THE 2ND LAW : Make It Attractive
Chapter 10 : How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits
Case study: a book called Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking convince people to stop by repeating that smoking seems like the most ridiculous thing in the world to do. And if you no longer expect smoking to bring you any benefits, you have no reason to smoke. It is an inversion of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change: make it unattractive.
WHERE CRAVINGS COME FROM
Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper, underlying motive.
Some of our underlying motives include:
- Conserve energy
- Obtain food and water
- Find love and reproduce > e.g. using Tinder
- Connect and bond with others > e.g. browsing FB
- Win social acceptance and approval Reduce uncertainty > e.g. posting IG
- Achieve status and prestige > e.g. playing online video games
- Reduce uncertainty > e.g. searching Google
A craving is just a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive. Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.
However, there are several ways to address the same underlying motive. Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use.
Every time you perceive a cue, your brain runs a simulation and makes a prediction about what to do in the next moment.
Life feels reactive, but it is actually predictive. All day long, you are making your best guess of how to act given what you’ve just seen and what has worked for you in the past. You are endlessly predicting what will happen in the next moment.
The same cue can spark a good habit or a bad habit depending on your prediction. The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them.
These predictions lead to feelings, which is how we typically describe a craving—a feeling, a desire, an urge. Feelings and emotions transform the cues we perceive and the predictions we make into a signal that we can apply. They help explain what we are currently sensing.
A craving is the sense that something is missing. It is the desire to change your internal state. This gap between your current state and your desired state provides a reason to act.
Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.
Our feelings and emotions tell us whether to hold steady in our current state or to make a change.
neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains, “It is emotion that allows you to mark things as good, bad, or indifferent.”
HOW TO REPROGRAM YOUR BRAIN TO ENJOY HARD HABITS
You can make hard habits more attractive if you can learn to associate them with a positive experience. Sometimes, all you need is a slight mind-set shift.
Imagine changing just one word: You don’t “have” to. You “get” to. E.g. You get to wake up early for work.
You transition from seeing these behaviors as burdens and turn them into opportunities.
E.g. a big presentation: reframe “I am nervous” to “I am excited and I’m getting an adrenaline rush to help me concentrate.”
Once a habit has been built, the cue can prompt a craving, even if it has little to do with the original situation.
The key to finding and fixing the causes of your bad habits is to reframe the associations you have about them. It’s not easy, but if you can reprogram your predictions, you can transform a hard habit into an attractive one.
Chapter Summary
- The inversion of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it unattractive.
- Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive.
- Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.
- The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling.
- Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive.
- Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings. Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.