Video 5 in our series on James Clear's book, Atomic Habits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1bTQPvdxyU

Transcription

Awareness, habit stacking, and the secret to self-control.

Hi, I'm Brian Pombo. Welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

And there you have one of the largest, the longest titles ever had here on the show. I want to fit it all in there. Because I'm covering a bunch of random areas from this book, Atomic Habits by James Clear.

They're not so random, they're all within this one section of the book, called The First Law makes it obvious.

So in the last episode, we talked about how there are four different laws, four different steps in the loop in the habit loop when you're trying to build a habit or trying to break a habit.

These are the same four steps no matter what. And if you can break apart those steps, you can get rid of a bad habit, if you can build those steps from the bottom up, you can create a good habit. And so the first law is to make it obvious.

So he's got it here make it obvious and he's got a handful of chapters going into that I just wanted to point out some very simple ideas in these that they're simple but powerful.

One of the things he talks about is that I'll just read it to you this is a great, great point, he says this is one of the most surprising insights about our habits, you don't need to be aware of the cue for a habit to begin.

So the queue, this is an aside, there's me talking, the queue is that beginning thing, it's the beginning thing that starts you in the process of going into to doing your habit.

There's something that that happens during a certain time of day, or it's or it's seen something or smelling something that lead you into the process of that habit that you just can't break.

He says, You don't need to be aware, you can notice an opportunity and take action without dedicating conscious attention to it.

This is what makes habits useful. And that's really, it's really true because it's the awareness. It's when you it's not it's below your awareness.

It's almost subconscious, but it's definitely below your immediate awareness.

That's when habits are the most powerful good habits and bad habits, bad habits are even worse, where you're in the middle of that, you know, you're sitting there smoking, like I don't even remember lighting up is how did this happen, you know, and I don't smoke, but I know that's how it works.

Because it works that way with all habits. And you find yourself in the ER like driving, driving to work, you know, the car kind of gets there on its own.

Sometimes you go and you don't remember getting in the car, and you don't remember putting your seatbelt on, you don't remember doing all these things you do every day.

You're there and you're like, wait a second, how do I get here, you know, your mind can be used somewhere else because your body is in the process of the habit. I mean, your brains directing it all. But at the same time.

It's how habits work and it's why they're useful.

It's also why they can be horribly destructive.

But one of the things you really have to do with is, is he talks about habit scorecard.

So if you can just sit back and watch on a daily basis, all the different habits that you have good and bad. And he says that he says really interesting thing, he says there's no need to change anything at first,