Success Hack
Success Hacks on How to Change Habits
“You can achieve anything you want in life! The key to getting there starts with your habits! Change your habits! Change your life!” Alex Dee
Twenty Second Rule Hack – Happiness Advantage
Studies have showed that if you want to change a habit, one of the ways to do so is make the habit you’re wanting to change or absolve take 20 sec. longer to attain. For example, for those wanting to stop watching TV, take the remote and put it where it takes you 20 seconds longer to get to it. Or, if you want to stop watching TV, take the remote and place it in another room or in a cabinet. Studies have showed that when people sit down and realize the remote is not in front of them and it’s going to take at least 20 seconds longer to get to it, they give up and look for something else to do. To add to that, if they add a book or an activity where they were wanting to watch tv, they usually end doing that activity (ex. Read a book, paint, play games with family, etc.)
Another study was done for a large corporation where they noticed the average worker spent over half their day on social media apps on their computers. So, they decided to make it harder to open up the social media apps. They stuck the app where they had to click on multiple folders before the worker could get access to it. Because it took so long to do it, over 20 seconds, most workers decided not to do it.
This works for a few reasons. One, during those 20 seconds, one is going from making a regular habit or unconscious choice they’re used to making, to thinking about what they’re doing and making it a conscious one. Second, and more importantly, humans have a tendency to be lazy and the reason why social media apps work so well is because they’re convenient to access. So, if we change where it takes time, we rather find something else that’s more convenient.
If you have a habit you’d like to change, make it 20 seconds longer to be able to attain it and you may find yourself breaking that habit.
This can also be used to incorporate good habits. For example, studies show that for runners who just started to jog, those who laid out their clothes and their shoes for the next morning the night before had more of a tendency to jog and adopt this new habit. If you look at this hack, it’s because it knocked out the 20 seconds that they would need to fumble around to figure out what they need to wear and had easy access.
To incorporate new good habits, make them easier to access, and knock out it taking longer than 20 seconds and succeed!
New Month’s Resolutions vs. New Year’s Resolutions Hack – Ryan Shea
How to make your New Year’s resolutions happen – I never make New Year’s resolutions. For one, it’s hard to make it happen, and one big goal is a lot harder to hit when compared to several small ones. So, I do new month’s resolutions instead. This gives me a chance to change a habit I want to permanently have in my life and then stack on that each month. This gives me a better chance to win. For example, here’s my new month’s resolutions:
Jan: Daily reading
Feb: No TV or Movies
Mar: No dairy
October: No gluten
Nov: Daily meditation
Dec: No news or social media feeds
I called this daily behavior month or elimination months. What’s great is by the end of that calendar, you’ll come away either not being dependent on that habit and then choosing whether you want to continue it or getting rid of it altogether!
This also allows you much better success in changing the habit. For New Year’s resolution, we have a tendency to make a bunch of goals and not be able to have success with any of them. This allows you to focus on one specific goal each month to change that habit and then move on to next month, building momentum along the way! That focus will lead you to success!
Rewiring Your Mind Hack – Joseph Clough
Getting to the root of your habits – Subliminal messages and hypnotherapy is one of the most effective hacks to resolve the deepest belief and letting go of the past! So, to make a true change in your habits, it’s best to find out the root of what’s causing that habit. This could be to lose weight, quit smoking, or be more ambiguous and hit your goals. With hypnotherapy, you’re able to go to the exact part of your subconscious mind that’s causing that habit. Once you find out what’s causing that (for example, you were always told you were not smart, or you were fat, or couldn’t do anything), you’re able to change the narrative or story in your subconscious from “I’m not enough” to “I am enough” or “I don’t crave smoking”, “I feel great”, and then your mind now has new ways of thinking and you were able to get to the root of the problem and rewire it! Then, you’ll see that it will progress from your thoughts to daily habits now that will allow you to get your results because the thing that was causing that bad habit has been rewired in your mind to a belief or thought that is reinforcing the goals you want to achieve!
B = MAT Hack – Jim Kwik
Changing behaviors permanently – So there was a guy name BJ Fogg, who did a study on how to change behavior and they come with a formula which is being B = MAT. This stands for behavior equals motivation, ability and trigger. So, let’s break that down with an example! If you want to change your behavior you have to change the motivation that’s behind it first so there’s always something that may help us or hurt us depending on that motivation. For instance, if you want to lose weight, it may be that you suddenly get a motivation to do it because you see yourself in the mirror. Or you have a major event coming up and you want to look good for so now you have a difference in motivation that makes you want to change! Or for some of us, there’s a death in the family which gives us a new way to look at things and now we have a different motivation.
The second change is ability. The question is do you have the ability to be able to make that behavior change. So, is there a certain skill set that’s required for you to be able to do that? For example, let’s say you want to open up your own digital agency; do you have the ability or skill set to be able to make that behavior change on a permanent basis.
The last one is trigger, which is changing the things that affect the behavior is not always the thing but the trigger that causes the thing. I can you give you an example as far as us losing weight. One of the things is our nutrition and one of the triggers is having healthy food laying around! So, one of the best things we could do is to get rid of the trigger and that will change the behavior. In this case, taking all the junk food and foods that are not good for us, out of your environment. This will reinforce the behavior change of eating healthy food. Triggers are going to be good or bad depending on whether it will lead to the behavior you want to have. A good trigger is healthy food where a bad trigger is junk food. For example, some of us have daily rituals in the morning and that’s a good trigger because it allows us to go out the right mindset to have a productive days that allows us to have a day where circumstances that come up don’t cost as much stress or anxiety! This behavior change works when we’ve had that daily ritual in place. So, whenever you want to change your behavior just look at what is your motivation. Do you have the ability to make that behavioral change, and get behind what is a trigger that’s causing it? With the B = MAT formula and these three, you’ll be able to make that behavior change now, and sustain it long term!
66 Days Hack – The ONE Thing – Gary Keller
How long does it take to develop a habit? Researchers have done tests where they have given nutrition and certain habit goals to a group of individuals to see how long it really takes to develop a habit. What they discovered was while the range was anywhere from 18 to 254 days, the sweet spot was 66 days where the habit they’re wanting to incorporate was coming through flawlessly and they were able to do it without thinking. It became a part of their daily habit. Self-development books often preach that it takes 21 days to create a habit… But scientific evidence has proven otherwise. The key is find a hobby that you would like to incorporate and take as long as you need in order to do so because once you’re able to incorporate that habit, you will have the discipline to be able to carry it out on a regular basis. In other words, it becomes a routine! And according to this research, it will take you 66 days to incorporate that habit!
**Disclaimer** Please forgive any spelling or grammatical errors in our posts. We’re not looking to win the spelling bee, or even compete. Our goal is to give you the main concepts and short implementable strategies, or what we call “Success Hacks”, so you can implement them right away and get the results you want. To that end, many of the hacks are paraphrase of a paragraph, chapter of a book, or a podcast interview. These are a summary and main points so you can gleam the wisdom and use it. They do not reflect the author or expert’s opinion that’s being quoted. For more info on any of the hacks, feel free to go to the source or Join Our Success Hacks Nation FB Community to ask questions.