Chapter 6 The secret of change

6.1 Principles of change

6.1.1 Change starts small

In a disorganized and complex world, how do you stay in control?

The motivation behind my own reading of many books related to self-help, habit formation, and success is to find ways to be able to face the world without so much helplessness. However, no matter how many books I read, if there is no substantial change in my life status, it is meaningless to read more books.

Now it seems habit-forming is a good way to go. Even the smallest habits, such as folding the quilt, tidying up the room, getting up earlier in the morning, allow us to find certain things we can do in a world full of uncertainty. I myself have had many attempts to make a cup of coffee every morning, which is a ritual for me to face a new day of life. On days when I don’t have coffee in the morning, I always feel like I’m missing something, like going out without checking my school bag or going to war without organizing my equipment. Don’t underestimate any small habit, anything we do in our daily life is helping us to learn to face the world.

6.1.2 Change starts with wanting

The first step in changing behavior starts with what you want to do. I think the hardest part of being a person is knowing what you want to do. But it’s hard to set an ambitious goal all at once, and the more long-term something is, the more vague our feelings can be. What is clearer to us is what we like and what we want to do in the immediate future. It’s the same with habit formation; it’s hard to encode a behavior into our habits without the desire for something behind it. So in the process of habit formation, it’s important to pay very close attention to your emotions… Do I like it? Do I hate it? Am I satisfied? Am I dissatisfied? If we go with our emotions, behavior change will be very easy, if we go against our emotions, behavior change will become difficult.

6.1.3 Building the Chain of Success

Why do small changes last? Because small changes provide a frequent sense of accomplishment, and only a sense of accomplishment can lead to the next accomplishment, creating a chain of success. The momentum of this sense of accomplishment has nothing to do with the size of the accomplishment, but rather with the frequency of the accomplishment. So when we go to develop habits, we must start with small behaviors. Many people look down on small behaviors and come up trying to develop some habit that will change them. For example, if you want to develop the habit of waking up early, you may get up at 8:00 am, but on the first day you think you have to get up at least 6:00 am to be considered early, and then you give up after getting up early once or twice. Why can’t you get up 10 minutes earlier in the beginning? It’s a very easy thing to do. Just experience the sense of accomplishment of getting up a little early, and that sense of accomplishment will push us to continue, a little bit, to push forward. Wait until one day, suddenly you realize that getting up at 6:00 is such an easy thing to do.

6.2 Methodology for change

6.2.1 Change depends on systems, not on goals

Goals are just one-time results. If our focus is only on the goal, we either feel that the goal is unattainable and therefore unmotivated, or because the goal is so easy, we get lost after we accomplish it. But a system is different. A system will give us a very clear path forward. Goals can only provide us with a general direction, but systems can help us to progress. The goal is only a temporary change, the system is a lasting change. If our eyes are only on the goal, then we will continually defer achievement until the next milestone, and the happiness of each milestone will be a one-time event. So, a goal-driven way of working can be less fulfilling. A system-driven way of working solves this problem because we then get continuous satisfaction in the process.

Just like when I do an experiment, if I only focus on the final result, I will be in a constant state of anxiety and no satisfaction in the process. But if I focus on what I’ve learned during the experiment, then the whole process is pleasurable for me.

6.2.2 Layers of Change

There are three levels of behavior change, from low to high: changing the outcome, changing the way you do things, and changing your self-perception. The shallowest way to change behavior is to focus on the outcome, for example, I just want to lose weight, publish a book, or reach a certain goal. Going deeper is to focus on how you do things, such as starting a fitness habit, creating a workflow, or balancing your work and life. Most people who want to go into habits are focused on this level. The deepest and most lasting way to change behavior is to change your self-perception. Your identity changes, your worldview changes, your judgment of yourself and others changes, and then you will have a very noticeable change in behavior.

With a results-oriented habit formation, the focus will be on achieving the goal; with a habit formation based on self-identity, the focus will be on the kind of person you want to be. Again, some people will say, because I am quitting, I don’t smoke. However, others will say, because I am not a smoker, I don’t smoke. In contrast, it is the latter non-smoking habit that will last.

I find that any habit that is based on short-term goals, or on personal planning to get into, is very difficult to maintain over time. The only habits that last are those that are based on our identity. For example, I am not trying to develop a reading habit, but as an intellectual, reading is part of my identity. I pushed myself to do experiments because I wanted to graduate and I had to do experiments and publish articles, but now I go to do experiments because I consider myself a researcher. For a researcher, doing experiments is part of my identity.

So the real behavior change can only be an identity change. We may start a habit because of some motivation, but really the only thing that makes these habits last is that they become part of our identity. We can go to the gym once or twice, or even for a month or two, but it’s our orientation to our own image that determines whether or not the fitness thing is important to us. So when we go to make habits, don’t just think about what we want to achieve, but think about what kind of person we want to be.

6.2.3 Changing identity starts with habits

Since identity is so important, how do we form our identity? In fact, identity and habit are two sides of the same coin. Our self-identity comes from our daily habits. Because identity is, by its very nature, some kind of constant repetition of existence. Whoever we think we are, we believe in that identity simply because we have corresponding evidence in our lives, and we believe we are a writer because we write every day or we have corresponding works. In this way, forming habits is the process of changing one’s identity. Each habit is like an attempt to experience whether certain identities are attractive or not. And each act is a small step toward a certain identity, and each day, step by step, we accumulate to become who we are today. So meaningful change doesn’t have to be a clean slate, a painful change of heart. The formation of any small habit can be a key part of a brand new life.

6.2.4 The Nature of Habits

What is a habit? Why do people have habits? Why does the mechanism of habit exist in our brain?

My understanding of habit is that it is some sort of programmed response that occurs when we encounter a similar problem. For the brain, habit is a way to conserve cognitive resources. For example, we need to consume energy and nutrients every day, so we form the habit of eating three meals a day on a regular basis. Habits help us allocate our eating time and energy use, and over time, our bodies produce many physiological changes corresponding to this habit.

6.2.5 Habit Loop

All habits go through a loop that consists of four stages: cues, cravings, responses, and rewards.

The clue initiates the habit and gives us the expectation of the reward. We are constantly observing our surroundings, constantly trying to obtain rewards and avoid punishment. Many cues are so tied to some base craving that we don’t even realize that it is these cues that inspire our craving.

Craving is the second step, the motivational basis behind the habit. Many instinctive cravings are constant, such as the desire for food, sex, and safety. Now many of our rewards are constructed only on the basis of these basic rewards, such as the desire for money, fame, and love.

Response is the third step, which can be expressed as a thought or a behavior. We usually refer to this step of responding when we talk about habits. Responding depends on how much we want to get the reward and how much resistance there is to doing it.

The reward is the last step, the clue means noticing the reward, the desire is wanting the reward, the response is going for the reward, and the reward is the purpose of all habits.

6.2.6 Habits and Clues

What cues are available to us to build habits. I think the most appropriate cues are things that we do regularly in our daily lives, like waking up, waking up, brushing our teeth, drinking coffee, etc. They can be called anchor behaviors. By connecting our desired behaviors to these anchor behaviors, a habit can be constructed.

6.2.7 Habits and Cravings

Cravings are the feeling basis for any action. It’s hard to talk about how to make changes that benefit us in isolation from how we feel. Any change is accompanied by our desire to feel a certain way. I want to exercise because I like the feeling of energy and hate the feeling of lethargy.

The desire for change is an interesting thing. Why do people desire change? What rewards does change bring? Many times we ignore our cravings and even treat them as desires, thinking of them as a harmful emotion. However, without this strong desire, it is also difficult to take strong action.

Many awesome people have a strong desire to perform, and often they also have a strong desire to act. I think the two are connected. Change is treated as a good thing, but it takes a strong desire behind change, and the source of that desire is not always good. It can drive us to become good , or it can drive us to fall. The problem is not in the longing, but in the choices we make. Often, at the beginning, we have no predisposed preference for good or bad. In choosing over and over again, we develop a preference for certain good habits and a preference for bad habits. We think of the former as qualities in ourselves, and the latter as temptations of desire. But they are just two sides of the same coin.

6.3 The enemy of change

6.3.1 The plateau period

One frustration with any change is that after you’ve been working on it for a while, you don’t see significant results. Often this is when we start to give up, and this stage is the plateau period. Any learning, change, effort will go through such a stage, only across the platform period to open the next progress.

Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored.

6.3.2 Conflict of identity

Habit formation is also selective, and it’s hard for us to do several habits at once. Even at first, we can only focus on one habit at a time. So, how do we choose which habit to adopt? It depends on the kind of person we want to be. If we want to be a runner, then running is the habit we need to sustain; if we want to be a writer, then writing every day is the habit we need to develop. We can have many identities, but it’s hard for us to get many identities at once.

In turn, what we do every day reveals who we are. Many habits are difficult to change because they are tied to our identity. If a person thinks he or she is old, he or she will be reluctant to learn new things. Because to make these changes, one must adjust one’s identity, which is more painful. The tighter a habit is tied to our identity, the harder it is to change it. While there are many good habits worth doing, if they conflict with our existing identity, it’s hard to put them into practice.

6.4 The value of change

6.4.1 Change is a form of compound interest

All the changes we make over the course of our lives accumulate to be an asset in life. True wealth is not just about how much money we accumulate, but more importantly, how many habits we accumulate, the kind of person we have shaped ourselves into? The key to compound interest is not how much we have improved each time, but how long this positive accumulation has lasted. Any accumulation will encounter various setbacks. For example, I want to be a regular exerciser, but today it’s raining and I can’t run; tomorrow I’m too busy at home and I don’t have time to exercise. Once or twice, we easily accept a status quo that I can’t achieve the desire to exercise regularly.