The following contains excerpts from the book, Atomic Habits (James Clear).
At our music school in Midland, Texas we believe that music is more than sound, it is relationships. At the foundational level of the subject of Leadership is how relationships work, and the first step to leading others well, through relationships is the ability to lead yourself well through personal discipline.
The author states his purpose for writing this book, “Small habits helped me fulfill my potential…The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits – cue, craving, response, and reward – and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps.”
“It’s so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action…You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results…Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits…If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line…It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed…habits need to persist long enough to break through…what I call the Plateau of Latent Potential…If you find yourself struggling…it is often because you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential…Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored…All the action happens at thirty-two degrees…Mastery requires patience…All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision.”
One of the most important things we help students at our music school in Midland, Texas achieve is the ability to form good habits in their practicing. This also applies to the life-skill of learning how to identify and establish patterns of living that are effective.
The four laws of behavior change: 1) (Cue) How can I make it obvious? 2) (Craving) How can I make it attractive? 3) (Response) How can I make it easy? 4) (Reward) How can I make it satisfying?
Make It Obvious. “We’re so used to doing what we’ve always done that we don’t stop to question whether it’s the right thing to do at all. Many of our failures in performance are largely attributable to a lack of self-awareness. One of our greatest challenges in changing habits is maintaining awareness of what we are actually doing…here is a question I like to use: ‘Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?’ The first step to changing bad habits is to be on the lookout for them. If you feel like you need extra help, then you can try Pointing-and-Calling in your own life…Hearing you bad habits spoken aloud makes the consequences seem more real…This approach is useful even if you’re simply trying to remember a task on your t-do list. Just saying out loud, ‘Tomorrow, I need to go to the post office after lunch,’ increases the odds that you’ll actually do it…The process of behavior change always starts with awareness.”
One of the concepts we teach students at our music school in Midland, Texas is that of intentionality. Every musical decision and action must be pre-decided upon, and every action that does not fit into the area of choice is excluded. The same can be true of a successful life.
“People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. Too many people try to change their habits without these basic details figured out…Many people thing they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity…Being specific about what you want and how you will achieve it helps you say no to thing that derail progress, detract your attention, and pull you off course.”
Specificity and attention to detail are both powerful attributes we help student at our music school in Midland, Texas develop.
“Habit stacking is a special form of implementation intention. Rather than paring your new habit with a particular time and location, you pair it with a current habit…The key is to tie your desired behavior into something you already do each day…habit stacking implicitly has the time and location built into it.”
“Given that we are more dependent on vision than on any other sense, it should come as no surprise that visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behavior. For this reason, a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do. As a result, you can imagine how important it is to live and work in environments that are filled with productive cues and devoid of unproductive ones…Environment design is powerful not only because it influences how we engage with the world but also because we rarely do it. Most people live in a world others have created for them. But you can alter the spaces where you live and work to increase your exposure to positive cues and reduce your exposure to negative ones.”
“When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, ‘disciplined’ people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations. The people with the best self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least.
Make It Attractive. “The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming…dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it…Desire is the engine that drives behavior.
“One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior…The human mind knows how to get along with others. It wants to get along with others. This is our natural mode. You can override it – you can choose to ignore the group or to stop caring what other people thing – but it takes work. Running against the grain of your culture requires extra effort.”
This is why we intentionally encourage students at our music school in Midland, Texas to play in ensembles (groups) in which they can experience music making within a community structure.
“Life feels reactive, but it is actually predictive. All day long, you are making your best guess of how to act given what you’ve just seen and what has worked for you in the past…Put another way, our behavior is heavily dependent on how we interpret the events that happen to us, not necessarily the objective reality of the events themselves…you can make hard habits more attractive if you can learn to associate them with a positive experience…Reframing your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks is a fast and lightweight way to reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive…You can reframe ‘I am nervous’ to ‘I am excited and I’m getting an adrenaline rush to help me concentrate.’”
Make It Easy. “Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition. The more you repeat an activity, the more the structure of your brain changes to become efficient at that activity. Neuroscientists call this long-term potentiation, which refers to the strengthening of connections between neurons in the brain based on recent patterns of activity. With each repetition, cell-to-cell signaling improves and the neural connections tighten…Repeating a habit leads to clear physical changes in the brain. In musicians, the cerebellum – critical for physical movements like plucking a guitar string or pulling a violin bow – is larger than it is in non-musicians…Like muscles of the body responding to regular weight training, particular regions of the brain adapt as they are sued and atrophy as they are abandoned…All habits follow a similar trajectory from effortful practice to automatic behavior, a process known as automaticity…habits form based on frequency, not time…One of the most common questions I hear is, ‘How long does it take to build a new habit?’ But what people really should be asking is, ‘How many does it take to form a new habit?’ That is, how many repetitions are required to make a habit automatic?”
The study of music at our music school in Midland, Texas is highly developmental for the brains of both young and old, and we are grateful to be able to offer this consequential benefit.
“It is crucial to make your habits so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it. If you can make your good habits more convenient, you’ll be more likely to follow through on them…When we remove the points of friction that sap our time and energy, we can achieve more with less effort…Want to draw more? Put your pencils, pens, notebooks, and drawing tolls on top of your desk, within easy reach…Whether we are approaching behavior change as an individual, a parent, a coach, or a leader, we should ask ourselves the same question: ‘How can we design a world where it’s easy to do what’s right?’ Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the actions that are easiest to do.”
“Use the Two-Minute Rule, which states, ‘When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.’ You’re not worried about getting in shape. You’re focused on becoming the type of person who doesn’t’ miss workouts. You’re taking the smallest action that confirms the type of person you want to be…Nearly any larger life goal can be transformed into a two-minute behavior.”
Make It Satisfying. “The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided…The ending of any experience is vital because we tend to remember it more than other phases. You want the ending of your habit to be satisfying. The best approach is to use reinforcement, which refers to the process of using an immediate reward to increase the rate of a behavior…The more a habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside encouragement to follow through. Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.”
This is why we accentuate the positive at our music school in Midland, Texas. We want our students to encouraged, and that starts by our attitude towards each of them being excited and positive about their potential.