Sattvic Guna helps form great habits, in the right place and at the right time - GITA -Chap14 I know that most of us would start the New Year with a resolution of acquiring one new habit at least. Then you set out with the goal with all vigour to internalise the new behaviour … only to find yourself not doing it at all two week later? I know I am guilty of this many a times. Then why is it so hard to form good habits? Why is it so difficult to make consistent change? How come we have the best intentions to become better, have full knowledge of the purpose and the possible effects and yet see so little progress? More importantly, is there anything we can do about it? So how long will it take to acquire a new habit? The Indian and Western philosophy of acquiring a new habit is vastly different even though both prescribe the same methodology for acquiring the habit. The initial idea of 21 days to get a new habit into your system was got by Maxwell Maltz's self-help book, Psycho Cybernetics. The reason why 21 days caught us by storm is that its easy and very feasible. Moving to the Indian side, it is prescribed that you need to at least practice the task for more than 41 days or one Mandala [Full moon to full moon + days to Ekadashi = 30+11]. Just as the embryo needs to spend enough time in the womb to become a fully formed child, a yogic practice needs it’s time to mature within our system. It takes some time for our food to digest and give us energy. Similarly, it will take some time for the practices to integrate with our system and start to offer us benefits.
So what does science says about forming a new habit? Habits are formed after a person has learned something new, like how to parallel park. This process engages the basal ganglia, or the part of the brain located in the prefrontal cortex that works to start and control movement and emotions. There’s a cue, or trigger, which signals to your brain to turn a behaviour into an automatic routine (parallel parking), followed by the actual routine of the behaviour, and then the reward. The reward is the brain’s own personal cue for when it should recall the automatic behaviour. Once that happens, the brain takes a break. In fact, the brain starts working less and less can almost completely shut down. Take driving a car for example we can talk to others while listening to the radio and still coordinate the break + clutch + accelerator pedal synchronisation. The real advantage of making things as a regular habits is that we can use the mental activity devoted to doing something else. So how come we acquire bad habits faster?
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Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American businessman and investor. He is the current owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, the co-owner of 2929 Entertainment and chairman of AXS TV. He is also one of the main "shark" investors on the ABC reality television series, Shark Tank. In 2011, Cuban wrote an e-book, How to win at the Sport of Business, in which he chronicles his experiences in business and sports. Mark Cuban grew up working class in Pittsburgh. His father installed upholstery in cars and his mom worked a myriad of odd jobs. He chased any number of random side-hustles on his way to the top, including selling baseball cards, stamps and coins. Instead of attending high school for his senior year, he enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Pittsburgh where he joined the Pi Lambda Phi International fraternity. While attending the University of Pittsburgh, he held a variety of jobs including a bartender, disco dancing instructor, and a party promoter. In 1982, Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas, where he first found work as a bartender and then as a salesperson for Your Business Software, one of the earliest PC software retailers in Dallas. He was fired less than a year later, after meeting with a client to procure new business instead of opening the store. Cuban started his own company, MicroSolutions, with support from his previous customers from Your Business Software. MicroSolutions was initially a system integrator and software reseller. The company was an early proponent of technologies such as Carbon Copy, Lotus Notes, and CompuServe. One of the company's largest clients was Perot Systems. In 1990, Cuban sold MicroSolutions to CompuServe—then a subsidiary of H&R Block—for $6 million. He made approximately $2 million after taxes on the deal One thing Cuban did not do? Follow his passion. So what is his advice for success, let’s see “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body” – Joseph Addison Reading has always been said to be a very good habit but no one has told us how to acquire it. Neither has anyone told us the toughness of getting into this habit. So what is so great about reading? There are numerous benefits of reading good books. They can make your mind think deeper, teach you more about your field, sharpen your skills, curb your anxieties and generally just help you grow to the next level. Whatever your field or interests might be, it’s very important to create a consistent pattern and habit to read beyond your horizons. Every new habit that we wish to cultivate requires a new mind-set, a deep willingness to move out of our comfort zone, try to approach the habit as fun and enjoyable transition until it gets into our regular routine. With reading there are lot many blocks even before we can think of starting. Reading is like exploration. It is like getting to know a new physical location. When you arrive in a new city you don’t expect to know how to get around straight away. You don’t expect to know a new place in the way you know your own home environment. You need to get lost and find the way out. In my opinion the academic books also don't help us in cultivating the habit. These books are totally convoluted and non-interesting that it kills the motivation to read from a very young age. I have still today never come across a text book be it for the primary or the higher secondary worth reading for more than 5 minutes. Reading should be made fun and should be started early in age so that it becomes a habit easily. When you start to read, the first block which you face would be to discriminate between the writing that is unfamiliar texts with difficult ideas and the crappy stuff. But it is important to do so. These two are not the same thing. The first is worth persevering with, and the second not. In today’s internet world and the smart phone cradled generation – it is tough to read plain words in black on white paper. People are flashed with heavy animations, bright coloured pictures and voice-over videos that make reading look too boring, tough and old-fashioned. These multimedia content kills the creativity of the person. And finally the digital invasion has got into us that it doesn’t allow our brains to stay focused in a place for more than 15 minutes – reading requires much more focus than this. So how do you beat all these obstacles? “Happiness is not something which is readymade, it needs to come from the inside” – Dalai Lama There are lot of people around you who always seem to be happy even though there are not successful or perfect. So what do they do that you don’t? This was how I felt when I started to look at people around me and watch for things they do to keep themselves happy. What I found is the core plot of this blog. Everyone (I know that I’m generalising here) are tuned in today’s world to worship the golden rule that happiness is the by-product of success. If we can chase success then we will be happier. This was the first myth that got busted in my first day of observation. What I observed is that to become successful we adopt the commonly shared best habits of successful people, happiness also naturally happens when we are surrounded by happy people. The reverse is also true for unhappy people. Certainly not everything that a happy person does is relevant to his happiness. What makes them different is the fact that they are able to distinguish between happiness and unhappiness and how they treat both these emotions in a balanced and a proper way. Learning from them has been a revelation for me and I wanted to share those pitfalls which will help others to also be happier in their life. This post would have more points of what the happy people avoid or never do than what needs to be done. Are you ready to become happier? Let’s start “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang To drive in Madras (now called Chennai) is one hell of an experience. I would like to stress on the word HELL a bit more than you can dream off. Every day while driving it’s like you are holding your life in your mouth until you park your vehicle. Yet the moment you park and catch the smell of Filter Kaapi from the kitchen [not necessary from yours] – all the stress disappear. To start with, there is only one main rule of driving in Madras that operates on the fact that you are the best and leave the rest to the insurance company. This is due to the road condition, which is a clear example of Darwin’s theory – “Survival of the Fastest”. The male protagonist of this story, the driver, goes in with a set algorithm. He usually starts in the left unless it’s occupied. In that case he tries to go to the right, unless that is occupied too. If both are occupied he goes for the centre. Then he proceeds by occupying the next available slots in the road, as in a chess game. So it’s a fairly easy algorithm to master – go for the empty spaces in front of you. |
AuthorVasudevan is a Leadership Mentor and an Executive coach. I run an online website geared towards helping creative entrepreneurs and future managers to build their dreams. Archives
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