Chapter 2: Habits shape identity

Video Link: https://vimeo.com/454075996/b3afd9ad52

Changing habits is hard for 2 reasons: 1- we are trying to change the wrong thing and 2- we’re trying to change our habits in the wrong ways.

There are 3 parts/layers to behavior change.
1- Your identity- what you believe. World-view, self image, judgements about yourself and others. Assumptions and biases.
2- Processes- what you do. How you change your habits and systems.
3- Outcomes- what you get. Results. Most of the goals we set are associated with THIS LEVEL of change.
-Most of us try to change our habits by focusing on what we want to achieve- OUTCOME based habits. What we need to focus on are IDENTITY BASED HABITS_ who we are or wish to become. (THE PERSON GOD HAS CREATED AND CALLED US TO BE)

Ex from page 32 of smoker.
Most of us never shift the way we look at ourselves and aren’t realizing that our old identities can sabotage our new plans for change.
BEHIND EVERY SYSTEM OF ACTIONS ARE A SYSTEM OF BELIEFS.

*What do YOU believe about yourself in the area you’ve been called to? What do you TRULY Believe? Is it in line with Scripture?

-Behavior incongruent with self will not last.
Ex: You want better health but you continue to prioritize comfort over accomplishment. This leads to relaxing instead of training. You can have a new goal and a new plan but at your core, you haven’t changed what you believe to be true about yourself.

-True behavior change is IDENTITY CHANGE.
Motivation can start a new habit, but it won’t stick until it becomes part of your identity. We must shift the belief behind the behaviors. Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who we are (p. 34). Our behaviors- what we do- are an indication of the type of person we believe that we are- consciously or unconsciously (p. 34)
-WHEN YOUR BEHAVIOR AND YOUR IDENTITY ARE FULLY ALIGNED YOU ARE NO LONGER PURSUING BEHAVIOR CHANGE. YOU’RE SIMPLY ACTING LIKE THE PERSON YOU ALREADY BELIEVE YOURSELF TO BE (P. 35) .

Ex on p. 35:

-Biggest barrier to positive change at any level is identity conflict. Good habits can make good sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action.
-PROGRESS REQUIRES UNLEARNING. BECOMING THE BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF REQUIRES YOU TO CONTINUOUSLY EDIT YOUR BELIEFS AND TO UPGRADE AND EXPAND YOUR IDENTITY.

-IDENTITY EMERGES FROM YOUR HABITS (P36). EVERY BELIEF, INCLUDING THOSE ABOUT YOURSELF IS LEARNED AND CONDITIONED THROUGH EXPERIENCE. YOUR HABITS ARE HOW YOU EMBODY YOUR IDENTITY. THE MORE YOU REPEAT A BEHAVIOR, THE MORE YOU REINFORCE THE IDENTITY.
Identity came from the latin word essentitas which means BEING and identidem which means REPEATEDLY. Your identity is literally your ‘repeated beingness’.
What does this mean to us that are followers of Christ given a new identity? A new creation? What are we allowing this to change/do in our lives? Our thoughts? Our habits?

Whatever your identity is right now, you only believe it bc you have proof of it (p37). Ex: “I didn’t start out as a writer. I became one through my habits”.
-We don’t change instantly- we change bit by bit, day by day, habit by habit. Continually undergoing microevolutions of the self.
-Every action we take is a vote for the type of person we wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of our new identity. MEANINGFUL CHANGE DOES NOT REQUIRE RADICAL CHANGE.  Small habits make a big difference by providing evidence of a new identity.
-Habits are the path to changing your identity- the most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do. (SCRIPTURE: from the heart the mouth speaks,,,)
-Each habit not only produces a result but also teaches you to trust yourself. You start to believe you can actually accomplish something and when the evidence becings to change, the story you tell yourself begins to change, too.  (p38)
-New identities require new evidence. If nothing changes, nothing is going to change.
-Decide the type person you want to be (Believers: The type you’ve been created to be)
-Prove it to yourself with small wins (Walk in it)

-Feedback loop: Habits shape identity and identity shapes habits.

-Are you becoming the person you want to become? The first step is not WHAT or HOW but WHO. You need to know who you want to be (who God has called you to be. God can help you change the beliefs you have about yourself. Your identity is not set in stone forever. You have a choice in every moment. You can choose the identity you want to reinforce today with the habits you choose today.
-Habits can help you achieve all sorts of things but at their core- they aren’t about HAVING something, they’re about BECOMING someone (original design).
-Your habits matter because they help you become the person you want to be. Quite literally, you become your habits.

Chapter 1: It’s not about your goals or your habits, it’s about your systems.

VIDEO LINK:

1 % improvements- story of British Cycling team

“It is 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.”
-Improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable- sometimes it isn’t even noticeable at all- but it can be far more meaningful, esp in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. If you can get 1% better each day for one year, you’ll end up THIRTY-SEVEN TIMES BETTER by the time you’re done.
-Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiples through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.

-We try positive changes but then the results never seem to come quickly so we slide back to previous routines.
-A single decision is easy to dismiss…making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. (And I’d add- who the Lord has created and called us to be).

-We should be FAR MORE CONCERNED WITH OUR CURRENT TRAJECTORY THAN WITH OUR CURRENT RESULTS. Outcomes are a lagging measure of our 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.

-People make a few small changes, fail to see a tangible result, and decide to stop. You think, “I’ve been running every day for a month, so why can’t I see any change in my body? Once this kind of thinking takes over, it’s easy to let good habits fall by the wayside. But in order to make a meaningful difference, habits need to persist long enough to break through this plateau- what I call the Plateau of Latent Potential.
If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential. COMPLAINING ABOUT NOT ACHIEVING SUCCESS DESPITE HARD WORK IS LIKE COMPLAINING ABOUT AN ICE CUBE NOT MELTING WHEN YOU HEATED IT FROM TWENTY-FIVE TO THIRTY ONE DEGREES. Your work was not wasted, it is just being stored. All the action happens at 32 degrees.

-ALL BIG THINGS COME FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS.

-if you want better results, FORGET ABOUT GOALS, FOCUS ON SYSTEMS INSTEAD
Results have very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed.
GOALS ARE ABOUT THE SYSTEMS YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE. SYSTEMS ARE ABOUT THE PROCESSES THAT LEAD TO THOSE RESULTS.
-Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.

-PROBLEMS FROM SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME THINKING ABOUT GOALS AND NOT ENOUGH TIME DESIGNING SYSTEMS:
1- Winners and losers all have the same goal- to win. The goal is always the same, but systems not implemented lead to diff outcomes.
2- Achieving a goal is only a momentary change: Ex: setting a goal to clean up a messy room. You get the room clean but it goes right back to messy. We have to keep chasing the same outcome because WE NEVER IMPLEMENTED OR CHANGED THE SYSTEM BEHIND IT. WE TREATED A SYMPTOM WITHOUT ADDRESSING THE CAUSE. The results are not the problem- the lack of system is. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.
3-  Goals restrict happiness. An either-or conflict. Either you meet your goal and are successful or you fail and are a disappointment. You may attain it but it rarely satisfies for long. But if you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you dno’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.
4- Goals are at odds with long-term progress: Once you meet the goal what happens next? We reach a goal then revert to old habits. 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. No one single accomplishment but a cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. It is our commitment to the process that will determine progress.

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 (p. 27).

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.