Mind the Habit

You Change Best by Feeling Good

BJ Fogg

This phrase by Dr. BJ Fogg, resonated with me since the day I read it in his fascinating book Tiny Habits.

Appreciate every single, small, positive change you make towards a goal, with a smile on your face, without aiming for perfection and wanting all the results at once.

Your growth starts small, very small…. TINY!

Do you remember that the best way to build good habits is to break them down to one thing, and start small? Well, BJ Fogg has taken it further, going really tiny, introducing a concept of habit’s chain, which I really advise you to try right now…. yes now! Because Tiny is fast and safe.

Whenever you want to build a new habit, the best way to do it is to make it really tiny and perform it immediately after an established habit of yours.

This is the Anchor Moment: a cue that reminds you to do your new behaviour.

You then perform your tiny Behavior immediately after the Anchor Moment.

Finally you Celebrate immediately after the Behavior.

When I read in the book Tiny Habits about the Maui Habit I started immediately to use it. Every morning, after washing my face, I look into the mirror and I say: “Today is going to be a great day”… starting my day with a smile 😁. I know it can be viewed as a silly thing to do, but for me it works exactly because of that. I feel silly, it makes me smile and laugh…. What a better way to start the day?!

The habits chain is “as easy as ABC“:

Anchor moment: washing my face

Behavior: Maui Habit

Celebration: smiling and laughing in front of the mirror, FEELING GOOD

Do you know that you can CHANGE your life by changing your behaviours?

Our Behaviours are driven by Motivation, Ability and Prompt and the best way to understand how a behaviour occurs is by analysing the Fogg Behavior Model:

A Behaviour happens only when Motivation, Ability and Prompt come together at the same time: B=MAP

The relationship between Motivation and Ability is represented by a curve, the Action Line, above which the Behaviour will occur. Below it won’t.

If we are above the Action Line (i.e. we are really motivated to perform a simple task) when Prompted, we will perform the Behaviour.

But if we are below the Action Line (i.e. we want to perform a difficult task and we have a low motivation) when Prompted, we will NOT perform the Behaviour.

Be aware that Motivation it’s often unreliable. Unlike common belief, motivation is not the core of behaviour change. Of course, the more motivated you are, the more likely you are to perform a certain behaviour. Nevertheless you can be very motivated, but if the behaviour you want to perform is outside your ability skills, you will not succeed.

The easier a behaviour is to do, the less Ability you need to have and the most likely you are going to perform it, because you don’t need to dig deep into your motivation: a little motivation can be enough to perform an easy task. Ability is the most reliable variable in the Behavior Model.

***Ok, good! We are all set: we find a balance between Motivation and Ability and we can do all the behaviours we want, right? NOT EXACTLY!***

Without a Prompt, our level of Motivation and Ability do not matter….

No Prompt = No Behaviour!

If we don’t notice the Prompt, or if the Prompt happens at the wrong time, the Behaviour will not happen! It is of primary importance to design the Prompt correctly. Locating a habit in the right spot in your daily routine makes the difference between success and failure. The best way is to use a current, and solid, habit of yours as the Anchor (Prompt) to do the new Behaviour. And remember that the new Behaviour has to be performed immediately after the Anchor moment.

For example, thanks to the decision of journaling at the end of my morning routine, while sipping my coffee, I managed to build this beautiful habit.

Behaviours that become habits will constantly fall above the Action Line. To build the habit we want, we need to play with Motivation, Ability and Prompt to find the right combination that makes the behaviour happen. If we make the behaviour really tiny and so easy to do, that we can succeed even in our worst day, then we are in for a win.

Repetition will make the behaviour easier.

The Fogg Behavior Model is also incredibly useful to untangle bad habits. You have to understand the three different moments of the bad behaviour and try to change one at the time: decrease the motivation, make the behaviour harder to do or remove the prompt.

Removing the Prompt is the best way to stop a bad habit.

To do so you have to redesign your environment. If scrolling through Social Media in bed before going to sleep is, for example, your bad habit, you can remove the Prompt (having the phone by your bedside) by turning off your mobile before going to bed and leaving it in another room.

I understand Dr. BJ Fogg explanation about the unreliability of Motivation, and I still strongly believe that to build a good habit, and especially to untangle a bad one, you must first of all be motivated to do it, otherwise you won’t even start to make a change. I am talking about planting the seed of a change in your mind… I don’t think you can do it without Motivation. Then, of course, Motivation on its own is not going to be enough to perform or stop the behaviour, and also it won’t be at its peak every time you need it, therefore the importance of TINY HABITS and of the Fogg Behavior Model!

Creating tiny positive habits is the path to developing much bigger ones

BJ Fogg

I sincerely wish to thank Dr. BJ Fogg bjfogg.com, founder of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University, for granting me the permission to use his Fogg Behavior Model and for writing his book Tiny Habits https://amzn.to/47J3LjL