter. Building better habits isn't about littering your day with life hacks.
It's not about flossing one tooth each night or taking a cold shower each morning or wearing the same outfit each day. It's not about achieving external measures of success like earning more money, losing weight, or reducing stress. Habits can help you achieve all of these things, but fundamentally they are not about having something.
They are about becoming someone.
Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.
Chapter Summary
# There are three levels of change: outcome change, process change, and identity change.
# The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.
# Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
# Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.
# The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.
Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.
1% BETTER EVERY DAY
1% worse every day for one year. (0.99)^365 = 00.03
1% better every day for one year. (1.01)^365 = 37.78
~~~
FIGURE 1: The effects of small habits compound over time. For example, if you can get just 1 percent better each day, you’ll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year.
~~~
The impact created by a change in your habits is similar to the effect of shifting the route of an airplane by just a few degrees. Imagine you are flying from Los Angeles to New York City. If a pilot leaving from LAX adjusts the heading just 3.5 degrees south, you will land in Washington, D.C., instead of New York. Such a small change is barely noticeable at takeoff—the nose of the airplane moves just a few feet— but when magnified across the entire United States, you end up hundreds of miles apart.
WHAT PROGRESS IS REALLY LIKE
Imagine that you have an ice cube sitting on the table in front of you. The room is cold and you can see your breath. It is currently twenty-five degrees. Ever so slowly, the room begins to heat up.
Twenty-six degrees.
Twenty-seven.
Twenty-eight.
The ice cube is still sitting on the table in front of you.
Twenty-nine degrees.
Thirty.
Thirty-one.
Still, nothing has happened.
Then, thirty-two degrees. The ice begins to melt. A one-degree shift, seemingly no different from the temperature increases before it, has unlocked a huge change.
Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change. This pattern shows up everywhere. Cancer spends 80 percent of its life undetectable, then takes over the body in months. Bamboo can barely be seen for the first five years as it builds extensive root systems underground before exploding ninety feet into the air within six weeks.
Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed.
THE PLATEAU OF LATENT POTENTIAL
FIGURE 2: We often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope it will come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done. This can result in a “valley of disappointment” where people feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing any results. However, this work was not wasted. It was simply being stored. It is not until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed.
FORGET ABOUT GOALS, FOCUS ON SYSTEMS INSTEAD
What’s the difference between systems and goals? It’s a distinction I first learned from Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind the Dilbert comic. Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
If you’re a coach, your goal might be to win a championship. Your system is the way you recruit players, manage your assistant coaches, and conduct practice.
If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal might be to build a million-dollar business. Your system is how you test product ideas, hire employees, and run marketing campaigns.
If you’re a musician, your goal might be to play a new piece. Your system is how often you practice, how you break down and tackle difficult measures, and your method for receiving feedback from your instructor.
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A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.
Problem #1: Winners and losers have the same goals.
Problem #2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.
Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness.
...Because the implicit assumption behind any goal is this: “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy.”
Problem #4: Goals are at odds with long-term progress
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.
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A SYSTEM OF ATOMIC HABITS
If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Focusing on the overall system, rather than a single goal, is one of the core themes of this book. It is also one of the deeper meanings behind the word atomic. By now, you’ve probably realized that an atomic habit refers to a tiny change, a marginal gain, a 1 percent improvement. But atomic habits are not just any old habits, however small. They are little habits that are part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results.
Habits are like the atoms of our lives. Each one is a fundamental unit that contributes to your overall improvement. At first, these tiny routines seem insignificant, but soon they build on each other and fuel bigger wins that multiply to a degree that far outweighs the cost of their initial investment. They are both small and mighty. This is the meaning of the phrase atomic habits—a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth.
KEY POINTS... AGAIN
#1 Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run.
#2 Habits are a double-edged sword. They can work for you or against you, which is why understanding the details is essential.
#3 Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient.
#4 An atomic habit is a little habit that is part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results.
#5 If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
#6 You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
WHAT EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE LOOKS LIKE: UNDERSTANDING THE FOUR SKILLS
To truly improve your ability in the four emotional intelligence skills, you need to better understand each skill and what it looks like in action. The four emotional intelligence skills pair up under two primary competencies: personal competence and social competence. Personal competence is made up of your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behavior and tendencies. Social competence is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills; social competence is your ability to understand other people's moods, behavior and motives in order to improve the quality of your relationships.
The four skills that together make up emotional intelligence. The top two skills, self-awareness and self-management, are more about you. The bottom two skills, social awareness and relationship management, are more about how you are with other people.
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is your ability to accurately perceive your own emotions in the moment and understand your tendencies across situations. Self-awareness includes staying on top of your typical reactions to specific events, challenges, and people. A keen understanding of your tendencies is important; it helps you quickly make sense of your emotions. A high degree of self-awareness requires a willingness to tolerate the discomfort of focusing on feelings that may be negative.
The only way to genuinely understand your emotions is to spend enough time thinking through them to figure out where they come from and why they are there. Emotions always serve a purpose. Because they are your reactions to the world around you, emotions always come from somewhere. Many times emotions seem to arise out of thin air, and it's important to understand why something gets a reaction out of you. People who do this can cut to the core of a feeling quickly. Situations that create strong emotions will always require more thought, and these prolonged periods of self-reflection often keep you from doing something that you'll regret.
Self-awareness is not about discovering deep, dark secrets or unconscious motivations, but, rather, it comes from developing a straightforward and honest understanding of what makes you tick. People high in self-awareness are remarkably clear in their understanding of what they do well, what motivates and satisfies them, and which people and situations push their buttons.
The surprising thing about self-awareness is that just thinking about it helps you improve the skill, even though much of your focus initially tends to be on what you do “wrong.” Having self-awareness means you aren't afraid of your emotional “mistakes.” They tell you what you should be doing differently and provide the steady stream of information you need to understand as your life unfolds.
Self-awareness is a foundational skill; when you have it, self-awareness makes the other emotional intelligence skills much easier to use. As self-awareness increases, people's satisfaction with life—defined as their ability to reach their goals at work and at home—skyrockets. Self-awareness is so important for job performance that 83 percent of people high in self-awareness are top performers, and just 2 percent of bottom performers are high in self-awareness. Why is this so? When you are self-aware you are far more likely to pursue the right opportunities, put your strengths to work and—perhaps most importantly—keep your emotions from holding you back.
The need for self-awareness has never been greater.
Guided by the mistaken notion that psychology deals exclusively with pathology, we assume that the only time to learn about ourselves is in the face of crisis. We tend to embrace those things with which we're comfortable, and put the blinders on the moment something makes us uncomfortable. But it's really the whole picture that serves us.
The more we understand the beauty and the blemishes, the better we are able to achieve our full potential.
Self-Management
Self-management is what happens when you act—or do not act. It is dependent on your self-awareness and is the second major part of personal competence. Self-management is your ability to use your awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and direct your behavior positively. This means managing your emotional reactions to situations and people. Some emotions create a paralyzing fear that makes your thinking so cloudy that the best course of action is nowhere to be found—assuming that there is something you should be doing. In these cases, self-management is revealed by your ability to tolerate the uncertainty as you explore your emotions and options. Once you understand and build comfort with what you are feeling, the best course of action will show itself.
Self-management is more than resisting explosive or problematic behavior. The biggest challenge that people face is managing their tendencies over time and applying their skills in a variety of situations. Obvious and momentary opportunities for self-control (i.e., “I'm so mad at that darn dog!”) are the easiest to spot and manage. Real results come from putting your momentary needs on hold to pursue larger, more important goals. The realization of such goals is often delayed, meaning that your commitment to self-management will be tested over and over again. Those who manage themselves the best are able to see things through without cracking. Success comes to those who can put their needs on hold and continually manage their tendencies.
Social Awareness
As the first component of social competence, social awareness is a foundational skill. Social awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on with them. This often means perceiving what other people are thinking and feeling even if you do not feel the same way. It's easy to get caught up in your own emotions and forget to consider the perspective of the other party. Social awareness ensures you stay focused and absorb critical information.
Listening and observing are the most important elements of social awareness. To listen well and observe what's going on around us, we have to stop doing many things we like to do. We have to stop talking, stop the monologue that may be running through our minds, stop anticipating the point the other person is about to make, and stop thinking ahead to what we are going to say next. It takes practice to really watch people as you interact with them and get a good sense of what they are thinking and feeling. At times, you'll feel like an anthropologist. Anthropologists make their living watching others in their natural state without letting their own thoughts and feelings disturb the observation. This is social awareness in its purest form. The difference is you won't be 100 yards away watching events unfold through a pair of binoculars. To be socially aware, you have to spot and understand people's emotions while you're right there in the middle of it—a contributing, yet astutely aware, member of the interaction.
Relationship Management
Though relationship management is the second component of social competence, this skill often taps into your abilities in the first three emotional intelligence skills: self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness. Relationship management is your ability to use your awareness of your own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully. This ensures clear communication and effective handling of conflict. Relationship management is also the bond you build with others over time.
People who manage relationships well are able to see the benefit of connecting with many different people, even those they are not fond of. Solid relationships are something that should be sought and cherished. They are the result of how you understand people, how you treat them, and the history you share.
The weaker the connection you have with someone, the harder it is to get your point across. If you want people to listen, you have to practice relationship management and seek benefits from every relationship, especially the challenging ones. The difference between an interaction and a relationship is a matter of frequency. It's a product of the quality, depth, and time you spend interacting with another person.
Relationship management poses the greatest challenge for most people during times of stress. When you consider that more than 70 percent of the people we've tested have difficulty handling stress, it's easy to see why building quality relationships poses a challenge. Some of the most challenging and stressful situations people face are at work.
Conflicts at work tend to fester when people passively avoid problems, because people lack the skills needed to initiate a direct, yet constructive conversation. Conflicts at work tend to explode when people don't manage their anger or frustration, and choose to take it out on other people. Relationship management gives you the skills you need to avoid both scenarios, and make the most out of every interaction you have with another person.
SELF-AWARENESS STRATEGIES
Simply put, to be self-aware is to know yourself as you really are. Initially, self-awareness can come across as a somewhat ambiguous concept. There is no finish line where someone is going to slap a medal on you and deem you “self-aware.” Awareness of yourself is not just knowing that you are a morning person instead of a night owl.
It's deeper than that. Getting to know yourself inside and out is a continuous journey of peeling back the layers of the onion and becoming more and more comfortable with what is in the middle—the true essence of you.
Your hard-wired emotional reactions to anything come before you even have a chance to respond. Since it isn't possible to leave your emotions out of the equation, managing yourself and your relationships means you first need to be aware of the full range of your feelings, both positive and negative.
When you don't take time out to notice and understand your emotions, they have a strange way of resurfacing when you least expect or want them to. It's their way of trying to bring something important to your attention. They will persist, and the damage will mount, until you take notice.
Facing the truth about who you are can at times be unsettling. Getting in touch with your emotions and tendencies takes honesty and courage. Be patient and give yourself credit for even the smallest bits of forward momentum. As you start noticing things about yourself that you weren't previously aware of (things you aren't always going to like), you are progressing.
The remainder of this chapter introduces you to 15 original strategies, which were designed to help you maximize your self-awareness to create positive changes in your life. The strategies are straightforward and packed full of insights and examples that will help your self-awareness grow.
1. Quit Treating Your Feelings as Good or Bad
2. Observe the Ripple Effect from Your Emotions
3. Lean into Your Discomfort
4. Feel Your Emotions Physically
5. Know Who and What Pushes Your Buttons
6. Watch Yourself Like a Hawk . . .
7. Keep a Journal about Your Emotions
8. Don't Be Fooled by a Bad Mood
9. Don't Be Fooled by a Good Mood, Either
10. Stop and Ask Yourself Why You Do the Things You Do
11. Visit Your Values
12. Check Yourself
13. Spot Your Emotions in Books, Movies, and Music
14. Seek Feedback
15. Get to Know Yourself under Stress
SELF-MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
Self-management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to actively choose what you say and do.
On the surface, it may seem that self-management is simply a matter of taking a deep breath and keeping yourself in check when emotions come on strong, and while it's true that self-control in these situations is a sizeable piece of the pie, there's far more to self-management than putting a cork in it when you're about to blow up. Your eruptions are no different from a volcano—there is all sorts of rumbling happening beneath the surface before the lava starts flowing.
Unlike a volcano, there are subtle things you can do each and every day to influence what is happening beneath the surface. You just need to learn how to pick up on the rumbling and respond to it. Self-management builds upon a foundational skill—self-awareness. Ample self-awareness is necessary for effective self-management because you can only choose how to respond to an emotion actively when you're aware of it. Since we're hard-wired to experience emotions before we can respond to them, it's the one-two punch of reading emotions effectively and then reacting to them that sets the best self-managers apart. A high level of self-management ensures you aren't getting in your own way and doing things that limit your success. It also ensures you aren't frustrating other people to the point that they resent or dislike you. When you understand your own emotions and can respond the way you choose to them, you have the power to take control of difficult situations, react nimbly to change, and take the initiative needed to achieve your goals.
When you develop the ability to size yourself up quickly and grab the reins before you head in the wrong direction, it keeps you flexible and allows you to choose positively and productively how to react to different situations. When you don't stop to think about your feelings—including how they are influencing your behavior now, and will continue to do so in the future—you set yourself up to be a frequent victim of emotional hijackings. Whether you're aware of it or not, your emotions will control you, and you'll move through your day reacting to your feelings with little choice in what you say and do.
The remainder of this chapter presents 17 specific strategies—things you can start doing today—that will help you manage your emotions to your benefit. Each simple strategy is targeted to an important element of the selfmanagement skill. This carefully crafted set has been honed through many years of testing with people just like you, and are proven methods for increasing your self-management skill.
As you master each of the strategies and incorporate them into your daily routine, you will develop an increased capacity to respond effectively to your emotions. Of course no matter how skilled you become in managing your emotions there are always going to be situations that push your buttons. Your life won't morph into a fairy tale devoid of obstacles, but you will equip yourself with everything you need to take the wheel and drive.
1. Breathe Right
2. Create an Emotion vs. Reason List
3. Make Your Goals Public
4. Count to Ten
5. Sleep On It
6. Talk To a Skilled Self-Manager
7. Smile and Laugh More
8. Set Aside Some Time in Your Day for Problem Solving
9. Take Control of Your Self-Talk
10. Visualize Yourself Succeeding
11. Clean Up Your Sleep Hygiene
12. Focus Your Attention on Your Freedoms, Rather than Your Limitations
13. Stay Synchronized
14. Speak to Someone Who is Not Emotionally Invested in Your Problem
15. Learn a Valuable Lesson from Everyone You Encounter
16. Put a Mental Recharge into Your Schedule
17. Accept That Change is Just around the Corner
SOCIAL AWARENESS STRATEGIES
Have you ever had a coworker approach you, and without you saying anything, he understood what kind of day you were having and where your mind was wandering? He knew you must have come from a meeting with so-and-so because he could “see it” all over your face. He knew it was probably time to let you vent, instead of asking for that favor he had in mind. He must have picked up on something.
Or how about that waitress who seems to “just know” what each of her customers need: one couple is in their own world and prefers to be alone; another couple welcomes some fresh conversation from a new person, while another table wants professional and polite service, minus the small talk. Everyone's sitting at a table to eat and drink and be served, and yet there's so much below the surface that makes each table unique. How does she quickly size up these tables and know their needs?
Both this perceptive coworker and the waitress have a high level of social awareness, a skill they use to recognize and understand the moods of other individuals and entire groups of people. Though these two may be seasoned veterans at this, it is a skill that they most likely learned and practiced over time.
Instead of looking inward to learn about and understand yourself, social awareness is looking outward to learn about and appreciate others. Social awareness is centered on your ability to recognize and understand the emotions of others. Tuning into others' emotions as you interact with them will help you get a more accurate view of your surroundings, which affects everything from relationships to the bottom line.
To build your social awareness skills, you will find yourself observing people in all kinds of situations. You may be observing someone from afar while you're in a checkout line, or you may be right in the middle of a conversation observing the person to whom you are speaking. You will learn to pick up on body language, facial expressions, postures, tone of voice, and even what is hidden beneath the surface, like deeper emotions and thoughts.
One of the intriguing things about building an acute
sense of social awareness is that emotions, facial expressions, and body language have been shown to translate across many different cultures. You can use these skills wherever you are.
The lens you look through must be clear. Making sure you are present and able to give others your full attention is the first step to becoming more socially aware. Looking outward isn't just about using your eyes: it means tapping into your senses. Not only can you fully utilize your basic five senses, but you can also include the vast amount of information coming into your brain through your sixth sense, your emotions. Your emotions can help you notice and interpret cues other people send you. These cues will give you some help in putting yourself in the other person's shoes.
The 17 strategies in this section will help you tackle the obstacles that get in your way and provide you with a helping hand when the going gets tough. You can only attend to so much, so it's critical to pick up on the right signals.
These proven social awareness strategies will help you do just that.
1. Greet People by Name
2. Watch Body Language
3. Make Timing Everything
4. Develop a Back-pocket Question
5. Don't Take Notes at Meetings
6. Plan Ahead for Social Gatherings
7. Clear Away the Clutter
8. Live in the Moment
9. Go on a 15-minute Tour
10. Watch EQ at the Movies
11. Practice the Art of Listening
12. Go People Watching
13. Understand the Rules of the Culture Game
14. Test for Accuracy
15. Step into Their Shoes
16. Seek the Whole Picture
17. Catch the Mood of the Room
RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
Most people have a spring in their step and put their best foot forward when they are in a new relationship (work or otherwise), but they stumble and lose their footing trying to maintain relationships over the long term.
Reality soon sets in that the honeymoon phase is officially over.
The truth is, all relationships take work, even the great ones that seem effortless. We've all heard this, but do we really get it? Working on a relationship takes time, effort, and know-how. The know-how is emotional intelligence. If you want a relationship that has staying power and grows over time, and in which your needs and the other person's needs are satisfied, the final EQ skill—relationship management—is just what the doctor ordered.
Thankfully, these relationship management skills can
be learned, and they tap into the three other EQ skills that you're familiar with—self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness. You use your self-awareness skills to notice your feelings and judge if your needs are being satisfied.
You use your self-management skills to express your feelings and act accordingly to benefit the connection. Finally, you use your social awareness skills to better understand the other person's needs and feelings.
In the end, no man is an island; relationships are an essential and fulfilling part of life. Since you are half of any relationship, you have half of the responsibility of deepening these connections. The following 17 strategies will help you work on what's critical to making relationships work.
1. Be Open and Be Curious
2. Enhance Your Natural Communication Style
3. Avoid Giving Mixed Signals
4. Remember the Little Things That Pack a Punch
5. Take Feedback Well
6. Build Trust
7. Have an “Open-door” Policy
8. Only Get Mad on Purpose
9. Don't Avoid the Inevitable
10. Acknowledge the Other Person's Feelings
11. Complement the Person's Emotions or Situation
12. When You Care, Show It
13. Explain Your Decisions, Don't Just Make Them
14. Make Your Feedback Direct and Constructive
15. Align Your Intention with Your Impact
16. Offer a “Fix-it” Statement during a Broken Conversation
17. Tackle a Tough Conversation
Close your eyes and drop your awareness into the body. Be present with whatever is happening. Merely feel how it is. Are you feeling stressed or relaxed? How does that feel? Can you distinguish physical sensations of the body—warm, cool, pain, pleasure, tightness—from more subtle or energetic feelings, such as buzzy, speedy, anxious, excited, calm, and so on? Whatever is happening, dont resist it or worry about it, just feel it.
The Three Speed Limits – Tsoknyi Rinpoche
When I challenged myself that morning in Kathmandu to slow down, the experience of moving at my bodys natural speed helped me understand an important distinction between my body, my thinking mind, and my energy. To my surprise, when I looked for the root of the problem—the stress—I couldnt find it in my body or mind. I realized there are three kinds of speed: the physical, the cognitive, and the feeling or energetic. I could walk and move quickly without stress and tension. My body could move however fast it needed to; the problem wasnt there. My mind could think fast and creatively; that was also fine. It was my feeling world that was off-balance, distorted. So I realized stress accumulates in the energetic world, the feeling world. The more I understood what was happening inside me, the more I saw it outside as well, all over the world. Whatever we call it—speediness, anxiety, restlessness, stress—I think almost all of us can relate.
I call this understanding the three speed limits: the physical speed limit, the mental speed limit, and the feeling or energetic speed limit. The body has its own healthy speed, but the feeling world can be rushed in a distorted way. That feeling—of restless, anxious energy—is not healthy. Its distorted because its not rational; its out of touch with reality. Speedy energy tells us to get there now, even when we cant. Anxiety tells us were going to die when we arent.
To help distinguish the bodys speed limit from the feeling worlds speed limit, imagine you have to clean a large room. You walk in and see what needs to be done. Moving furniture, dusting, wiping, and vacuuming—it will take about an hour. This is the physical speed limit. The feeling world, however, can be either relaxed or banging on us the whole time: Go faster! Finish as soon as possible! I want this to be over! If we do it like this, well feel stressed the whole time and burned-out in twenty minutes. If our energy is relaxed, on the other hand, we can respect our natural speed limit and clean the room the same, without feeling rushed or restless. We might even feel fresh when its done.
If we dont distinguish between these speed limits, its as if we havent diagnosed the problem correctly, and so we cant apply the right remedy. A major misunderstanding is thinking that speedy energy and fast movement are almost the same. Then we either keep trying to slow down our bodies, or slow down our thinking minds. Neither of these works, because the physical and cognitive are not where the problem is, and not where the solution is found either. Not only that but these strategies cause other problems too. If we slow down our bodies and minds, we can start to worry about functioning well in the world. We can also start to be afraid and pull back from the world, as if it were an enemy. But we need to function; life is fast, and we cant slow it down. We have to run in the world. We need to move our bodies, and we need to use our minds.
Thinking fast is fine; its useful! So what is this third part of our being, this murky area of the feeling world? I think its the key to understanding and working with stress.
The Practice
There are four gentle breathing techniques that are especially useful for handling this upward-moving energy. These methods retrain the energy to come down below the navel—its natural home—and rest there. They stand alone as beneficial practices and can also be practiced together as a more comprehensive training. They are:
1. Deep belly-breathing, or “baby-breathing.”
2. Scanning the body and feeling our speedy energy.
3. Connecting speedy energy and awareness with the breath and bringing them all down below the navel.
4. An extrasubtle method that mainly uses intention with minimal muscle control.
Method #1: Deep Belly-Breathing, or Baby-Breathing
Usually when were startled, emotionally activated, or just stressed, we breath more quickly, shallowly, and more in our chests. This happens subconsciously but over time can become a habit, and our bodies forget our natural, relaxed way of breathing. In my tradition, we believe the natural way is deep.
Find a relaxed position to work with your breath. This can be sitting or lying down. If youre sitting, whether on the floor or in a chair, try to find a posture where your back is straight but not tight, upright but relaxed. The position of your hands and feet is not so important; all our bodies are different. Try postures and see which allows you to feel straight but relaxed. Whichever position you take, the most essential point is to be relaxed.
TIP: If you are sitting in a chair, try either crossing your legs in the chair or sitting in a way that your feet are flat on the floor. If you cant do this, dont worry. If you are lying down, try on your back with a straight spine and, if you can, your legs bent, with your feet flat on the floor.
Next, put your hands on your lower belly. Your thumbs should be roughly at the level of your navel. Relax your shoulders and arms. Start breathing gently from your abdomen, allowing your belly and hands to rise and fall with each breath. You can rest awareness with the rise and fall of your belly and hands. Try to completely relax your neck, shoulders, and chest so they have no tension. Allow the upper body to fully rest, and let the lower abdomen do most of the movement.
TIP: If you have trouble finding the breath in your abdomen or relaxing with it, try lying down on your back with your legs bent and feet flat on the floor. Put a medium-size heavy object like a big book on your belly. Feel it gently rise and fall as you practice belly-breathing. This can help settle your body and awareness in this practice.
When you feel relaxed and are breathing in a regular rhythm, breathe more deeply, letting the belly and hands rise and fall with each breath. Then introduce short pauses when the breath is fully inside and the breath is fully outside. In other words, after exhaling, pause a few seconds before beginning the next inhalation. At the end of the inhalation, hold the breath in for a few seconds before beginning the exhalation.
These pauses, just holding for a few seconds, should be relaxed and comfortable. Dont hold until you feel short of breath or strained. This is not a competition, and more is not necessarily better. This is a gradual training, and we are just exploring a new way of breathing.
TIP: One day you can feel which pause is more helpful, the holding in or holding out. Whichever is for you, do that. Progress comes over time as we feel more and more comfortable holding our breath, and the retention lengthens naturally.
Finally, just keep relaxing and continuing this belly-breathing. Allow your body to enjoy the deep rhythmic abdominal breathing. Allow your whole system to calm down and let go, like a baby resting without a care in the world. Continue for as long as you are comfortable. This method of deep abdominal breathing has many benefits even without the subsequent techniques.
Method #2: Body-Scanning
The aim of body-scanning is to find and connect with our speedy energy, with our feelings of anxiety or restlessness. Its important to bring an attitude of gentleness and curiosity here. Otherwise we can start thinking of our speediness as an enemy or a negative disease that needs to be eliminated. Instead we treat it with tenderness, like an overexcited child. This method is a little different from other traditional body-scanning techniques—for example, those that focus on choiceless awareness—because here we are choosing to pay attention to speedy energy. As with the first technique, this body-scanning technique has many benefits on its own but also serves as an important preparation for the third practice, khumbak, or gentle vase breathing.
Begin by finding a comfortable posture, where your spine is straight but your whole body is relaxed. This can be sitting or lying down. Start with a dropping practice for a few breaths, and if you have time, maybe a few minutes of deep breathing.
Then bring awareness to your energetic feeling body and explore to find the speedy energy. There are two ways to scan; by moving awareness through the body or by directly bringing awareness to where its needed. If you already know where the speedy energy is, you can just go directly there. If not, you can move awareness relaxedly through your head, face, neck, shoulders, upper back, and chest. Remember to be curious and gentle. The main focus is just connecting directly to sensations and feelings; there is no other agenda to this step. We are not looking for particular sensations or feelings, or trying to change our experience at this point. We are just exploring the of speediness and restlessness.
The sensations and feelings associated with speedy energy can be quite subtle.
As you explore more you may notice coarser physical sensations like tightness, pain, heat, and dryness, as well as more subtle sensations of tingling, vibrating, and buzzing. Continue this practice, scanning again and again, just being curious and open to whatever you feel.
Method #3: Gentle Vase Breathing with Retention
This method is a gentler version of a classic technique called vase breathing.
Although this modified version is suitable for unsupervised practice, please follow the instructions carefully and listen to your body.
Gentle vase breathing is where everything comes together. We build on our skills of belly-breathing and body-scanning, and learn to bring breath, speedy energy, and awareness together and hold them under the navel. This practice needs to be repeated over and over again, because we are retraining an energetichabit. Its very important that the body remain relaxed and the pressure be very gentle; if we tense up and push too hard, the practice can backfire and make our energy more unbalanced. If were too tight, especially in the upper-stomach area around the solar plexus and sternum, the energy can feel like its blocked,
“bouncing” back up into our chest and head. This can actually make us feel temporarily worse.
This is a subtle practice; youll have to play with it to find the right balance.
We can use two main metaphors to help visualize and understand this practice: the French press and the balloon. These two techniques may yield different experiences, so play with them and see which feels more natural and beneficial for you.
Begin by taking a posture with the spine straight but the whole body relaxed, either sitting or lying down. Start by doing a few minutes of breathing to prepare the body.
Then scan for the speedy energy—signs of restlessness, anxiety, or buzz. When you feel you have connected to the energy, move on to the next step.
THE FRENCH PRESS: Remaining relaxed and grounded, breathe out completely.
While breathing in through your nostrils, imagine the breath is mingling with the speedy, restless energy and gently pressing it down, like a French press gently pushing the coffee grounds down to the bottom of the vessel. The speedy energy is being urged from the upper body down through the stomach, to its natural home below the navel. Then hold the breath down there for a few seconds. The energy needs to be held in the “vase,” so we press very gently downward with the muscles we use to poop, to hold it all down there. You dont need to push hard. Exhale completely, then inhale and repeat over and over again.
THE BALLOON: This is essentially the same practice physically, but some people find the French press image too forceful and they push too hard. So instead of a French press, imagine there is a balloon in your lower belly, under your navel. In this version, we dont imagine pushing anything down from above. Each breath in fills the balloon, and each breath out empties the balloon.
Remaining relaxed and grounded, breathe out completely, emptying the balloon. As you breathe in, imagine the empty balloon sucking down the breath and speedy energy and filling up below the navel. When its full, gently “pinch” the top of the balloon to prevent the energy from escaping, by pressing down very gently the muscles we use to poop. Hold the breath for a few seconds. Exhale fully and repeat, over and over.
When holding your breath in like this, its important not to hold it until you feel strain and gasp for breath. Just start with a few seconds, and gradually build up the duration over days and weeks. If you keep practicing regularly, your capacity will naturally increase, without forcing it. If you start with two to three seconds, for example, you can build it up to ten seconds, and then fifteen to twenty seconds over time.
This is very beneficial, because the increased retention is often a sign of more relaxation in the subtle body, and of more control of the energies.
If you feel tightness in your head or chest, light-headed, or dizzy, you may be tensing up, pushing too hard, or holding the breath too long. Stop the practice and relax for a while. Try practicing gentle belly-breathing and body-scanning to see where the tension is building up. Try to relax that.
Method #4: The Extra-Gentle Way
This final method is for when we have gained some proficiency in the other techniques. When we have become comfortable with belly-breathing, can connect to our speedy energy with awareness, and can regularly bring our speedy energy down to rest in its natural home below the navel, we can try this fourth technique. We have created a link between energy and awareness, and can now use that link to bring speedy energy down with almost no effort. We may notice that the previous techniques are really helpful, but when we get up and have to do other things, our speedy energy pops back up and becomes activated. After all, we cant talk and engage normally if were holding our breath! This technique helps to bridge these practices with daily life. It allows us to maintain some benefits while talking, moving around, working, and engaging in our lives.
Start by just mentally connecting to the energy in the body and exhaling. While inhaling, imagine bringing breath, energy, and awareness down under the navel. Once you have applied a slight amount of muscular engagement, almost a reminder to the body, keep about 10 percent of your energy and breath down in the “vase,” and breathe naturally in and out on top, keeping the chest and shoulders relaxed and natural. Just be as natural and normal as possible. This practice is so subtle no one needs to know youre doing it.
At first, we will be constantly distracted by life and lose this subtle practice. So whenever we lose it, we just need one breath to connect again. Just repeat over and over. Gradually we are forming a new habit, and it becomes easier and easier. We will feel more grounded throughout the day. We will notice many situations that were stressful before become easier to manage. This is really helpful for long meetings!
DANIEL GOLEMAN: THE SCIENCE
My wife and I were in a taxi with Tsoknyi Rinpoche on the way to the Delhi train station. It was March 2000, and we had reservations on a train that would take us up toward Dharamshala, where I would moderate a meeting with the Dalai Lama and a handful of psychologists on the topic of “Destructive Emotions.”
We had left with plenty of time to spare, but gridlocked traffic was eating away at the time buffer. I was, frankly, getting uptight, increasingly worried about missing the train—a destructive emotion had taken control.
My anxiety boiled over when our taxi stopped for a red light at the intersection of two huge avenues, which looked less like streets and more like parking lots packed with cars (and the occasional oxcart, bicycle rickshaw, and cow). The red light stopped us for what seemed like an endless amount of minutes.
A silver-colored word in the middle of that red light—relax—made no difference in my state. I could not relax, but got more and more tense. My head spun with the swarming colors, sounds, and smells whirling around us like a hurricane. Though our lanes werent moving anywhere, drivers all around us were showing their impatience in a rising cacophony of honking. I felt a mounting sense of urgency at the traffic jam, an impossible pretzel that had no rhyme nor reason and seemed would never untangle.
“Oh man!” I said to Rinpoche. “This traffic is really snarled. Im starting to worry about getting to the train.”
Rinpoche said, in a soft, calm voice, “Can you feel the speediness? Can you find where it is?”
I closed my eyes and scanned my body, noticing a buzz of sensations and a growing tightness in my belly. I nodded.
Rinpoche continued, “Find it. Feel it. Its not you. Its not your mind, not your body. Its your energy.”
Rinpoche added, “First just sense that you are speedy—what that feels like in your body. Then understand that you are tuning into the feeling world. Find where in your body you feel your energys speediness. Then breathe in and hold the breath down under your navel for as long as is comfortable for you. Exhale slowly, holding back about ten percent of the air.”
Getting what he was saying, I took a deep breath and let the air out slowly. Rinpoche led me through several breaths this way. And, almost miraculously, my tension eased. The light changed, traffic moved again, and I felt more relaxed. Right on the spot, Rinpoche was guiding me to use the body scan and the gentle vase breathing method. As weve just learned, that gentle vase breathing is one of several ways to work with our breath to calm our nervous energy. These breath-control practices are ancient in India, and made their way from there, along with Buddhism, to Tibet in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Several such breath-control practices have been preserved and are still taught in various corners of Tibetan Buddhism to this day.
Their purpose: calming the mind for meditation. Science agrees.
It turns out there is sound research showing the power of these breath methods. In recent decades scientists have turned their attention to such breath-control methods, realizing that using them has powerful impacts on our mental state. In short, managing our breath helps us manage our mind.
Key parts of the brains emotional circuitry get triggered by the amygdala, our neural radar for threat. In todays stressful life our amygdala fires far more often than needed, and the speediness we are caught up in adds to our stress.
That pitches us into “sympathetic nervous system” activity, where our body prepares for an emergency: our heart rate jumps, as does blood pressure; our bronchial passages enlarge, and we breathe faster; our digestion shuts down; blood shifts from our organs to our arms and legs (the better to fight or run); and we sweat.
Such emergency responses are triggered by hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which mobilize all these systems to prepare for emergency. This biological reaction gets set off all too often these days (That irksome too-slow driver! That scary fast driver! Difficulty with the kids! That horrible boss!).
Once stress hormones surge through us, were more readily triggered for a further stress reaction. And, as weve discussed, these days this threat reaction triggers in response to symbolic threats too—like the feeling that someone is treating us unfairly—not just the physical survival emergency the reaction was designed for. Being treated unfairly feels bad, of course. But its not the threat to our very life that our fight-or-flight response was designed to handle. Even so, that biological machinery for physical survival also takes over when we undergo a psychological threat like unfair treatment.
We can undergo this fight-or-flight response many times in a single day, all too often without having time to end it. And such a prolonged, ongoing fight- or-flight reaction overtaxes our biology with long-term costs, such as heightened inflammation, lowered immune system defenses, and becoming more susceptible to a range of stress-worsened illnesses.
During the emergency mode our attention shifts to focus on the presumed threat—even when were trying to get something else more important done, we stay preoccupied by what upsets us. The response is so strong that we might find ourselves thinking about that threat and how to handle it even when we at two a.m. As we read in chapter 2 this kind of anxious worry serves no useful purpose.
Some of us might get sad or angry, while others panic. Theres no set response, but none of the likely reactions help us.
Contrast that with a “parasympathetic response,” the physiological state where the body rests and recovers from such stress. Our heart rate and blood pressure subside and our breath slows, as do the other biological upshifts of the emergency reaction. Our digestion resumes its usual workings. This is the biological state where the body rests, restores itself, and relaxes. We can eat, have sex, sleep.
The bodys emergency response has a beginning—when were triggered—a peak in the middle, and an end, if we have the chance to calm down again.
Thats what the controlled breathing method Rinpoche offers here does for us: it ends the stress cycle were caught up by.
It is impossible to build one’s own happiness on the unhappiness of others.
—Daisaku Ikeda
Cancers of the mind
"Cancers of the mind," referring to comparing, complaining, and criticizing, highlights negative
thought patterns that can adversely impact one's mental well-being and relationships.
Comparing: Constantly measuring oneself against others can lead to feelings of inadequacy or superiority.
Instead of fostering a positive mindset, it can breed jealousy, low self-esteem, and hinder personal growth.
Embracing individuality and focusing on personal progress can be more beneficial.
Complaining: Habitual complaining not only reflects a negative outlook but can also create a toxic environment
for oneself and those around. While it's natural to express concerns, constant complaints without seeking
solutions can perpetuate a cycle of negativity. Shifting focus towards finding solutions or practicing gratitude
can be a healthier approach.
Criticizing: Excessive criticism, whether directed at oneself or others, can erode self-confidence and damage
relationships. Constructive feedback is valuable, but relentless criticism can be destructive. Cultivating empathy
and understanding can lead to more positive interactions.
Addressing these "cancers of the mind" involves cultivating self-awareness, fostering a positive
mindset, and practicing mindfulness. By consciously choosing to replace comparing with self-acceptance,
complaining with gratitude, and criticizing with constructive communication, individuals can promote mental
well-being and build healthier relationships.
NEGATIVITY IS EVERYWHERE (But don’t play a victim)
Bad things do happen. In our lives, we’re all victims at some point—whether we’re being racially profiled or
being cut off in traffic. But if we adopt a victim mentality, we’re more likely to take on a sense of entitlement
and to behave selfishly.
Stanford psychologists took 104 subjects and assigned them to one of two groups—one told to write a short essay
about a time they were bored, and the other to write about a time when life seemed unfair or when they felt
“wronged or slighted by someone.”
Afterward, the participants were asked if they wanted to help the researchers with an easy task. Those who’d
written about a time they’d been wronged were 26 percent less likely to help the researchers.
In a similar study, participants who identified with a victim mindset were not only more likely to express
selfish attitudes afterward, they were also more likely to leave behind trash and even take the experimenters’
pens!
NEGATIVITY IS CONTAGIOUS (And Groupthink Bias)
In the 1950s Solomon Asch gathered groups of college students and told them they were doing a vision test. The
catch was that in each group, everyone was an actor except one person: the subject of the test.
Asch showed participants an image of a “target” line first, then of a series of three lines: one shorter, one
longer, and one that was clearly the same length as the target line. The students were asked which line matched
the length of the target line. Sometimes the actors gave correct answers, and sometimes they purposefully gave
incorrect answers. In each case, the real study participant answered last.
The correct answer should have been obvious. But, influenced by the actors, about 75 percent of the subjects
followed the crowd to give an incorrect response at least once. This phenomenon has been called groupthink bias.
Groupthink is the practice of thinking or decision-making in a way that discourages individual responsibility.
Negative behaviors surround us so constantly that we grow accustomed to them.
Think about whether you have any of the following in your life:
Complainers, like the friend on the phone, who complain endlessly without looking for
solutions. Life is a problem that will be hard if not impossible to solve.
Cancellers, who take a compliment and spin it: “You look good today” becomes “You mean I
looked bad yesterday?”
Casualties, who think the world is against them and blame their problems on others.
Critics, who judge others for either having a different opinion or not having one, for any
choices they’ve made that are different from what the critic would have done.
Commanders, who realize their own limits but pressure others to succeed. They’ll say, “You
never have time for me,” even though they’re busy as well.
Competitors, who compare themselves to others, controlling and manipulating to make themselves
or their choices look better. They are in so much pain that they want to bring others down. Often we have to play
down our successes around these people because we know they can’t appreciate them.
Controllers, who monitor and try to direct how their friends or partners spend time, and with
whom, and what choices they make.
Gauranga Das repeated this advice in brief metaphorical form that we often used to remind ourselves not to
harbor negative thoughts toward others:
Don’t judge someone with a different disease.
Don’t expect anyone to be perfect.
Don’t think you are perfect.
REVERSE EXTERNAL NEGATIVITY
(1) Become an Objective Observer
Instead of reacting compulsively and retaliating to negativity or a negative word or action, we could enjoy our
freedom as human beings and refuse to be upset.
We step away, not literally but emotionally, and look at the situation as if we are not in the middle of it. We
will talk more about this distance, which is called detachment, in the next chapter.
For now, I’ll say that it helps us find understanding without judgment.
(2) Back Slowly Away
From a position of understanding, we are better equipped to address negative energy. The
simplest response is to back slowly away. Just as in the last chapter we let go of the influences that interfered
with our values, we want to cleanse ourselves of the negative attitudes that cloud our outlook. In The Heart of
the Buddha’s Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who has been called the Father of Mindfulness, writes,
“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to
anything—anger, anxiety, or possessions—we cannot be free.” I encourage you to purge or avoid physical triggers of
negative thoughts and feelings, like that sweatshirt your ex gave you or the coffee shop where you always run into
a former friend. If you don’t let go physically, you won’t let go emotionally.
The 25/75 Principle
Aim for the feeling that at least 75 percent of your time is spent with people who inspire you
rather than bring you down.
Allocate Time
There might be some people you can only tolerate for an hour a month, some for a day, some for
a week. Maybe you even know a one-minute person. Consider how much time is best for you to spend with them, and
don’t exceed it.
Don’t Be a Savior
If all someone needs is an ear, you can listen without exerting much energy. If we try to be
problem-solvers, then we become frustrated when people don’t take our brilliant advice. The desire to save others
is ego-driven. Don’t let your own needs shape your response.
REVERSE INTERNAL NEGATIVITY
The more we define ourselves in relation to the people around us, the more lost we are.
Spot, Stop, Swap
First, we become aware of a feeling or issue—we spot it.
Then we pause to address what the feeling is and where it comes from—we stop to consider it.
And last, we amend our behavior—we swap in a new way of processing the moment.
Spot
TRY THIS: AUDIT YOUR NEGATIVE COMMENTS.
Keep a tally of the negative remarks you make over the course of a week. See if you can
make your daily number go down. The goal is zero.
Stop
Regarding negative speech...
“Remember, saying whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want, is not freedom. Real
freedom is not feeling the need to say these things.”
Swap
Mudita is the principle of taking sympathetic or unselfish joy in the good fortune of
others.
KSAMĀ: AMENDING ANGER
Kṣamā is Sanskrit for forgiveness. It suggests that you bring patience and forbearance to your
dealings with others. Sometimes we have been wounded so deeply that we can’t imagine how we might forgive the
person who hurt us. But, contrary to what most of us believe, forgiveness is primarily an action we take within
ourselves. Sometimes it’s better (and safer and healthier) not to have direct contact with the person at all;
other times, the person who hurt us is no longer around to be forgiven directly. But those factors don’t impede
forgiveness because it is, first and foremost, internal. It frees you from anger.
TRANSFORMATIONAL FORGIVENESS
FORGIVENESS IS A TWO-WAY STREET
Forgiveness has to ow in both directions. None of us is perfect, and though there will be
situations where you are blameless, there are also times when there are missteps on both sides of a conflict. When
you cause pain and others cause you pain, it’s as if your hearts get twisted together into an uncomfortable knot.
When we forgive, we start to separate our pain from theirs and to heal ourselves emotionally. But when we ask for
forgiveness at the same time, we untwist together. This is a bit trickier, because we’re much more comfortable
finding fault in other people and then forgiving it. We’re not used to admitting fault and taking responsibility
for what we create in our lives.
On an end note: The less time you fixate on everyone else, the more time you have to focus
on yourself.
