Tiny Habits - Chapter 5: Emotions Create Habits

Question 1

What are the 6 Steps in Behavior Design?

Answer 1

Step 1: Clarify the Aspiration
Step 2: Explore Behavior Options
Step 3: Match with Specific Behaviors
Step 4: Start Tiny
Step 5: Find a Good Prompt
Step 6: Celebrate Success

Question 2

What does learning mean in psychology and what is it’s aim?

Answer 2

In psychology, learning is the process by which your brain facilitates a change in behavior in response to your environment. The evolutionary aim of these changes is to make us more likely to survive, thrive, and reproduce.

A range of positive experiences can reinforce a new behavior that leads to a habitual response. For example, anything that gives you instant pleasure can reinforce a behavior and make it more likely to happen in the future.

Getting relief from physical, emotional, or psychological discomfort is also a positive experience. It’s 3:00 AM and you are having another bout of insomnia. You’re restless and thinking about work. There’s a big deadline tomorrow, and everyone is rushing to get a project out the door. You’re the manager, so you’ve got to keep things moving. And as you lie there awake, you’re worried that there will be a productivity bottleneck in your inbox tomorrow morning. The thought of it makes you anxious. So you roll over, grab your phone off the nightstand, and check your e-mail. Whew, nothing urgent. No need to respond to anything. You feel relieved. This is a positive experience that you’ll seek the next time you wake up in the middle of the night. You check your inbox and once again you feel relief. And then checking your e-mail will start becoming a habit.

Question 3

How many repetitions does it take to create a habit?

Answer 3

For too long people have believed the old myth that repetition creates habits, focusing on the number of days it requires. Some of today’s popular habit bloggers still talk about repetition or frequency as the key. Just know this: They are recycling old ideas. They have kept up on current research.

Current research show us that habits can form very quickly, often in just a few days, as long as the person has a strong positive emotion connected to the behavior. In fact, some habits seem to get wired in immediately: You do the behavior once, and then you don’t consider other options again.

When teaching people about human behavior, boil it down to three words to make the point crystal clear: Emotions create habits. Not repetition. Not frequency. Emotions. When you are designing for habit formation—for yourself or for someone else—you are really designing for emotions.

Question 4

When it comes to behavior, what’s the relationship between decisions and habits?

Answer 4

When it comes to behavior, decision and habit are opposites. Decisions require deliberation, habits do not. You probably decide what to wear to work every morning. But most people don’t decide if they will take their phone when they leave the house. They just take it with them, without deliberating. It’s autopilot.

Question 5

You can use many types of self-reinforcement to wire in a habit, but in BJ’s research and teaching, what feeling did he find to be the clear winner?

Answer 5

The feeling of success, and celebration is the best way to create a positive feeling of success that wires in your new habits.

Question 6

Why is the timing of a reward important to reinforce a new behavior?

Answer 6

The definition of a reward in behavior science is an experience directly tied to a behavior that makes that behavior more likely to happen again. The timing of the reward matters because rewards need to happen either during the behavior or milliseconds afterward. Dopamine is released and processed by the brain very quickly. That means you’ve got to cue up those good feelings fast to form a habit.

Incentives like a sales bonus or a monthly massage can motivate you, but they don’t rewire your brain. Incentives are way too far in the future to give you that all-important shot of dopamine that encodes the new habit. Doing three squats in the morning and rewarding yourself with a movie that evening won’t work. The squats and the good feelings you get from the movie are too far apart for dopamine to build a bridge between the two.

Your brain has a built-in system for encoding new habits, and by celebrating you can hack this system.

When you find a celebration that works for you, and you do it immediately after a new behavior, your brain repatterns to make that behavior more automatic in the future. But once you’ve created a habit, celebration is now optional. You don’t need to keep celebrating the same habit forever. That said, some people keep going with the celebration part of their habits because it feels good and has lots of positive side effects.

Question 7

Regarding his garden analogy, what does BJ think of celebration as?

Answer 7

He thinks of celebration as habit fertilizer. While each individual celebration strengthens the roots of a specific habit, the accumulation of celebrations over time fertilizes your entire habit garden. By cultivating feelings of success and confidence, we make the soil more inviting and nourishing for all the other habit seeds we want to plant.

Question 8

In chapter 2 we learned that Tiny Habits Maxim #1 is Help people do what they already want to do. BJ discovered how important this principle was by studying what many successful products and services had in common: They helped people do what they already wanted to do. Without that, the product or service failed.
So what is Tiny Habits Maxim #2?

Answer 8

Tiny Habits Maxim #2 is pretty simple, but so important - Help people feel successful.

Question 9

What are the two most important nuances of an effective celebration?

Answer 9

Immediacy and intensity. You’ve got to celebrate right after the behavior (immediacy), and you need your celebration to feel real (intensity).

Here’s how to help a habit root quickly and easily in your brain:
1. Perform the Behavior Sequence (Anchor —-> Tiny Behavior) that you want to become a habit.
2. Celebrate immediately.

Anchor —-> Tiny Behavior –> Celebrate.

Question 10

What does a particular celebration work great for one person and not someone else?

Answer 10

Celebrations are personal, and depend on our personality and even our culture.

Question 11

By skillfully celebrating, you create a feeling of Shine, which in turn does what?

Answer 11

By skillfully celebrating, you create a feeling of Shine, which in turn causes your brain to encode the new habit.

Question 12

BJ says that if her were teaching someone in person about how to create a new habit, what would he teach you first?

Answer 12

If he were teaching someone in person how to create a new habit, he would start the training by teaching you how to celebrate successfully because it’s the most important skill for creating new habits.

Question 13

When a client struggles to see the value in celebrating a new habit, what can I help her get clear on that will inspire her celebration?

Answer 13

I will help her remember the deeper meaning behind doing the new habit which will fuel the celebration and ultimately help to lock in that habit.

Question 14

When a client isn’t enthusiastic about celebrating something that to them seems too small to celebrate (eg. two pushups), what 3 things can I remind them of that will likely help?

Answer 14

1. We know that dopamine is a key part of making habits stick. That’s how your brain works.
2. Celebration is a skill, and while it might not feel natural to you, and that’s okay, but practicing this skill will help you to get comfortable.
3. You are doing something worthy of celebration, which becomes more obvious when the client realizes the positive effect the habit will have in their life when it becomes a habit, far beyond, in this example, doing pushups.

Question 15

What are a few fast ways to feel successful?

Answer 15

You’ve got to start small in order to achieve great things. But you can’t succeed with starting small if you’re looking down your nose at it. Why do we clap for a baby when she is taking her first step? Not because she is doing it perfectly. We clap because we know it is the first small step that she is taking toward a lifetime of walking and running—and that is hugely important.

Accepting this, believing that it is the way we succeed at change, may be a challenge for some. Here are some strategies you might try that help people cultivate that feeling of success even when they are having difficulties doing so.

• Recruit a kid to celebrate with you (they are so good at it!). Invloving a child in the celebration will help you feel Shine more genuinely.
• Do a physical movement: smile, raise your fists in victory, or look up and make a V-shape with your arms. Physical movements can generate a positive feeling. Tune into the feeling of Shine and see if movement amplifies it.
• When celebrating, imagine that you’re celebrating someone you love. What would you say to them? Would you feel genuinely proud of what they’re doing? Yes, you would. Use that as a way to access the feeling of Shine.

Question 16

How can I wire my habit in fast?

Answer 16

First, remember that creating a habit is a skill. This will help my answer make perfect sense.

To wire in a habit fast or help yourself remember, you need to rehearse the behavior sequence (the Anchor, then the new habit) and immediately celebrate. Repeat this sequence seven to ten times. By doing this drill—by rehearsing—you are supercharging the speed of habit formation.

When you rehearse in Tiny Habits, you are both training muscle memory and rewiring your brain to remember. And you can drill and wire in a habit quickly if you have an effective celebration.

Let’s say your wife is mad at you because you never put the TV remote back on the fireplace mantel where she thinks it belongs. If you goof up on this one more time, it won’t be pretty. Time to wire in this habit fast with rehearsal and celebration. The recipe would be something like this: After I push the off button at night, I will put the remote on the mantel. Here’s how you rehearse. Sit in the chair where you watch TV. Pick up the remote. Hit off, then stand up and put the remote on the mantel. Then celebrate big-time, pull out your go-to—the Rocky theme song or the Wonder Woman pose or the silent affirmation. Okay, that’s once.

Trust the process and rehearse this sequence seven to ten times. Make sure your celebration creates the feeling of Shine.

Question 17

I keep forgetting to do my habit; how can I help myself remember?

Answer 17

You remember a habit the same way you wire the habit in fast. You rehearse the behavior sequence (the Anchor, then the new habit) and immediately celebrate. Repeat this sequence seven to ten times.

By doing this drill you are training for the very moment you will do the habit in real life, just as you would rehearse for a dance recital or sales pitch. If you didn’t rehearse for these things, your dance performance would suffer and your sales pitch might fail. When it comes to peak performance, rehearsal matters. How many three-point shots has Stephen Curry practiced? More than a million? He’s rehearsing so he can shoot from downtown without thinking. He’s wired in this habit. Swoosh!

When you rehearse in Tiny Habits, you are both training muscle memory and rewiring your brain to remember. And you can drill and wire in a habit quickly if you have an effective celebration.

Let’s say your wife is mad at you because you never put the TV remote back on the fireplace mantel where she thinks it belongs. If you goof up on this one more time, it won’t be pretty. Time to wire in this habit fast with rehearsal and celebration. The recipe would be something like this: After I push the off button at night, I will put the remote on the mantel. Here’s how you rehearse. Sit in the chair where you watch TV. Pick up the remote. Hit off, then stand up and put the remote on the mantel. Then celebrate big-time, pull out your go-to—the Rocky theme song or the Wonder Woman pose or the silent affirmation. Okay, that’s once.

Trust the process and rehearse this sequence seven to ten times. Make sure your celebration creates the feeling of Shine.

Question 18

What are the 3 different times to celebrate?

Answer 18

Each of the three different times to celebrate has a different effect, and you make a behavior a habit faster and more reliabe by celebrating each of them.

1. The exact moment you remember to do the habit.
   Suppose you have this as a Tiny Habit Recipe: After I walk in the door after work, I will hang up my keys. Imagine that you walk in the door after work, and as you’re putting down your backpack, this idea pops into your head: “Oh, now is when I said I was going to hang my keys up so I can find them tomorrow.” Now celebrate at that moment. By feeling Shine, you are wiring in the habit of remembering to hang up your keys, not the habit of hanging up your keys. When you celebrate remembering to do a Tiny Habit, you wire in that moment of remembering. And that’s important. If you don’t remember to do a habit, you won’t do it.
2. While you’re doing the habit.
   Your brain will then associate doing the behavior with the positive feeling of Shine. One example is a woman named Jill. Her habit to wipe the kitchen counter clean after she finished using it. The next step was to figure out the best celebration to use to help her lock it in. After some experimentation, she landed on celebrating while she was doing it. What most reliably prompted the feeling of Shine for her was picturing the meal that her husband would make that night and imagining him giving her a kiss and saying, “Nice work, babe” while she wiped the counter. Her visualization allowed her to connect her small action with positive feelings of family togetherness. This celebration wired in the remembering and increased her motivation to wipe the counter in the future.
3. Immediately after completing the habit.

Question 19

How do I keep the habit strong?

Answer 19

After a habit becomes automatic, you no longer need to celebrate. But, like watering a plant, you will need a spritz of celebration here and there to keep your habits well hydrated.

There are at least two scenarios where celebration can help keep your habit firmly rooted.

1. You haven’t done your habit for a while. Maybe you’ve been on vacation or changed locations. Or life has simply gotten in the way. Use celebration to rewire the habit back into your life.
2. You are rocking this habit and now you’re increasing its intensity. Perhaps your baseline habit was up to ten push-ups, but one day you decide to go for twenty to see what happens.
   When you increase the intensity or duration of a habit, you are exerting yourself more. This is a good time to bring back celebration because if I do a habit and it’s painful or awkward or unpleasant in any way, then your brain is going to rewire and lead you to avoid the habit. Negative emotions seem to shrivel the roots of automaticity. So keep my habit healthy and alive by celebrating extra hard to offset the pain of increasing the intensity or durating. And that injection of Shine keeps the habit alive.

Question 20

Is there any value in celebrating the good stuff that happens in our lives that we wern’t trying to make a habit?

Answer 20

Yes, we can take actions every day that accumulate and drive the way we see ourselves.

Am I the type of person who brings a shopping cart back or leaves it in the parking lot? Am I the type of person who leaves a mess on the floor for my partner to pick up? Am I the type of person who shovels the walkway of an elderly neighbor? These are small moments that determine who we really are. Some of the time we’ll fail, and maybe we’ll be fleetingly disappointed in ourselves. Other times we’ll do a good job and momentarily feel good about ourselves.

But what if we could easily make it more likely that we’d do the good behaviors again and again? What if we could quietly build on the moments when we’re being our best selves until we are our best selves? (At least most days.) You do this by celebrating in the course of your everyday life. It’s pretty simple. Pay attention to the moments when we do the good stuff (including for yourself) and reinfore those good behaviors with celebration.

The point is this: You can use celebration at any moment in your life. No need for a plan. No need to write down a Tiny Habit Recipe. Just notice any good behavior you do and self-reinforce by celebrating it. If you can feel Shine, you are on your way to making that good behavior automatic. But more important, you’ve gained the ability to impact your emotional life for the better by finding opportunities to feel positive emotions instead of focusing on negative ones. Even in difficult situations, look for small things that you can attach a positive emotion to through celebration. It will help you see the good when it’s not easy and focus on that, instead of getting stuck in the negative. Remember that you change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad.