How to Break Habits in Yourself and Others
WHY care: We all have unsavory habits in our life that we want to get rid of. We also all have people in our lives who have annoying habits that we’d love for them to break. This concept will help you do both of these
WHERE it is from: Don’t Shoot the Dog! by Karen Pryor. Pryor is an animal trainer who has devoted her life to the concept of reinforcement and it’s implications in the real world. I learned of this book from Tim Ferriss’s Youtube Channel and it did not disappoint.
WHAT it is: Pryor detail eight methods of changing behavior such as habits in the book; for all eight, check out the book. She cites this one as the most impactful of the eight. It is “Changing the Motivation.” I like to equate this to changing someone’s WHY behind their actions or the root cause of the action. Let’s say someone you know eats a lot of junk food and is thus gaining weight. A simple method would be to just remove the junk food (or the person), i.e. “shooting the dog.” Another method could be to reward the person every time they eat fruit over junk. This also works and is much kinder. Let’s dig a little deeper now; let’s find out WHY the person eats junk in the first place. Is he or she addicted to it? Is he or she depressed and the only escape they have is junk food? Figuring out the root cause behind the behavior and working to change that is the most effective and PERMANENT way to get rid of the behavior.
I personally hate writing (yes, you read that right), but I learned that in order to learn best, I need to write about what I learn. My motivation behind writing changed from “having to do it because I was told to” into “wanting to do it to learn better.” This put me into the habit of writing and now I like doing it much more.
The great thing about this concept is that it works with anyone for any behavior or characteristic. Give it a try (just don’t tell your subject) and see if it works!
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Live life to the fullest!