When we want to create good habits or eliminate bad ones we often think.
"I've got to be the one to change, it's got to come from inside me."
We often make the mistake that willpower or motivation is what is going to
help us change. Which is not entirely accurate.
Have you ever noticed when you're in a positive environment you mimic or try to
"fit in" with that atmosphere. The same can be true for negative or bad environments.
If you want permanent change you need to change your environment.
Here is a good example. Let's say you're trying to be healthier for the New Year by
buying a gym pass. Your intent is to go every day.
Buying the pass is a good start but adding an additional step of putting
your clothes out the night before increases the odds of you using them.
In the same vein of being healthier if you want to eliminate bad food, eating cookies
for example. Instead of keeping a cookie jar in the kitchen put them in the
basement in a storage room.
Increasing the visibility makes things more obvious and a little easier to do if you are
creating a good habit.
Decreasing the visibility of something and making it less obvious makes it harder to
keep doing and that can help break a bad habit.
In either case, by putting the clothes out or hiding the cookies downstairs, you are changing the environment, you are removing or adding something to make it easier or harder to get.
Over half of our brain is devoted to vision. It makes sense if we make something in our environment more visible we are going to be drawn to it good or bad.
So if you can redesign your environment and highlight the things that make you better and reduce
the ones that don't you're going to be more successful in changing.
What is something you can change in your environment today to encourage a good habit or break a bad one?
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