 If you haven't watched the first part of this series of two videos, I highly recommend you watch the first one in which I talk about the most important facts or most important information from the book Atomic Habits. Today we cover the following topics. How to get rid of bad habits, how to habit stack, how cues can trigger a habit and how to avoid them. I'm pretty sure everyone on this planet has a habit that they don't like. Be it eating junk food, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, being messy, a habit of running late. There are so many habits that aren't good for us but we still do them anyways. But why? As I mentioned in my previous video, this is very important so I'm gonna say it one more time. Habits that give you immediate satisfaction most likely harm you in the long term. Let's take eating junk food for example. Obviously every habit has to start some day and then we repeat that habit for a very long time and then it actually manifests into our life and it becomes an actual habit. Why do we eat junk food though? We know exactly that it's not good for our bodies. It's not healthy. It doesn't make us look good. It's just bad for us because it tastes good and it satisfies our craving. Okay now we're getting closer. Why do we have cravings? Who installed that program? Now I'm sorry to say that but you did. It is important to understand that every single craving that we have is linked to a desire. A simple desire could be just to feel good but what does that mean? Let me paint a picture for you. Peter works all day at a stressful job which doesn't fulfill him in any kind of way. When he comes home he's tired and doesn't want to do anything but relax. He grabs a beer and chips to watch his favorite Netflix show. Sounds familiar? So Peter's desire is to feel good. That craving built on that desire does everything in its power to satisfy that desire. Therefore the easiest way is to just sit down, turn on the TV, grab a beer and chips. Peter feels good immediately. Desire, check. If Peter does that a couple days during the week, voila you have created a bad habit. But how can Peter get out of this cycle? It is quite simple. Instead of fighting the bad habit all you have to do is create a new one. That's it. If you want more information on how to create a new habit just click the I think here. Click right here. That's the first video. It's six minutes just explaining how to create a good habit but I will also explain it in a shorter version right now. If Peter really wants to make a change and change the bad habit and create a new one a good way to start could be every day when he comes back from work instead of sitting down and watching television he goes immediately for a 15 minute walk. His new habit could sound something like this. Every day when I come home from work I go for a 15 minute walk without my phone. Why without the phone? Because we want to make sure that he focuses on his 15 minute walk which is basically the new habit. I know in the first video I mentioned that if you create a new habit it shouldn't last longer than two minutes. In this case I believe that 15 minutes of walk in is manageable if Peter cannot do that and he gets bored while doing so he should start with two minutes just you know walk around the block and come back. As soon as he gets that he can like increase to five minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes but again I think 15 minutes is possible and manageable. The first couple times will be extremely hard for Peter because his bad habit will lure him into the house where he knows the good feeling of like sitting down watching his favorite show having a beer and chips but after a couple of weeks he will want to walk even more because the benefits of being active will slowly kick in. He will feel better he will look better and his health will increase as well. This brings me to the next topic how to habit stack. After establishing that new habit a good way to improve even faster is to put another new habit right after the new one. Another great habit that he could establish right after walking 15 minutes a day is drinking a protein shake and consuming one piece of fruit. Super easy to do that one doesn't take longer than two minutes. Not only will that prevent him from grabbing the beer and the chips it will also satisfy the craving of feeling good. I am pretty sure by now you can imagine what the new habit would sound like but I will say it anyways. Every day after my walk I drink one protein shake and eat one piece of fruit. As you can see in this example he doesn't have to focus on the bad habit and getting rid of the bad one he just establishes new ones and focuses on the positive rather on the negative. Now how can cues trigger a habit? In our example a cue could be the sound that Netflix makes whenever you turn it on. It's a familiar sound and you know exactly what's going to happen next. This audible cue can trigger the habit of him wanting a beer and chips because he trained himself to do so. A great example is the experiment Pavlov did with a dog and the bell. If you're not familiar with it basically here's the experiment. Every time Pavlov fed the dog the dog would start drooling so he associated food drooling. After a while he showed the dog the food and had a bell so he did that and every time he heard the sound and smelled the food he started drooling. The next step was he removed the food and just used the bell and the dog immediately started drooling and wanted the food because he associated the ding with the food. Same thing in our example with the Netflix. We humans are no different from dogs in that perspective. So how can Peter avoid cues? The best way to remove a cue is just to make it harder for yourself. In the book Atomic Habits the author mentioned that one person I forgot his name had a Netflix addiction and that addiction was in the way of another goal that he has of losing weight. So that person was a genius. So what he did was he used the treadmill connected it to the television and created a program that only if he walked Netflix would work. So every time he stopped walking the show would stop immediately. So he created a new habit of walking while enjoying his Netflix show. That's Falco in the back. Another person had a video game addiction which stole all of his free time. That person had a genius idea as well. Every time he finished playing the game he unplugged the entire computer. I know it's annoying. So that way he made it really hard for himself to show up the next day in front of his computer and just start playing because he needed 15 minutes to just assemble it. The takeaway from this is we love convenience. The harder something is the lower the chance we casually start doing it. Last but not least how can I avoid bad habits. The first step is to write down all the bad habits that either slow you down in your progress or a detrimental to your health. Figure out what your desire is that creates the craving and find the cues that start the bad habit. Then go through the list of topics that we discussed today and create new habits above your bad habits that will just overwrite them. Focus on the new habit that you want to establish rather than focusing on the bad ones. One last thing if you fall back into a bad habit don't give up. The most important thing is to get right back into the new habit because the longer you wait the harder it is to get back into it. I wish you all the best by creating your new habits or getting rid of your bad ones. And if you want to read the book I have a link in the description below for your convenience. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.