Habits and how to build or eliminate them: Change your habits, change your life

1. A brief introduction to the course: Hello everyone, welcome to the course, and this course is called habits and how to build or eliminate them. Change you have this change your life. And I am your instructor, Ricki Lake Erie. And in this course, I will teach you tools, techniques, and processes that can be used to change bad habits. Build good habits, change your life in the process. So let me first begin by introducing myself. I'm a PhD student in Business Administration. My research involves entrepreneurial finance, entrepreneurial psychology, including entrepreneurial motivation and habits that lead to success and employ productivity. Before embarking on my PhD, I worked as a data scientist and before that as a data analyst and my hobby is mountain trekking. And this goes draws from my research on entrepreneurial habits that lead to success. So what do you get for your money? You learn what habits or you learn how habits are formed. You learn different tools and techniques to change habits. You'll learn how to build good habits. You learn how to change bad habits. What do you gain from this course? You'll gain an understanding of tools to change bad habits, of tools to build good habits. You learn, tried and tested psychological techniques of habit formation and change. And you gain an understanding of habit formation and Changed Psychology. And what are the prerequisites for this course? You need to be eager to learn. You need to have a desire to improve your life. You need to have the courage to make important changes in your life and you need to be adaptable. So without further ado, let's begin learning. Thank you so much. 2. What is a habit: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to learn what a habit is. What is a habit? A habit is something people do repeatedly and unconsciously in response to some Cu. By Cu I'm referring to trigger or some external stimuli. A habit gets stronger over time. The more you indulgent a habit, the stronger it gets. So an example of a habit would be nail-biting, eating too much over eating nervous tics such as biting her lips, are picking your skin or picking your nose, or playing with your tongue. And smoking is also a bad habit unless it becomes an addiction habit. Basically, it's something you do repeatedly and unconsciously in response to some trigger or external stimulus. Remember this. Thank you so much. That's all for this lecture. 3. Breakdown o habits: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And in this lecture we're going to break down habits. So what is the habit forming mechanism? You have some external cues or triggers. Cues or triggers may be looking at something or someone telling you something or a word that triggers some sort of reaction in you, right? So when these cues or triggers are present, a trigger for smoking. Exam e.g. maybe Stress, write your sentences, transmit these triggers to the brain. So you have cues or triggers and then your census transplant these triggers to the brain by sensors. I'm referring to your five senses, your sense of smell, sense of touch, sense of sight, etc. And in the brain yet anchors which are like filters, which are like past memories, which lead to filters. These filters process this information and tell your muscles, del your organs what to do, right? So you have anchors in brains form d2 repetition of processes, right? So the more you repeat something, these anchors gets stronger. These anchors tell you how to respond. So after you respond, you get some reward, right? So you respond by smoking, you get a reward, you feel a reduction in stress. You have cues or triggers. You have sensors that transmit these triggers to the brain. You have anchors in the brain which are formed. You do repetition of process signals, and these anchors tell your body how to respond. And once you've responded, you get some reward from the habit. If you're over eating, you might get some conflict. If you're smoking, you might get some relaxation. So that is how the habit mechanism works. Thank you so much. 4. Goals and habits: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about how goals and habits are interrelated, right? So habits are essential for gold fulfilling activity, right? So all habits lead to some goal fulfillment. E.g. if you eat a lot of fatty food, it might give you satisfaction. Comfort food. Comfort food might give you satisfaction or comfort. And satisfaction in the goal and eating. Fatty foods is the habit. The goal you're chasing satisfaction and you're achieving that through eating comfort food. So all habits lead to goal fulfillment and a strengthened every time a goal is fulfilled. So an example would be smoking, leading to relaxation. Relaxation is the goal and smoking is the habit. By smoking, you're attaining a state of relaxation and your goal in this case is relaxing. So as you can see, you have a desire for gold fulfillment, which is a queue, and then environmental cue, which tells you that a goal needs to be fulfilled. For instance, your boss shouts at you, and that's a cue. And that tells you that you need to become more relaxed. So you pick up a cigarette and smoking. And desire for goal fulfillment leads to habit. And habit leads to goal fulfillment through response. So once you engage in a habit, this leads to some goal fulfillment. And eventually what happens is habits go on autopilot. You no longer need a goal fulfillment que, no longer need to fulfill a goal. Habits basically become a part of your system. So goal fulfillment is no longer required after awhile. So initially if you are smoking to combat stress, now you're smoking because it's become a habit. So you smoke just whenever you feel like smoking, right? So when a habit is being formed, goal fulfillment is key. So there has to be a desire for gold fulfillment that leads to formation of a habit. And habit leads to a response, which is essentially goal fulfillment, which is reinforced by a reward that you get at the hand of indulging in a habit. Thank you so much. That's all for today's lecture. 5. What habits to change: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to start discussing about different techniques that can be used for changing habits. But what is the first step in changing a habit? Well, you have to identify which habit you want to change. You may have a multitude of habits, but you may want to change only one habit at a time. So you have to decide which have to change, right? So list out your habits that you want to change today. Right now. It may be smoking, it may be overeating, it may be biting your nails, maybe biting ellipse it, maybe picking your skin or picking your nose, right? This them out and read them on a scale of importance, 1-10. If the reading is nine, that means it's very important. It has to be changed readily. If the reading is one, it means it can wait for a little bit long. So you have to start with habits that are rated higher, right? I've given a table over here. You can see that I've listed to have is over eating and sleeping late. And you're supposed to change them. So rack your brain and read them on the basis of importance. So it's over eating. More important to sleeping lead, more important, maybe over eating is more important right now because you have become really, really rodent. You might want to cut down on all the eating. Overeating has a rating of nine and sleeping lead has a reading of eight. So basically, that is how you determine which habit to address right now at this very moment. Thank you so much. That's all I have in today's lecture. 6. Reinforcement: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to discuss another habit changing technique is called reinforcement. So what is reinforcement? Reinforcement is a psychological technique that is based on behavioral psychology, is a field of psychology that works on changing behavior and defines how behavior can be changed and is based on behavioral psychology tool called operant conditioning, which was found by BF Skinner. So what is reinforcement if two types of reinforcement. So the first type of reinforcement is positive reinforcement. If you reward positive behavior with an addition of something good to a person's life. So if a person buys his knees every time it stops biting his knees, you give the person a chocolate or toffee or logins. So that is how you're rewarding good behavior, good behavior and tales of good habits and deals. You stop biting your nails. And every time a person stops biting snails, he's rewarded with something positive. With addition of something positive to his life, which is chocolate or a toughy. But be creative about this. The, the reward can be anything. It can be anything under the sun. So you have to be creative about this. Then we have negative reinforcement. So good behavior or habit is real and rewarded with the removal of something negative from a person's life. Suppose you had that nagging mom, which all of us have, right? So if you stop biting nails, your mom will stop nagging. You hated when your mom nags. But if you start biting your nails, your mom will stop neck. So you're removing something negative from your life by indulging in a good habit. So the negative thing is the irritation you get from hearing your mother NAG. So you're removing that when you indulgent good habits. So you're rewarding good habits by removing something negative from your life. That is negative reinforcement. Rewards motivate people to change bad habits. For instance, chocolate for a child, for finishing homework on time Is being rewarded with a chocolate for finishing homework on time. Finishing homework on time is a good habit. Rewards motivate people to build good habits, right? A chocolate for a child, for going to sleep early. So going to sleep early is a good habit and it will reward that with the chocolate. What it can do is you can try gamification, right? So in any instance, in any situation, you can try to gamify the entire process of good habit formation. So for instance, people who attend class regularly are given donors at the end of the course. It's like a game. If you attend class regularly, you'll be given a donut. And everyone loves donuts. At the end of the class, if you attend regularly and form a good habit of attending regularly, you're given a doughnut, you gave me buying the whole thing. For instance, on Amazon, if people leave reviews than people are given stars, reviews, read it. Reviewers are given a certain status. That is gamification. They're not giving anything physical in return for a review, but you're giving review of stars and making them amazon experts, right? So that is how reinforcement works. So remember, positive reinforcement, addition of something positive to a person's life for developing a good habit of changing a bad habit. Negative reinforcement, removal of something negative from a person's life in reward for good behavior or habit, or forming a good habit and changing a bad habit. Thank you so much. 7. Punishment: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about another habit changing technique called punishment. What is punishment? We all know what punishment is, but in this context, management is a behavioral psychology tool that is based on operant conditioning, BF Skinner's operant conditioning. So what is positive punishment, negative behavior or habit is punished by adding something negative to a person's life. That is punishment, right? So you're punishing someone for indulging or engaging in negative behavior or habit. For instance, every time you use profanities, your mother Find the $1. So if you have a pocket money of $10 per day or $10, $100 per week. Your mother basically deduct $1 from that every time you use a profanity. So you're being punished for engaging in a bad habit. That is how bad habits changed because people want to avoid punishment. People want pleasure and want to avoid pain. Now what is negative punishment? Negative behavior or habit is managed by removing something positive from a person's life. Think about detention. You misbehave in school. You have bad habits or a bad habit of talking in class and school, and you're giving detention. So you have to stay at school longer. And you cannot go back home or you cannot go out with your friends, right? Another example would be rationing chips and cola for eating too much if you overeat someone in your family or loved one, may reaction chips and Cola, they won't give you a packet of chips, are cooler if you are eating too much, right? So you're removing something positive from your lives that will motivate you to change your bad habit of overeating. Because you need some call-out, some chips, let's say during the day for as a snack. And if you overeat on them, then someone in your family or loved one will, rationally, they'll prevent you from eating all of it, right? Punishments motivate people to change bad habits. A penalty such as denying a child chocolate for biting means if a, if a child by snails, you deny the child chocolate, so that is punishing the child. So the child will try to change his habit if he's denied a chocolate because he wants the chocolate. So in order to make certain that he gets his chocolate in prey to change the bad habit. Punishment motivates people to build good habits. E.g. if you are a smoker, your girlfriend refuses to kiss you if you smoke. So that's a punishment because your girlfriend wound tissue. So essentially you are trying to give up a bad habit and a girlfriend might insist that you chew gum instead of smoking. So in order to get that gets from your girlfriend, you are basically developing the good habit of chewing gums, right? So that is how punishment works. There can be gamification to in this case, for instance, if you are in a prep school system or if you are in a boarding school system, e.g. like in Harry Potter. So you have house points, right? There are different houses and people are given points for achievements and points are deducted for misbehavior of bad habits. So essentially, if children cry and kindergarten, house points will be deducted if they are unless they want particular house that's like Gryffindor or yellow or red house, then house points will be deducted. If the child cries too much in class, that will motivate the child to change the bad habit, right? So that is all about punishment. Thank you so much. 8. Pros and Cons: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about the pros and cons list. Yes, the age old pros and cons lists much dried, much happening, but it's very useful. So you have to list out pros and cons about why you want to change the habit out. What the pros for the habitat and what the cons for the habitat. For instance, have a T-bill over here. You have a habit like, Oh, we're eating the pros are mental satisfaction, the guns or weight gain, or sleeping late as a habit, let's say. And the prose or more time to watch Netflix and cons or lesser amount of sleep which will affect you at work, right? So you have to read pros and cons on a scale of gen and decide if pros at greater than concept pros are greater than cans, then you might want to continue that habit, right? Let's say if it's a good habit, if cons are greater than prose, then you want to change that habit because that is probably a bad habit, for instance, over eating is a bad habit. We'd get, maybe read it as ten out of ten. You don't want to don't want to weight gain with, no one wants to gain weight. And the pro would be mental satisfaction, which is probably rated as six out of ten. So in this case, the cone is greater than the pro, right? So we'd gain is much more severe than having some mental satisfaction from over eating. So in order to prevent weight gain, you will be motivated to change the habit of over eating. So list out all your habits and find out the pros and cons for all these habits we created with it. It's not necessarily that you need to have only one row and one column in this table. You can have multiple pros, Multiple cons, list them out, read them, and then decide which is heavier. The pros or the cons are heavier than change the habit of the pros are heavier than continuing with the habit. Thank you so much. 9. Thought, emotions and behaviour: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to discuss thoughts, emotions and behavior and how the thoughts, emotions and behavior Nexus leads to bad habits or indulgence and bad habits. You have thoughts which leads to emotions, which leads to behavior, leads to emotions. And it brings about behavior, an example. So the toddlers, I need to stop over eating. The emotion is shame because you've been eating too much. So you feel embarrassed, you feel ashamed of yourself, right? The behavior is let me check the fridge for something healthy. Do you want to change your habit? You want to eat healthy. So you go to the fridge and open it to check There's something healthy to eat. Then you find this ice cream in the fridge and you're thinking, wow, this ice cream in the phage, then the emotion you feel is irritation. Why should I deny myself ice cream? I deny myself a lot. Why should I deny myself? I scream, I want to feel good. Ice cream makes me feel good and the behavior, you end up eating ice cream. So what does this tell you? What does this example tell you? It tells you that if you get caught in the emotions behavior cycle, then you might end up indulging in battle because it'll be very difficult for you to change bad habits. Because the more you think, the more stressed you are and the worst emotions you feel. If you feel bad emotions, it leads to bad behavior, bad habits, right? So break the pattern, do not get caught in your emotions. Read about it. If you're feeling bad about something, forget about it. Be kind to yourself. Tell yourself that no, I'm not going to indulge because I'm feeling bad, I'll do something else, right? So keep don't keep dwelling on your touch. If you're having these kind of parts. Negative thoughts or thoughts about indulging in bad habits, engaging in bad behavior. Same your thought and I'll teach you how to do that in the next few lectures. The change of thought that you'd not feel that emotion which leads to bad behavior or bad habits. That's all for now. Thank you so much. 10. Awareness and habit diary: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about the habit daily. So what does it have a diary do? Well, the habit diary brings about awareness. You have to become aware of your cues and triggers that lead to bad habits. We need to be aware of what motivates you, what triggers you to indulge in bad habits? So use a habit diary to map your habits right? Now, how does it have a diary look like it looks like this. As in the table. You have time, you have habit, if situation, you have thoughts or feelings, which are the triggers essentially. And you have how long for you indulged in that bad habit, then you have what made you stop? For instance, I've given an example of a yet for 10:00 P.M. you started nail-biting, right? You are sitting alone at home. You are really bored and he started nail biting your nails for five-minutes. And what made you stop? Your husband rebuked to? That is what media. So your husband came into the room and saw you nail-biting and he was like, not indulgent this bad habit that out then at 05:30 P.M. you will over eating. The habit is over eating. The situation is such. Afterward your dad, you're exhausted, right? So that's the trick of being tired and exhausted. And the time is after work. You over eight or 15 min. When did you stop? You fetch like a stomach will burst. That is when he's talked. Map your habits like this so that you know how to break down your habits and you understand you have is better. What leads to habit? What traders you'll have it? And how do you respond? How long do you respond? What makes you stop? Once you know all of this, you will be well equipped to deal with your habits. So that's all for today's lecture. Thank you so much. 11. Identify triggers: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about how you identify triggers. Triggers that lead to instances of bad habits or leads to manifestation of bad habits. So how do you identify triggers? You identify using triggers that lead to bad habits through the habit. Now, had given a shorter version of the habit diary over here. In this case, you have the time, you have the habit, you have the queue or trigger, and you have how long before you gave in? Let's say at 04:10 P.M. you felt like nail-biting. You started nail biting. And what made you start nail-biting? Anxiety about it is suppose you're a student in, you have an exam coming up. You feel some anxiety and he started biting your nails? And how long before you gave him, how long could you resist that habit? Well, 2 min right at 05:30 P.M. you started over eating. You are bored. Let's say after work, you're bored. What do you do? You start over eating. How long before you gave him, how long could you resist the habit? 5 min, right? So in this case, as you can see, you have the queue or credit column and this q are true. The column will list out what leads to what triggers your habit. For instance, nail-biting was triggered by anxiety about a test. Over eating was triggered by boredom. You're feeling bored, that triggered you to overweight. You're feeling anxious about a test that triggered you to nail-biting. You can do the same thing for smoking, right? Rough day at work. Your boss shouted at you and you started smoking. So what was the trigger boss shouting at you, right. Or a certain time in the day, right? 08:00 P.M. in the night, you're feeling kind of empty. You have had dinner, all of that and if you like smoking. So what the time in the night, 08:00 P.M. after dinner. You are triggered to smoke, right? So after every meal you feel like smoking, let's say after every meal, you are triggered to smoke. The time after the meal is the trigger. The meal is a trigger, right? So after every meal, you are triggered and that is how you smoking habit was fun. So that's all for today's lecture. Thank you so much. 12. Pattern Interrupt: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about pattern interrupt or pattern interrupters, right? What a pattern interrupt us. Well, pattern interrupt us. Retain your response to triggers by interrupting the automatic patterns that follow cues or triggers leading to a response. So let's say a queue or trigger was boredom and it led to over eating. What is the pattern interrupter? A pattern interrupt, it essentially changes your response. So you are on autopilot, you feel bored and you feel like eating and you start eating. Instead of that, when you feel like eating, you can do something else, which will interrupt the autopilot mode, which will interrupt the pattern. A pattern interrupt or can be an activity that diverse your mind. Or it can be a word too such as never again, you feel like eating and you say to yourself never again. That split second that you use are utilized to say to yourself never again, that will interrupt the pattern that will change your mind, right? So I have a table over here. In this case, you have time time when you felt like indulging in the habit. The habit is nail-biting. The QR triggers anxiety about the tests and the pattern interrupt. What can it be, be creative about this? By the way, the pattern of interrupting, in this case can be playing a computer game, of playing cell phone game with your fingers. You can play it back to you with your fingers, right? So instead of nail-biting, you're interrupting the pattern and you start playing on your cell phone with your fingers. You are engaging your fingers, occupying them, and hence you will or not, nail-biting. Another type of pattern interrupter would be useful in the case of over eating at 05:30 P.M. you felt like, Oh, we're eating. Trigger was boredom. You are feeling bored and you feel like over eating, right? Instead of over eating, what it can do is every time you feel bored, go on YouTube and start watching a video. So you're occupying your mind. You're no longer feeling bored because you're only YouTube watching a video, you're doing this instead of overeating. So in the first case, playing a cell phone game is a pattern interrupt. The second case, watching a YouTube video is a pattern interrupt. So essentially, if you watch a YouTube video, it will stop you from overeating because you are getting out of Autopilot before. Whenever you feel bored, you started with eating, but in doubt, because you have something else to do when you feel bored, you're no longer over eating. So that's all for today's lecture. Remember that uninterrupted can be anything. It can be an activity that diversity of mind. It can be a word that brings you out of your reverie and brings you out of the autopilot mode. It can be playing a game when you feel like nail-biting, thereby occupying your fingers. It can be chewing gum when you feel like smoking. It can be going for a walk. When you feel like drinking, you feel like drinking, you end up going for a walk, right? Instead of drinking, you're interrupting the pattern and you're doing something healthier for a wall. So that is all about battery interrupters. 13. Pause and think: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about the technique called pause and think what is positive thing, right? As the name suggests, when there's a trigger, that impulse you to engage in a bad habit, you take a deep breath and you pause and think for a few seconds or a couple of minutes, right? You pause and think about whether you want to indulge in the bad habit. So pausing and thinking lets the conscious brain over ideas subconsciously, all habits or subconscious, right? Because you have ankles or filters formed in your mind, which impel you to engage in a certain habit in response to a trigger becomes a subconscious process. But by pausing and thinking, you're engaging your conscious brain, right? What is your conscious brain and the conscious brain takes all the decisions for you. It rationalized the subconscious brain cannot oppression, the license cannot rationalize. It's irrational. Or rather it works on autopilot. So the conscious brain rationalizes. So by pausing and thinking, you're actually putting in effort to think about your habit tray. And it brings you out of autopilot mode. It increases willpower, as has been shown by science. Thinking and pausing before any action increases with Bob because willpower is a conscious activity, right? So basically what you're doing is you're bringing yourself out of autopilot and you're stopping the automatic habit manifestation, right? So basically you can pause for 2 min and compare pros and cons. This will bring you up autopilot more. Think about whether you want to have that extra cake after having a full me. Whether you want to have that extra tub of ice cream after having a very fulfilling lunch. Think for 2 min. And after that, if you still feel like it, you can go for it. But in most cases, if you're trying to change your habit, then by, by pausing and thinking, you will convince yourself not to engage in that bad habit because you have given some time to thinking about it and you will have interrupted the baton by just pausing, breathing deeply and thinking about the pros and cons of doing something that will be harmful to you in the long run, right? So that is all about pausing and thinking. Thank you so much. I'll see you in the next lecture. 14. Positive Visualization: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about a technique called positive visualization. So your subconscious mind, which is the part of the brain that is responsible for automatic reactions running your body than memories and emotions. The subconscious mind cannot think in terms of words are complex logic. It thinks in terms of pictures, right? So you show it a picture, and it finds it difficult to distinguish between past and present. So if you visualize yourself as a healthy fit men, although you're obese, a conscious mind will consider you to be healthy and fit. It'll be tricked into believing that you are healthy and fit, right? So you have to visualize yourself happy and living a good life without your bad habits. So if your bad habit was overeating, then visualize yourself eating a normal portion of food. Visualize yourself working now, visualize yourself in shape with very little body fat and a great amount of muscles visualize yourself in that manner. And your subconscious mind is tricked into believing that you have already conquered the bad habit of eating and your clinical life, bad habit free. So your subconscious mind is tricked into believing the new visualized situation and helps you change your actions accordingly. So action may be overheated and your subconscious mind wants it, believes that you have stopped awaiting what it believes that you're a healthy, fit man who eat just the normal portion of food that should be eaten by a normal, healthy man, then your subconscious mind will convince you internally that you have stopped over eating. And next time you see food, a lot of food you won't feel like, Oh, we're eating. This is how the subconscious mind works. And it has been proven by science that the subconscious mind works in terms of pictures, right? For instance, UFC is UFC as in the mixed martial arts Ultimate Fighting Championship, at least visualize every move. They visualized before a fight about how they're going to counter and comeback the moves of the opponent. What visualization does is it prepares the bread, making the brain think that what you're visualizing is happening in real or has happened in real life just like the proactively so visualize every move on the field. Before going into the field, you have to visualize that you have already achieved elimination of the bad habit from your body, from your system, from your life. So basically visualize that you are healthier eating the right portion of food. And next time you see a lot of food, you won't feel like overeating. That is one way you can trick your mind into changing the habit. So that's all for today's lecture. Thank you so much. 15. Negative Visualization: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about a technique called negative visualization. Is the opposite of positive visualization. In positive visualization, you're visualizing yourself having conquered the habit. You're visualizing yourself fit, healthy without the bad habit and negative visualization. You're visualizing the negative effects of indulging in a bad habit, right? So, like I said before, the subconscious finds it easier to think in terms of pictures, right? So if you're a smoker, let's say you have a habit of smoking. You have to scare your subconscious mind by imagining how you'd end up if you had lung cancer. How do you do that? Visualizing detailed visualize yourself coughing out blood, emaciated, and in pain. Visualize the negative effects of your bad habit of smoking. So scare your subconscious until the idea that the bad habit of smoking needs to be given up takes root in your subconscious. So basically you have to convince your mind that smoking is bad for your health. Now, when people become aware of negative consequences of bad habits, then they try changing that bad happened. For instance, in many countries on cigarette packets is written that smoking is injurious to health. But in many other countries, pictures are provided. Pictures of people suffering from cancer, dying from cancer, pictures of the lung of a cancer patient. That is how pictures are used to scare people into giving up smoking. So what you can do for yourself is to visualize the bad effects of smoking down the line. You may not have cancer at the moment, but visualize how smoking can lead to cancer and how smoking can destroy your life, right? So you can do the same for overeating to visualize yourself fatter than a veil. Visualize yourself as an obese, extremely obese man, finding it difficult to move, finding it difficult to sit in a certain place, finding it difficult to fit into your clothes. And that scares your subconscious mind into saying to your conscious mind that you have to make certain that you stop me from smoking or drinking or over eating, right? So that is how negative visualization works. You scare your mind by pitting pictures and visualized images so that your mind responds by wiggling and influencing you in giving up the bad habit. So that's all for today's lecture. Thank you so much. Like I said before. Your mind, a cautionary tale. Thank you. 16. Kaizen: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about the habit changing process. The first step in the habit training process is also a technique. It's called Kaizen. Kaizen is a Japanese word for continuous improvement in small steps. You improve in small steps, and these small steps are additive. So take a bad habit, change it one step at a time. Do not attempt to change the habit all at once. If you're smoking 20 cigarettes a day, reduced to 19, then reduced to 18 gives you a body and mind time to adapt. How our bad habits prompt, right? So you drink one Pepsi a day first. Then after some time, you feel thirsty and you drink Pepsi every time you feel thirsty. This forms a bad habit. And at the end of, let's say, one year, you're drinking fight cans of Pepsi a day. Maybe at the end of two years, you're drinking six cans of Pepsi a day. You're adding more than 500 to 600 empty calories to your body. Empty calories, which gives you no nutritious value, but they are adding to your weight, body weight. So this is how bad habits are formed. You start with one pepsi, then after a while, every time you feel thirsty, you have a Pepsi, then after a while you having six cans of Pepsi a day. Same goes for anything else, right? But smoking, you start in one cigarette today. Then after a while you're smoking three and you say to yourself, I'm just moving three cigarettes a day. Not much. Then after awhile you're smoking tensegrity. After a while you're smoking 15th diversity. That is how these habits are formed. They form little by little until the habit versions and dx are very, very deleterious form. So I'll give an example of how Kaizen can be applied, right? You're trying to change your habit of eating junk food every day. So let's say you consume 4,000 calories early 2000s, it comes from junk food. 2000s from your regular healthy meals. What sort of junk food do you eat? You eat chips, you eat fries, you'd McDonald's huge soft drink, drink soft things. So first you have to identify which food article you can remove without feeling absolutely naked, are absolutely exhausted by not having that food article, right? So the first thing you have to do is remove one food article and let's say you remove chips from your diet. So you are reducing 500 calories. Have one goal by just removing chips from your diet. Then one by one year to remove other junk food from your diet. So first you remove chips, that's a small improvement, right? That's the first step. Then you remove cooler, then you remove hamburgers, then you remove fries. So one-by-one, you removing junk food articles from your diet. And then you're going to replace the junk food articles with something heavy like salad, right? So you remove price from your diet, replace it with salad. Then you remove color from your dad. You replace it with non sugary fruit juice. Then you remove, handle this from your daddy, replace it with, let's say, big, big chicken. And then you remove sovereigns from your diet. Like that. You go one step at a time slowly without changing your entire diet all at once. Because if you try to change your entire diet all at once, it will cause psychological stress. So this goes for every habit. You change it one step at a time. Think about nail-biting, stop nail-biting. During the morning. First, be aware of when you're nail-biting during the morning and stop it during the morning, then do it during the afternoon, then repeat the same process for the evenings. Walking same thing. Got down to 19, cut down to 18%, down to 17 from 20. And after awhile, you'll be smoking three cigarettes a day, then you can cut down to zero. So that is how Kaizen works. Thank you so much. 17. Be realistic: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about the second step in the process, which is essentially to be realistic. If you try to change all bad habits all at once, it becomes difficult because it causes huge psychological strain and stress. It is difficult for the body and mind to adapt to such massive change all at once. So instead, you have to be realistic and you have to change one habit at a time. Once you have conquered one habit, then move on to the next tab. Remember the readings for habits that I discussed in one of the techniques which habit to change first, right? So you read your habits. You start with the habit that is rated the highest, that is the most important for you to change right now. Then you move down the list one by one, you change different habits. So all greeting is additive, right? And you change one habit one step at a time. It adds, and it accumulates little by little. You change from smoking cigarettes a day to 19. That's a small improvement. Then you change to 18, you got down to 17, then 21514321. These changes are happening in small steps. And then continually, if you keep changing, you will achieve elimination of the habit completely. So you have to be realistic, cannot change everything at once. You have to change things one habit at a time. And even when you're changing one, happy to change that habit little by little. So that's all for today's lecture. Thank you so much. 18. Have Clarity: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture. In today's lecture, we are going to discuss the next step in changing habits, which is having clarity. You have to have clarity on what you want to change and how you have to decide which habit to change, and then yet to decide how you want to change it, right? For instance, if you decide that you're going to change your eating habits here to identify the triggers. And then you have to decide how you're going to change. Whether you want to use reinforcement, whether you're going to use punishment, pause and interrupt battery interrupters. Which technique you'll use to change your habit, right? So you have to decide beforehand what you want to replace a bad habit with. Suppose you pick your nose. Do you want to replace it with playing a computer game instead? Or do you want to replace it with chewing and Government's debt? So you have to decide what you want to replace your bad habit width, right? So you have to decide on the when, where, why, and how. When refers to the date. You'll change the habit. You need to decide beforehand when you want to change the habit, how refers to how you're going to change the habit, which technique you are going to use to change the arbiter of whether it'd be reinforcement or punishment or any other technique that I've discussed in this course of lectures. And then you have to decide what you want to replace the habit with. And then you have to understand your motivation. Why do you want to change the habit, right? So why do you want to change a habit? How do you define that? Well, you need to have pros and cons. Remember I showed you the pros and cons list. So you need to find out pros and cons for habits so that you're motivated to change your habit. If you have a bad habit, if the cons outweigh the pros, then you'll be motivated to change the habit. But you have to convince your brain that you need to change absolutely and immediately because the tons of continuing with the habit or too heavy, too high. So you have to decide why you want to change the habit. And you have to decide what you want to replace the habit width. So for instance, do we want to replace no speaking with deep breathing, which will occupy your mind. The breathing can be used to replace many bad happens. Deep breathing increases willpower, it calms you down. It reduces anxiety and stress. So do you want to replace your nose picking habit with deep breathing? Whenever you feel like picking your nose, you what do you want to do? Do you use pattern interrupt to stop yourself from those picking? And once you have stopped from those, stop yourself from no spitting. What do you replace that with? Deep breathing or something else or chewing on a gum or sucking on a logins are eating celery. So you have to decide. So the important things are what, where, when, and how, and why you have to answer these questions and have clarity or the entire process. That's all for today's lecture. Thank you so much. 19. Set a date: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we will discuss the next step in the habit changing process, which is setting a date. You have to set a date when you want to change the habits. So you have decided beforehand when you want to change the habit, I need to inform everyone. You love, everyone in your network circle that you're planning to change this happen. Why do you need to do that? Well, really inform everyone, then. It makes it more difficult for you to Welsh on your promise or makes it more difficult for you to not come good on your decision of quitting a bad habit. Because you'll be embarrassed in front of people. It'll be ashamed when people tell you that you have no willpower, you decided to quit and now you're not quitting. So people will basically keep you in track, on track rather. Because when you tell everyone there's some pressure and what does this pressure come from? It comes from peer pressure. Peer pressure can work both ways. It's a double-edged sword. Peer pressure can lead to bad habits such as smoking and drinking. If your network circle smokes and drinks. Or it can lead to good habits. When your network circle convinces you to give up smoking or drinking or overeating. So basically, you have to set a date, date and tell everyone that you're quitting smoking or you're stopping over eating. And then if you don't follow through on your promises, then people are going to bring you back on track because you'll be embarrassed and ashamed of the fact that you did not follow through on your promise. You'd not want to be called a person with no willpower, right? So basically, that is why setting a date is very important. Thank you so much. That's all for today's lecture. Thank you. 20. Write down your goals: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to discuss the next page. In the habit changing process is called writing down your goals. You have to write down your habit changing goals on people. Why do you want to change the habit of which had to? Do you want to change it to write it down on paper? If your goal is to stop overeating or cut down 2000 calories from your diet. You have to write it down on paper. So why does writing down on paper help? Writing down on paper as proved by psychology, makes you conform because you're writing it down. It makes it commit and conform to what has been written down in the paper. It's the shelf short way of confirming to your decision to cut down on a bad habit or to eliminate a bad habit. So if you write down something, it leads to greater adherence to goals. And what do you do now that you've written down your habit changing goals on a post-it note or piece of people, you stick it somewhere in your line of vision so that you can see it oftentimes during a day. Why do you do that? So that you can be reminded of your habit changing goals, that he wants to quit smoking or you want to quit over eating, cut down on calories by 2000 calories, et cetera. Or you can set a reminder on your phone that makes certain that you're focused and you're reminded of your habit changing goals. So remind yourself every one, or by setting a reminder on your phone. That is how you can help yourself along the way of eliminating bad habits. So write down your goals so that you commit to it and conform to it. Thank you so much. 21. Identifying danger times: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about the next step in the habit changing process, that is identifying danger types. Now you have to use a table to identify danger times are times when triggers appear or are more likely to appear. And you have to be more cautious during these times. You have to keep yourself occupied during these times, right? So how does the danger timetable look like? Let's say your habit as drinking alcohol. And the trigger is anxiety about work or about your family, or about your health or anything of that sort. And the danger time is after work when you need to wind down. So you have identified the trailer which is anxiety, maybe after Hard Day's work, where you are shouted at by a boss or you had a fight with your coworker and you feel anxious about the next day about the project that you have to submit the next day. That is the trigger and the danger timess one after work. So after work when you need to wind down is a danger tag, right? So you have to be very cautious during this time, afterwards. That is, now let's take the habit of overeating. The trigger is boredom. You're feeling bored and you start over eating. Now, when do you overeat the last meal of the day when you have lost all willpower. Willpower reduces by the end of the day because you're utilizing willpower throughout the day for doing different things. You're utilizing willpower to move your hands, to move your feet. At the end of the day, will power reduces? You wanted to have a healthy, sumptuous meal to fill your belly. That is the danger day, right? The last meal of the day. So you have to be cautious when the last meal of the day approaches to make certain that you don't overeat. So you can use this table to identify danger times and you can become consciously more cautious during these times. So that's all for today's lecture. Thank you so much. 22. Reward yourself: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about the next step in the habit training process, which is rewarding yourself. So you have to reward yourself every time you change a bad habit, reward yourself with something healthy, with a massage or a healthy snack. You would rewarding yourself because rewarding reinforces good behavior, it strengthens behavior, and it strengthens good habits or conquest of bad habits, like I spoke about in the reinforcement section, where I discussed reinforcement in detail. If you reward yourself every time you achieve something good, or every time they've conquered a bad habit, or you have built a good habit, then this reinforces our strengthens your new habit or absence of bad habit, right? Basically, that is how rewarding works. It reinforces and motivates you, encourages you to keep working on changing bad habits and building good habits. That's all for today. Thank you so much. 23. Seek Support: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about the next step in the habit training process, which is seeking support. So you don't have to tell your friends and family that you're changing a bad habit because they will encourage and motivate you, motivate you to keep at it. Keep working and plugging away in changing your bad habit. If you reprimand you and bring you back on track. So you'd not want to let them down. You do not want to disappoint them. So we will try to make certain that you keep fighting the good fight for changing bad habits. But if you are, then reprimand, you will feel ashamed and you will start working on your bad habit again, works like a charm for smokers. You tell everyone, and then you start smoking, you're disappointing them and people will tell you that you are weak. You don't have any willpower and that will encourage you to stop smoking. That is how psychology works, right? So a support system will keep you on track. That is what you need. You need help, you need motivation, and if you make mistakes, you need someone to review. Q. If the bad habit is to debilitating, then you should seek personal, professional support. If it's to debilitating and needs immediate action such as problem drinking which becomes an addiction, then you need professional support. But for most habits such as biting nails over eating in front of your friends and family. If you're going on a diet to prevent yourself from all eating, then tell everyone and make certain that you tell them to review. Q. If you if you make a mistake and you start stacking on unhealthy snacks again. So that's all for today's lecture. Thank you so much. 24. Replace bad habits with good ones: Hello everyone, welcome to a new lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about the last step in the habit training process. Replacing bad habits. Good habits, replacing bad responses to trigger or stimuli with good responses. So you have to change your response to cues and triggers that lead to bad habits or manifestations of bad habits. So if anxiety is leading to smoking, then replace the act of lighting up a cigarette with chewing gum. You feel anxious, you pop them into your mouth and you start chewing that gum. If boredom leads to overeating, then start eating healthy vegetables such as salary or Asperger's. Every time you feel like eating between meals instead of having that chocolate or having that deep fried chicken. Have something healthy every time you feel like eating. So you're replacing a bad habit with a good habit. These new responses will result in formation of good habits. So, for instance, if you pick your skin, you can replace that with deep breathing. Every time you feel like picking your skin, you start breathing deeply. That will help you change the response to triggers. Change your bad habit to a good head. So be creative about this. You have to be creative about this so that you can come up with different solutions to your response to triggers. So that's all for today's lecture. Thank you so much. 25. A few tips on anxiety and will power: Hello everyone, welcome to the final lecture on habits. And today we're going to talk about willpower and anxiety. I'm not gonna go into depth about these things, but I'll just give a brief overview. Willpower is exhaustible as you know, because it's required to do a lot of things, to move your hands, feet, to walk. Everything requires willpower, right? Exhaustible. Willpower reduces as the day progresses. So in the morning you have the most amount of willpower. By the end of the day you have very little willpower. Low blood sugar also decreases willpower. Exercising too much willpower also reduces it. So how do you replenish willpower? So the scientifically proven method of replenishing willpower includes shot exercise and some fresh air. So you can walk around for 5 min. That increases willpower. We can have a small quantity of sugar through a Tic, Tac maybe are to a large n, So to a toughy small quantity of sugar do not have huge quantities of sugar because that will add to your, we'd have a small quantity of sugar through some sort of breath mint or a TikTok, et cetera. You can meditate to replenish willpower may take two or three times a day for 5 min each. So basically, if you meditate and debrief, that increases willpower to, you can exercise willpower over a period of time. And this helps build willpower. So if you're good at willpower over a period of time, then you will have willpower to fight off different bad habits. That is how you can replenish willpower. A small note on anxiety. Anxiety leads to a slower bad negative habits. Write. It leads to kneel by adding at least to smoking different habits. You can deal with anxiety through meditating and deep breathing. That's one method of dealing with anxiety. Every time you feel anxious, breathe deeply, or you can meditate, do some mindfulness every time you feel anxious, or you can use a pattern interrupt technique. I spoke about pattern interrupt techniques before. You can use that to break the cycle of anxiety every time you're starting to feel anxious and your thoughts are veering towards making you anxious. Then you divert your mind with something else. You watch a movie, you watch a YouTube video, you read a joke on, uh, on twitter or do some Twitter, social media, anything, right? So basically every time you're feeling anxious, you interrupt that by doing something else such as deep breathing, watching a movie, et cetera. The less anxious you are, the more likely you are to not indulgent bad habits, such as smoking, overeating, biting nails, etc. Anxiety is key. You reduce anxiety and your bad habits will start going one by one because the trigger will be removed. Anxiety is one of the greatest triggers or cues for bad habits. So when the trigger is removed, no mistakes, you're smoking, et cetera, et cetera. We start reducing slowly using the methods I've discussed before and using the process that I've discussed in this series of lectures. Thank you so much. That's all for this course. Thank you.