In a heroic book titled Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg defines habits as mental shortcuts learnt from experience. Habits are also repeated patterns of behaviour. In the distant past, an Athenian thinker called Aristotle said, “We become what we repeatedly do; excellence is not an act, but a habit.”
Pantheon of philosophers tell us, when we plant a thought, we reap an action. When we plant an action, we reap a habit. When we plant a habit, we reap character. When we plant character, we reap destiny. Destiny is a matter of choice, not chance. William Jennings Bryan put it aptly, “Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for. It is a thing to be achieved.”
Indeed, if habits and destiny are close cognates, then students should adhere to stupendous study habits. They should know that nothing comes through a silver platter. Effort is required. Sedulous students access success by dwelling in habitats of habits. No wonder, no student should sit like a rock. Instead, it is advisable to tick and click like a clock.
Stupendous Study Habits
In a school set up, students who yearn to pass with flying colours should toil and moil. It all begins with what Napoleon Hill christened as Positive Mental Attitude (PMA). There is the exigent need for having all useful tools in place. Every student must have well-written notes and consult teachers on regular basis. It is good to cultivate rich reading culture. They should build their attention and concentration spans. Time management is prime and supreme. Not forgetting the aspect of seeking to understand content taught. As they also focus on marvellous methods of mastery and memory. Students that excel also expand their learning time.
Bad Study Habits
Some students do not perform well in school because they are prone to bad study habits. They fail and fall flat to unleash their best because of laziness and lassitude: they get tired before they do the job. Some are used to inaction, indecision and procrastination. While others are lost in bad habits, like abuse and misuse of drugs. Other bad study habits include cramming information and passive study. Studying without plausible plans, objectives, targets and goals, also feature in the giant list of bad study habits. Unfortunately, woe betide learners who fail to settle on some unique technique of study.
Science of Habits
Therefore, it is clear like crystal, students who want to evince excellence in school and beyond, should understand the Science of Habits. Repeated pattern of behaviour plays an integral role in excellence and in what Napoleon Hill terms as Science of Success. Those who want to shine as stars must be used to habits that are good. In a larger sense, a habit is caught and not taught. In a certain tantalising tome titled Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about the Habit Loop or the Science of Habits. The putative author argues that the process of building a habit has four simple steps — cue, craving, response and reward. The cue triggers a craving. In turn, it motivates a response. Then, it provides a reward. It sates or satiates a craving. As it ultimately becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop — cue, craving, response and reward. The four steps create automatic habits. Such as blinking the eye without thinking about it. There is the cue. The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behaviour. The cue focuses on noticing the reward. The craving wants the reward. Response is obtaining the reward.
Installation of Habits
Most psychological pundits argue that it takes 21 days to install a habit. Darren Hardy talks of 365 days in his iconic book titled the Compound Effect. Robin Sharma in his heroic book titled the 5:00 AM Club theorises about the Habit Installation Protocol: the 66-Day Minimum. He breaks down the installation of habits into three phases, each taking 22 days. There is the destruction, installation and integration.
The first stage is the hardest one because it entails re-writing the past pattern of the mind. At the destruction phase, there is obliteration of old ways of operation. There is re-writing of the past programmes of the heart and emotions. The space shuttle is an excellent example. It uses more fuel in the first 60 seconds after lift-off than what it uses over the entire orbit around the earth. It expends more fuel because it must overcome powerful forces of gravity after take-off. With exigence, it requires oodles of fuel in order to fight and defeat initial forces, reach and touch escape velocity. After the destruction of bad habits, we definitely move ahead into installation phase, where there is formation of new neural pathways. As we stick like a tick to the practice of making any fresh routine our normal way of being, we arrive at the final, and the most wonderful stage — integration.
Breaking Bad Habits
Maybe, before I drop my pen, the scribe should describe a few ways of breaking bad habits. There is habit stacking, priming and designing the environment. When it comes to building new habits, we can use the connectedness of behaviour to our advantage. We drop bad habits by acquiring good ones. We identify a current habit we do on daily basis then stack new behaviour on top. This is what we call Habit Stacking. Connected to the Diderot Effect, coined from the French philosopher, Dennis Diderot (1713-1784). Priming the environment refers to ‘re-setting the room’. This is not just to clean up the last action, but to prepare for the next one. Environmental Design means that we re-organise the environment completely to help us accommodate the new behaviour.
Bible and Berean Brethren
Lastly, daily dedication and devotion to means of grace, also known as spiritual disciplines, makes a Christian to grow and glow. Such habits made the early church to gain spiritual power in those years of yore. In Acts 2:42, Dr. Luke writes, “They devoted themselves to apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer.” In Acts 19:11, this medical practitioner who worked and walked with Jesus of Nazareth writes about the Bereans who were more noble in character than those in Thessalonica, for they received God’s message with more eagerness, and examined the sacred scriptures on daily basis to ascertain whether what Apostle Paul of Tarsus said was true.
By Victor Ochieng’
The writer is a peripatetic speaker. vochieng.90@gmail.com. 0704420232
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