How to establish a new habit ~ The golden rule

Have you ever wondered what a habit is? A habit is something that you do often, sometimes without knowing you are doing it. Think about everything you do mechanically.  It might be brushing your teeth every morning or having a fruit for dessert or even smoking. You see where I am going. There are good habits, such as reading, but there are also bad habits, such as smoking, eating junk food e.t.c. Is there a way to get rid of your bad habits, while at the same time establishing new ones?

The Golden Rule

First things first, you need to know that you can’t get rid of a habit entirely. You might stop smoking for 3 months, but habits tend to leave a permanent “scar” in your brain. Your goal is to 1) Identify your bad habits and 2) change them with a new one. This is where The Golden Rule, as the author of the book The Power Of Habit, Charles Duhigg calls it, comes to play its role.

If you break down a habit, there is an event that causes the habit, the actual habit and the reward you are seeking from it. In case of smoking, stress might be the event that causes the habit, smoking the action and the nirvana-like state is the reward. The Golden Rule states that you should Keep the event that causes the habit and the reward, but switch the actual habit with something different. In the example above, you might switch smoking with meditation, yoga or basically anything else, as long as you enjoy the same reward (the nirvana-like state).

It might sound simple but believe me, it’s not. Identifying all those 3 phases of a habit is not child’s play. You should think a lot before coming to any conclusion. The event that causes the habit tends to be the trickiest one to find so be extra careful with that. Examine every possibility!

I strongly recommend you read Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of habit (not an affiliate link), as it goes into great detail about the golden rule and the science behind habits, but I don’t mind writing a more in-depth article about habits.

You can find more about me and the good habits I established over the course of my life here