"ATOMIC HABITS" (Chapter 5): The Best way to Start New Habits | Keto Mom Book Club
Updated: Oct 11, 2021
Keto Mom here!
There's two different things he's talking about, Implementing intentions and Habit stacking. If you already feel you've got good habits, add a new habit on a good one to keep going. If you don't have anything that you're working on, then you need to get specific with a time, a date and a place. So the punchline is clear, people who make specific plans for when and where they will perform a new habit, are more likely to follow through.
Points to Ponder
00:03 "Atomic Habits" by James Clear
00:38 The goal is to create systems
01:10 "The Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod
02:15 Habits and the systems in place
03:29 Three different groups
05:40 Implementing intentions
06:32 Time and a location
07:51 Being aware
09:10 Start the action
11:02 Don't mess up good for perfect
12:51 Habit stacking
14:01 The key is to tie a desired habit
14:14 Add a new habit on a good one
15:33 Make it obvious
16:57 Set an alarm clock
18:33 Copy the action, you don't have to recreate the wheel
Full Episode Transcript
Good morning! It is time to dive in to "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, we are on chapter five and we're talking about the best way to start a new habit. So as you're tuning in, where are you tuning in from, Welcome to the Keto Mom page. We are going through this book every morning, and the goal is to create systems and habits to where you don't reach your goals in the next thirty, sixty, ninety days, and then all of a sudden, spiral out of control, then come back next year to start over again. So my hope is that you're going along, or you're going through the book with us. Whether you're reading it, or you're just watching and taking notes. The point and the goal is to create systems that will help you create a lifestyle, to where you don't come back every single year feeling like you have to start over. I am tuning in from Minnesota, it is beautiful out, the sun is shining, and it is going to be a great day. I just got done working out, my personal morning routine is great, but I think it could always be a little bit better.
If you are following along, we did the "Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod, in the beginning of this month. And a handful of you are doing the 30 Day Challenge. We're on day five, and for those of you who are doing this, how is your morning going? Are you getting up early, are you not hitting your snooze button? Do you feel like when you own your morning, you own your day? That is the point of this book, if you don't have the "Miracle Morning" book, and you didn't follow along with us, I would encourage you to get the book and go through it. It's a very easy read if you want to own your day, it's incredible. So if you feel like you're at the point in your life where nothing is working, you've tried everything, you need to make a different pivot. I would challenge you to get the "Miracle Morning", because it might just be the mindset you need to make a couple pivots in the morning to own your day.
Some of you might be going, "I just need to be told what to eat"... I will tell you what to eat, I can tell you how to track your macros, or go drink more water and drink electrolytes.
I can tell you all of those things, but until you have the habits and the systems in place to reach your goal, you're going to keep it moving in a circular motion of setting a goal, having enough willpower to hit the goal, not keeping the habits intact, so you fall into bad habits, and then start over again.
So we're going to dive through chapter five of "Atomic Habits", super awesome. For those of you who have the book, how's it going? I want to get through the book for the rest of June, but I don't know if we'll finish by the end of June, so we may go into July. Here's what chapter five talks about, it's super great. Pay attention, if you're not going through the book, take some notes. It starts off with three groups, they had a whole group of people. The goal was I want to work out, they want to get their exercise routine intact.
All of these people wanted to get stronger, healthier, and their goal was going to work out more. So they had three different groups, the first group was a control group, and they simply asked them to track their workouts. Let us know if you work out every day, so that was group one. Group two was a motivational group, so they were asked to track their workouts. They were asked to read some type of material, and they also gave them some benefits of why working out would help them. So it would help them with heart disease, and they gave them all of these statistics.
Group One is tell us if you work out, Group Two is to tell us if you work out, read something and we're going to tell you why you should work out. Group three did all of those things, but they had a formulated plan on when they were going to work out. The formulated plan was, during this next week, I will partake in at least twenty minutes of vigorous exercise on____ and it says the day at a time in the place. So group three was very specific, and that's what we're going to talk about.
How did they do? Group Two, who had more motivation, did not do any better than Group One, who was just told to track their workouts a day. You'd think that motivation would maybe make the second group better, but it didn't. They were all basically the same. The group that did the best and actually exceeded their expectations was Group Three, that had very specific intention. So that's what he's going to talk about, he said the people that filled out that little sentence, "I'm going to do something" and then added a specific day, time and place, we're the ones that actually did the exercise. They committed, because they actually set a date. So they're going to talk about implementing intentions. He said "The sentence they filled out is what the researchers referred to as implementation intentions"...
So he's talking about two different things, Implementation intentions and then we're going to talk about Habit Stacking. Two different things, you can do one or both. He says, "Which is a plan that you make beforehand, about when and where you want to take the action. This is how you intend to implement a particular habit"... So prior to chapter five, we talked about cues.
He said "The cues that can trigger a habit come in a wide variety of forms. There's two common cues, there's a time and a location"...
So remember how we talked about earlier this week, a cue would be... You drive the same direction every single day, or your morning routine. You get up, make your bed, brushing your teeth, going into the bathroom, showering, and all those things you naturally. This morning, I woke up, I was dreaming so hard last night, but that alarm clock went off and I got up to work out, I honestly think I was in still Dreamworld. I realized as I was going in the kitchen, I was shaking up my ketones, and as I was doing all these things, the book popped into my head. I was just opening cupboards, and I felt like I was walking around with my eyes shut.
I realized then that I naturally have a morning routine that I didn't even have to think about it.
I went to the cupboard, I grabbed my shaker bottle, I turned the water on, I filled it with ice, and I went and grabbed my ketones. Before I knew it I felt like I didn't even think, I just had my shaker bottle in my hands and I was ready to go wor