Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 484 of our trek, and today is Motivation Monday. Every Monday we hike the trails of life that will encourage and motivate us to live rich and satisfying lives this week. Today let us explore the trail called The Habit Domino.
We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. This past extended Thanksgiving weekend was filled with activities and time with family. We had two Thanksgiving dinners, one at my brother’s home on Thursday and one at our home on Saturday. We were also able to harvest several more loads of leaves, so we are making progress on that front. There are still quite a few leaves still on the trees, so that will entail a couple more weekends of work to finish all the leaves.
As we head into December and the Christmas season this week, there are many activities yet to come. Much of the activities in our lives are made up of habits that we have acquired over the years. Habits can be either good or bad, but are usually linked to each other, which is why it is difficult to change them. As we break camp and head out on our trek for today, let us invest time exploring the concept of…
The Habit Domino states that when you make a change to one behavior, it will activate a chain reaction and cause a shift in related behaviors as well.
For example, a 2012 study by researchers at Northwestern University found that when people decreased their amount of sedentary leisure time each day, they also reduced their daily fat intake. The participants were never specifically told to eat less fat, but their nutrition habits improved as a natural side effect because they invested less time on the couch watching television and mindlessly eating. One habit led to another. One domino knocked down the next.
You may notice similar patterns in your own life. As a personal example, if I stick with my habit of getting up early and exercising, then I naturally find myself more focused at work and sleeping more soundly at night even though I never made a plan to specifically improve either behavior.
The Habit Domino holds for negative habits as well. You may find that the habit of checking your phone leads to the habit of clicking social media notifications, which leads to the habit of browsing social media mindlessly and to another 20 minutes of procrastination.
In the words of Stanford professor BJ Fogg, “You can never change just one behavior. Our behaviors are interconnected, so when you change one behavior, other behaviors also shift.”
As best I can tell, the Habit Domino occurs for two reasons.
First, many of the habits and routines that make up our daily lives are related to one another. There is an astounding interconnectedness between the systems of life, and human behavior is no exception. The inherent relatedness of things is a core reason why choices in one area of life can lead to surprising results in other areas, regardless of the plans you make.
Second, the Habit Domino capitalizes on two
