Cultivate positive habits

Studying systems and habits for the past 20 years, I’ve learned the value of looking at the full systems and applying habit changes to our daily lives. It is more than breaking some bad habits. It is more than finding meaning behind our actions.

The benefit of working to instill positive habits is that we can make progress and improve our lives. When we stop making effort the only factor, we start to make real progress.

In The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success & Happiness, author Jeff Olson says, “It’s not that good habits don’t exist, or that we don’t have them. We do. It’s just that we typically take them for granted.”

Why do they get taken for granted? If they are so powerful, why do we not notice them and highlight them in our lives?

The reason is that they are small and easy to bypass. Our society is all about the extremes. We focus on the outliers, the one-offs. We don’t pay attention to the recurring systematic elements of life. Because they happen all the time, it is easy to stop paying attention to them.

But this is a mistake. When we give away our ability to leverage time to obtain great gains, we start to make short-sighted decisions. We choose a chance for success or happiness right now over the potential for future success or happiness.

This is bad because of the odds. The odds are low if we sacrifice everything for success and happiness now. The odds are much better when we sacrifice now for a future gain.

We would rather buy a lottery ticket now for a chance to instantly change our lives. We don’t want to start saving for the future or putting money into our retirement account.

We would rather exercise hard today and hope it results in weight loss tomorrow. We don’t want to start a new exercise routine that won’t result in success for weeks.

But those positive habits are powerful. People are doing incredible things by working slowly and consistently. They are applying lifestyle changes that will last.

All of us do this. Everyone has positive habits that we have created. It might be to wake up earlier than you want so you can make it to work on time. It might be to work hard on the job to make sure you don’t get fired.

It could be that you put off certain activities because you know the dangers, despite the fact that they might provide instant gratification.

When we shift our point of view, we can start to celebrate those. Instead of ignoring them, we highlight them.

One system that gets ignored is education. Most people in the U.S. go to school and learn for at least 12 years. In 12 years, the volume of content that is covered is incredible. But since so many do it, we ignore how we did it.

Most people would say they were forced to do it. Or they would say they didn’t even think about it, they just did it because they had to do it.

But this is a systematic way to educate an entire country. Imagine having a country full of citizens with no education. How do you get them all educated?

Doing it instantly is impossible. But what about creating a system that educates the country and elevates the intelligence of a massive group of people?

That is what was created and what we all took part in. We were a part of a system that educates a whole country. The majority take on the necessary habits to learn and progress their understanding of the world.

I’m guessing that you went through a similar structure yourself. You may have even continued those positive habits beyond what was required and took higher education classes.

That is just one example of how the systems and habits approach to improvement works. It isn’t about extremes or one-offs. It isn’t about brute force and effort. It is about creating the structures that allow habits to form to produce the desired outcome.

Look around at your life. I’m guessing that there are elements of your life that follow the systems and habits approach to produce a positive outcome. Learn from those and find new ways to replicate that structure in other areas to build up more success and happiness.