Supritha S

For example, if you smoke when you get stressed, then it's a bad plan to “just stop smoking” when that happens. Instead, you should come up with a different way to deal with stress and insert that new behavior instead of having a cigarette.

One thing I had to get used to was not going all-out in my training. On most days, I was clearly doing less than I could have. I would do my scheduled sets or miles and call it a day, even though I could have done more. I wasn’t “leaving it all out there” or “giving every ounce” very often.

The key as I see it, in my limited experience, is making our renunciations very small. I don’t know how to renounce snack food forever, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to. But renouncing my participation in this bowl of Doritos is always doable. It’s a small feat with a lasting benefit: future temptations, of all sorts, lose a bit more of their... See more

In other words, bad habits address certain needs in your life. And for that reason, it's better to replace your bad habits with a healthier behavior that addresses that same need. If you expect yourself to simply cut out bad habits without replacing them, then you'll have certain needs that will be unmet and it's going to be hard to stick to a... See more

Like your body, there are many forces and feedback loops that moderate the particular equilibrium of your habits. Your daily routines are governed by the delicate balance between your environment, your genetic potential, your tracking methods, and many other forces. As time goes on, this equilibrium becomes so normal that it becomes invisible. All... See more

In my experience, there are two primary ways to change long-term behaviors and improve performance for good.Increase your performance by a little bit each day. (Most people take this to the extreme.)Change your environment to remove small distractions and barriers. (Most people never think about this.)

And precisely for that reason, I haven’t had trouble sticking to it. There are extra-challenging days, but because they aren’t the norm, I can always be ready to meet them. Excited even. The improvement has been very consistent. There’s no more bargaining, no dread, and no compromise. I can live here.

As far as I can tell, interpreting problems as the crimes of clear perpetrators is the only way we attempt to justify real hatred for people. We need that sense of simplicity – the bad thing comes from the bad people — to hate a person or group without reservation, and history is full of examples.