Atomic Habits EXPLAINED: how to create good habits & break bad ones
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Hello, my beautiful friends, and welcome back to the Claim Your Power podcast, the ultimate show for all things spirituality, self-love, and personal development. I'm your host, Kim Peretz. I'm a two-time author, content creator, yoga teacher, and entrepreneur. You are at the right place if you're ready to tap into your gifts, unleash your potential, and become your higher self. It's time to claim your power.

Hey my friends and welcome back to the pod. If you're new here, my name is Kim and I am your host and I'm so happy that you joined us in this beautiful Claim Your Power community. Before I start off the episode, I just want to say that

If you guys have been liking the show, you guys have been liking the topics I've been talking about, really resonating with everything, I would really, really be so grateful if you left me a review. You guys have no idea how much it helps me and how thankful I am for it. So if you can go ahead and do that, it would really help your girl out. And without further ado, today we're going to be talking about habits.

So recently I've been reading the book Atomic Habits and wow, it is worth the hype. I have to say that like, I know it was trending on TikTok a while back and I didn't do it. Like I didn't read it and fall into the trend back then. But recently I was at a bookstore. I saw it. I was like, it is calling my name. I bought it. I've been reading it.

And wow. So I thought in today's episodes, we will talk about some of the key things that I've been learning as I read this book and kind of like the whole overarching idea of what is atomic habits and how to build better habits in your life. So the one thing that I took away from the book recently, like this is the number one thing that I want you guys to understand is building habits is not about setting goals, but focusing on your systems instead. So

So your system, like you know how like let's say you really want to wake up early and you want to start waking up early? Bad habits repeat themselves again and again, not because you don't want to change but because you have the wrong system and the wrong environment for changing them. So the way that you change your habits is not by setting different goals but by kind of changing your systems and environments. So a really good example for like the waking up in the morning is let's say you sleep with your phone next to your bed.

And you are someone that's a snoozer. Like I am literally so guilty of this. I'm the biggest snoozer ever.

If you constantly sleep with your phone next to your bed, but you keep having that same goal, that same habit of, oh, I want to start waking up early and not snooze, but you don't change your system and environment, your habit isn't going to change. So the way that you would change that habit is you would change the system. Maybe you would put your phone across the room next to, I don't know, a coffee pot that is ready for you in the morning. So right when you get up and you click stop on the alarm, your coffee's ready and you're about to set it up.

up. Basically, you're changing the system behind your habits so that it makes it easier for you to come through because people think that they don't come through their bad habits because they don't want to change enough, but that's not true. It's because you're like focusing all your energy on the tangible small goals when you need to be focusing your energy on the systems instead. Habits form when you identify your habits with your identity.

So one of the most powerful sentences in the English language is I am. And when you begin to associate I am with your habits, your self-concept begins to form an identity with it. So your pride comes in, which makes you more likely to follow through with your habits. So a really good example that they gave, the author gave in the book was runners.

If you want to start running and you want to become a runner, if you are always telling people like, yeah, I'm going to go on a run tomorrow, da da da, or like I like to run sometimes versus the sentence, the different belief system, the different affirmation and mantra of saying, I am a runner. I am an athlete.

When you start to associate that identity with your habit of I am an athlete, your pride comes in and it becomes part of your identity so you're more likely to stick through the habit. So the author was talking about this idea that every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

So if you begin doing habits that identify with the identity and the person that you wanna be, that highest version of yourself, you will be more likely to follow through with it because those habits define who you are and your pride comes into it.

So something that's really helped me in changing my habits is like I used to be someone who would always get up and check her phone right when she wakes up. And that induced so much anxiety in my life because I was connecting to everything around me, to like the social media world, my emails, da da da, before I was actually pouring into myself. And so whenever I would do that, then the whole day would be anxious and tired and

overwhelmed and also that was like my first hit of dopamine in the morning is checking social media so I was constantly craving that dopamine throughout the day is like the whole day after that I was constantly craving to be on my phone and check social media

versus now I have this habit of journaling in the morning and meditating and creating this calm centered space. So that's my first hit of dopamine in the morning. So throughout the day when I'm feeling anxious or confused or overwhelmed, I don't crave social media. I crave meditation and I crave yoga and I crave quiet and peace. So if you have a bad habit that you want to release that you're ready to let go of, the best way that you can start is make a list of all the traits and qualities and the type of person

that your highest version of you would be. Are they athletic? Are they open? Are they generous? Do they wake up early? Like who is that person? Genuinely like maybe sit in a meditation and ask yourself, who is that person? Visualize it. So the whole idea is taking small action towards making a big difference in your life. So it's about showing up to yourself just 1%.

Just 1% having all these small wins for yourself to change your entire identity. So the whole idea of building habits is deciding the type of person that you want to be and improving it to yourself with your small wins. Because every small action that you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. And once you learn this, also celebrate your small wins and rewarding yourself for taking the action towards the good habits that you want to develop, you create a new identity for yourself.

So let's say, for instance, think about something that brings you a lot of pleasure in your life. Whatever that may be for you, like for me, it's sitting and watching an episode of Friends in my bed at 9 p.m. Like that is my form of pleasure. Find a way to take those small moments of pleasure that bring you happiness and joy and associate it as a reward for your habits. And that brings me to the whole actionable part of Atomic Habits, which is called the habit loop. So the habit loop is basically a process

process for building habits that's divided into four simple steps. Cue, craving, response, and reward. And once you break down these different fundamental steps, they can help you understand exactly what habits are, how they work, and how you can change your habits.

In the habit loop, the cue triggers a craving which motivates a response from you which then leads you to a reward and satisfies your initial craving and then that becomes associated again with the cue. So let me explain this. It's basically like a feedback loop. Cue, craving, response, reward. Cue, craving, response, reward. And this allows you to create automatic habits that is known as habit loops. So I'm just gonna read to you guys some things that are like directly taken from the book

book on how to create a good habit. So the first law is the cue. And the way that you make a cue a good habit is you make it obvious. The second law is the craving. You make it attractive.

The third law is the response. You make it easy. And the fourth law is the reward. You make it satisfying. And the opposite goes to how to break a bad habit. The inversion of the first law is to make it invisible. The second law, the craving, you make it unattractive. The third law, the response, you make it difficult for you. And the fourth law, the reward, you make it unsatisfying. So I'm going to break it down for you.

The first part, how to create a good habit. Whether you want to start waking up earlier, being less on your phone, bringing more movement and fitness into your life, whatever it is, this is how you create a good habit. The first law is about making it obvious. So first you want to bring awareness to your situation. You want to write down and make a list of all your current habits so that you become aware of them.

Then you want to use something called implementation intentions, which is basically a mantra that you will tell yourself every single day when you want to create the habit. And the big focus on that is your behavior, your time, and your location. So let's say that you want to work out. You want to bring fitness back into your life.

Instead of saying, yeah, I'm going to go work out tomorrow. I'm going to go to the gym. You will say, I will go to the gym at 9 a.m. tomorrow in my local gym. The way that you make a habit stick is you focus on implementing the intention behind the time and location, which is why you don't want to like, you want to stray away from all the vague sayings of like, I will wake up early tomorrow. I will go to the gym tomorrow. You want to be very specific and make it very obvious for yourself.

And the way that you do that is also, the author was talking about something called habit stacking, is where you take a certain current habit that you already have, and then you add a new habit to it. So like, let's say you already have a habit of drinking coffee right when you wake up, but you want to add a habit of journaling or meditating, which now that I'm thinking about it, you probably should be meditating right after drinking your cup of coffee. But

let's say that you want to start journaling after a cup of coffee. So you take the current habit and you start telling yourself the mantras, after I drink my cup of coffee, I will journal in my notebook for five minutes. And you take that old habit, that current habit that you already have, and you stack the new habit that you want to call into your life above it. Second law is all about making the habit attractive.

So you want to pair your actions with the actions that you actually want to do and actions that you need to do. So basically, it's all about joining a culture where your behavior is the normal behavior. So let's say that you are someone who wants to get into the gym and fitness. Start surrounding yourself in environments where people are all about fitness and health

and doing that. When you create a motivational ritual for yourself, it's taking something that you don't necessarily enjoy and making it less difficult for yourself to perform and bring it to life. So something that's like helped me is, for example, I love to listen to YouTubers that talk all about motivation and mindset, Abraham Hicks and things like

that because it makes it more attractive for me to be called to meditate. When I'm seeing all these people that I look up to and I'm inspired by their wisdom and they always talk about meditation, it's making it more attractive for me.

to do that desired behavior to bring meditation into my life more often third law is all about making the habit easy for yourself and the author talked about one specific example in the book is let's say you want to start working out again i'm just using the gym one as like my base because i think it's the easiest way to explain it but let's say you want to start going to the gym more often or practicing yoga or pilates or whatever it is or running and

If you make it easy for yourself to do that habit by reducing friction and all the number of steps you need to take between you and your good habits, you will be more likely to perform it. So the example they gave is right before you go to bed, if you know you want to go to the gym early the next day, you already set up your clothes on your desk, they're already ready, your shoes are out, your socks are out, your water bottle is filled up in the fridge. Everything is easy and made easy for you that it reduces the friction between you and your habit.

So you really wanna prime your environment. You wanna prepare your environment that makes the functions of your habit easy. And the author talked about the two-minute rule, which is basically you're downscaling your habit to be done in under two minutes.

So the whole idea of like setting up your clothes and everything's ready and the water bottle is ready, da-da-da, you're waking up, you're ready to go to the gym, you just put on your clothes, you grab your water bottle and you're out the door. You're making it very easy for yourself to come through with the habit. So you have less excuses to come up with because it's made easy. And the last component is all about making your habits satisfying. So in this part, the author was actually suggesting to use a habit tracker, which helps you keep a track of your habit streak so you don't break the chain.

When you make things satisfying for yourself, you're more likely to come through. So for example, in my life, I love to make to-do lists because checking off something off my to-do list is so satisfying. So if you can find a way to like, you know, make a habit tracker or make to-do lists and basically just make, you know, following through with your habits more satisfying for yourself, like checking something off on your calendar or...

or on your to-do list, it's just so satisfying once you get it done. So it's making it more enjoyable for you. Now let's talk about how you can break those bad habits. And you know what I'm talking about. I know that you have one bad habit because we all do. We all do, we're human. And this is how you can start breaking those habits. First thing, make it invisible. You wanna reduce your exposure to those habits. You wanna remove all the cues of your bad habits from your environment. Make it literally so hard for yourself to actually come through with the habit.

Second thing, you want to make that habit unattractive. You want to reframe those beliefs in your mindset and highlight all the bad parts of you doing that habit. So for instance, for me, I have a bad habit of snoozing. Like I told you guys, I'm going to be real. I am a snoozer and it is so bad because I know how good it makes me feel to wake up early in the morning, but I'm not.

Boy, I love to hit the snooze button. Like I hit it at least three times each morning when I have to wake up early. So I know how good it makes me feel

to wake up early and I also know how I don't necessarily feel good when I sleep in for instance till 10 11 every single morning not that there's anything wrong with that but for me it feels off in my circadian rhythm and it feels like I don't feel good when I go to sleep super late and wake up super late because I like to be outside I'm a nature girl I love to have the sun and I don't like that I'm awake and then I've got five hours of sunlight so when I'm reframing that mindset for myself that like I it's like unattractive I

I'm making it in my head unattractive to wake up super late and sleep super late. I'm reframing my mindset so that it's making all the benefits of avoiding that bad habit more highlighted for me. Third thing is make it difficult. You want to increase the number of steps that you need to take between you and your bad habits. Basically, you want to increase friction. For instance, again, with the alarm snoozing situation that I've got going on and I'm trying to break,

I have decided that I'm literally, I have a drawer like across my bed that has like a lock to it. So I've decided that I'm going to start locking my phone in there while I sleep so that when I wake up and I'm going to put the key on like the other side of my room so that when like the alarm snoozes, I have to physically get up, grab the key, unlock my phone from the drawer and then grab it.

Making it more difficult. Also, don't put it past me because I bet you the first two days that I'm going to be doing this, I will continue sleeping. But making it more increasingly hard and difficult for me to actually come through with a bad habit is actually super, super helpful to help you break it. The fourth law to help you break a habit is make it unsatisfying. So find yourself someone that will hold you accountable for your actions.

So maybe, okay, again, this all comes back to pride. If you tell people that you are going to stop smoking or that you are going to stop drinking a lot of alcohol, you're going to stop going to bed at 4 a.m. each day and you tell everyone that you love around that, it's making you way more accountable for your actions so that when you don't follow through with that bad, like when you don't follow through with breaking that bad habit, it's unsatisfying for you.

So involving other people, usually I'm someone that like, no, like you do your own thing. But when you're trying to make a bad habit, involving other people and asking them to guide you and help you is actually super helpful because it keeps you accountable. It's creating like this habit contract for you so that you're less likely to break it because your pride comes in.

So first off, I hope that this episode inspired you to go buy the book because it is so amazing. And second of all, I hope that this kind of like helped you understand a basic framework into breaking bad habits and creating new good ones.

And so I want to end this episode with one of the favorite quotes that I read in Atomic Habits. And it is, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress. Beautiful souls, thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. Feel free to leave a review or DM me any topic suggestions. I hope you feel inspired to claim your power today. With Lucky Land Sluts, you can get lucky just about anywhere.

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