BUILDING GREAT HABITS

Habits are behaviors wired so deeply in our brain and unconsciousness, that we perform them automatically. This allows you to follow the same route to work every day without thinking about it, liberating your brain to ponder other things, such as what to make for dinner.

To better understand how the mind works, concerning habits, the concept of The Chimp Paradox is introduced below, and followed up with lists of great habits.

THE CHIMP PARADOX

For simplicity, imagine your mind as 3 separate entities

• The Human - Rational thinking - (Frontal lobe).
• The Chimp - Emotional, unconscious and immature toddler - (Limbic lobe / amygdala).
• The Computer - Processing and interpreting somatosensory input - (Parietal lobe)

To function properly, emotions should have the primary control over your mind and body, so you won't think too much and too long, when your life is on the line, but instead act instinctively and choose between fight or flight.

THE CHIMP

Your inner Chimp is the very powerful protector and gatekeeper of your body and Computer, and controls access to your Computer input, body, emotions and neuro chemistry, with pre-programmed and primed habits, behaviors and purpose, like fight, flight and reproduction.

THE HUMAN

Your human thoughts needs acceptance from your Chimp, to change any default emotional response or action, before any necessary neurotransmitters are released.

THE EQUILIBRIUM

It takes a lot of self-awareness, courage and persistence to connect with your inner chimp and inspire it to change  fundamental habits. To reach your chimp, you communicate in a language based on desires, faith and emotions, which is the native language of inner chimps.

When you've managed to connect with your chimp, you'll be amazed with the power and knowledge it possesses, and it's much better at finding creative and novel solutions to the challenges it's given.

THE CONSEQUENCES

If you don't help your Chimp mature, it will continue to be a childish, selfish, neurotic, fearful, irrational, pleassure graving and risk averted chimp/toddler.

Listen to Professor Steve Peters, the author of The Chimp Paradox, reading his book in this audio version, which will enlighten you and give you a much better understanding of  how your mind works.

“The person that you want to be is the person that you really are.”

― Steve Peters

7 habits of highly effective people

• Be proactive.
• Begin with the end in mind.
• Put first things first.
• Think win-win.
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
• Synergize.
• Sharpen the saw.

By Stephen R. Covey, grokipedia.com

STRIVE FOR SUCCESS

• Life waits for nobody. Get up every day and keep pushing through no matter what.
• Make sure you take good care of yourself. If something happens to you, the world will move on and you will fall behind.
• If you don't work to build your dream life, someone will hire you to build theirs.
• Work in silence, celebrate in private, people love to ruin things.
• Don't regret the past, just learn from it and move on.
• No one cares, work harder to become better each day.
• Ignore advice from anyone who doesn't live the life you want to live.
• Rule over your emotions, a calm mind can handle any situation.
• If you find someone better than you, don't hate, ask them for advice.

12 RULES - AN ANTIDOTE FOR CHAOS IN LIFE

• Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
• Treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible for helping.
• Make friends with people who want the best for you.
• Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
• Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
• Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
• Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).
• Tell the truth — or, at least, don’t lie.
• Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.
• Be precise in your speech.
• Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding.
• Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

By Jordan B. Peterson, wikipedia.org

BEYOND ORDER - 12 MORE RULES FOR LIFE

• Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement.
• Imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that.
• Do not hide unwanted things in the fog.
• Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
• Do not do what you hate.
• Abandon ideology.
• Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
• Try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible.
• If old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely.
• Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship.
• Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant.
• Be grateful in spite of your suffering.

By Jordan B. Peterson, wikipedia.com