Every Olympian wants to win a gold medal. Every candidate wants to get the job. And if successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers.
——Automatic Habits
At the beginning of 2023, I saw many bloggers promoting the idea of "don't do a to-do list, do a result list." I
n other words, instead of having too many "New Year's resolutions," have a "result plan" and they also advocate that "if you dare to think, you can achieve.”
However, the book "Automatic Habits" points out that everyone actually has some great, far-reaching and attractive goals and results, but any goal implicitly carries the assumption: "Once I achieve that goal, I will be happy soon.”
The problem here is that you are constantly delaying enjoying the supposed happiness that comes with the result and always hoping for the realization of the next milestone. The actual path of life you take is unlikely to match the journey in your mind when you set out.
Automatic Habits was published in 2019 and its author is James Clear, a best-selling author for The New York Times. He founded the famous "Habit Academy" and provides training for many organizations and individuals who desire to cultivate good habits for their lives and work, including many Fortune 500 companies and leaders and employees of growing startups.
"Becoming that kind of person"
is your deepest motivation
The author points out that success is not a target to be achieved or a finish line to cross. It is a system that allows people to progress and a process of constant improvement.
For example, two people are offered an unhealthy late-night snack.
One of them says, "No, thank you, I am on a diet."
This response sounds reasonable, but it implies that they still feel overweight and unhealthy and are trying to make a change. They believe that if they have this belief, they will certainly see change.
The other person says, "No, thank you, I don't eat late-night snacks anymore."
This response is slightly different, but it indicates a change in identity. Eating late-night snacks was a part of his past life, but it is not part of his current life. He believes that he is no longer the person who is "tempted to eat but has to resist late-night snacks.”
If we set goals and then decide what actions we should take to achieve them, we don't even consider the beliefs that motivate us to act, and we never change the way we see ourselves.
Well, we always hope for the next milestone. It's like feeling that there is a switch in life, and it will be completely changed with a single press. Finally, if you fail or fail to achieve the set goals, you will be disappointed.
Our goal is not to read as many books as we want to obsessed with that number. Our real purpose is to be a reader, a person who loves to read.
Our goal is not to run a marathon per se, but to become a true runner, someone who loves sports, or improves their physical or mental health through exercise.
When you fall in love with the process rather than the outcome, you don't have to wait for the happy moment of so-called "success."
What we need to do is not quite a few to achieve a certain result. What really needs to change is our sense of who we are, the identity that leads to these outcomes, and the whole system that is associated with it.
Are you really becoming
that kind of person?
We all know what kind of outcome we want: a vest line that stops feeling anxious, or a doubling of wages and a few digits of earnings. That's fine.
If we shouldn't be focusing on the outcome itself, then what exactly should we do?
The authors propose to start with the target outcomes and start pushing back to figure out what kind of people can get those results. You can ask yourself,
"What type of person is the person who has the results I want?"
Who can really lose 40 pounds a year? Who can really master a new foreign language? Who can start a successful business?
This is what the author interprets as "habit". In fact, there are no good habits or bad habits in the world, only effective habits.
Once I read a blog of a young girl who had just graduated a few years. She shared that if she wanted to raise her salary in her next job, she would first go online to see the specific recruitment needs of this type of work, compare what she did not do enough, what kind of ability she needed to make, or what kind of case works she needed to supplement. She then gives herself one year to complete those abilities or case works.
What we should do is this derivation process:
- Does this behavior now help me become the kind of person I want to be?
- Does this work/life habit support or oppose my desired identity?
- Habits that reinforce your ideal identity are desirable. Habits that conflict with your desired identity are often bad.
You should change the system,
but you need to start with small details
Starting with the small details of the day, this is the most respected method in this book.
Whether it's losing weight, starting a business, winning a championship in any competition, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to work on something earth-shattering. However, it's easy to overestimate the importance of a defining moment, and it's easy to underestimate the value of making small improvements every day.
The author argues that almost any grand life goal can be translated into small actions. Small choices add up, each setting a trajectory for how you spend the next period of time.
For example, want to run in the morning the next day? Then before going to bed, take out your running shoes and put them at the door, and put your sportswear in a place where you can touch it when you wake up.
Want to draw more? The author recommends that you keep pencils, pens, notebooks, or all sorts of other drawing tools on your desktop, everywhere and within reach.
Imagine if you could improve by 1% every day for a year, by the time you finish, you would have improved 37 times. Conversely, if you regress at a rate of 1% every day for a year, whatever you have will drop to almost zero.
Life is a long journey, and everyone is experiencing their own growth. It's not a straight road, it's a curve. Our purpose is not to have a short period of happiness or win any competition, our purpose is to keep competing and improving ourselves.