Personal Learning from a Remarkable Book

Prayers to God: Please bless all Your children

Dated: 5^th March 2022

Part (A):

Insights from the remarkable book: "Tiny Habits" by Dr B J Fogg

Chapter: Introduction

1. Write one 'to-do' every morning and do it right away.

2. Affirm to God that, it is going to be a great day, right after you wake up every morning and smile.

3. Write in your journal immediately on experiencing any negative feelings

Chapter 1: The elements of behaviour

1. B = MAP

This means when motivation(M), ability(A) and prompt(P) converge together, behaviour happens.

2. The easier our behaviour is, the more likely it will become a habit.

3. Life is your own personal change lab: treat your life as a place where anything is possible.

Chapter 2: Motivation

1. Get clear on your aspiration: what is your dream?

2. With magical powers, vividly imagine all possible supporting behaviours that will help you to achieve your dream.

3. Write down a list of anxieties before going to bed.

4. Tidy up your desk every evening.

Chapter 3: Ability

1. If you want to grow big, start small.

2. If you want to grow big, start simple.

3. If you want to grow big, start easy.

4. Things will feel light and durable when you start tiny.

5. Make a list of tiny to-do's for a particular task - this will generate a sense of momentum for completing the entire task - and that will free up your vital brain space for the next task.

6. Ordinary humans do not do things that are painful for very long.

Chapter 4: Prompts

1. A prompt says 'do this behaviour now'.

2. Send yourself a text message to complete an important task.

3. Focus upon only one thing and cover all other things - this will make you calm.

4. Create one good habit: it will create a series of good habits in your life.

Chapter 5: Emotions create habits

1. Pay attention to each particular occasion, when you score an authentic accomplishment, at any point of time during the day - the size of your accomplishment does not matter here.

2. Feel authentically happy for such true accomplishment.

3. Feeling authentically happy for ourselves teaches us how to be nice to ourselves.

4. Every day, tidy up your study table for just one minute - this will bring in an authentic feeling of accomplishment and hence, will lead to an authentic feeling of joy.

Chapter 6: Grow your habit from tiny to transformative

1. When you begin your day with affirmation that it's going to be a great day with the Grace of God, then you create an upward trajectory for your entire day.

2. Success momentum:

Allow yourself to feel successful at something, even if tiny. Your confidence will soon grow and make you perform other related behaviours.

3. Always ask yourself the question: What is the tiniest habit I could create, that could have the greatest meaning, to the Mission of my life? The more answers you come up with, the more you are practicing the skill of "Self-insight".

4. When you consciously design your environment to accommodate your new habits, you make your whole life easier and hence, better.

5. Finish the sentence, "I am the kind of person who...", with the identity you'd like to embrace.

Chapter 7: Untangling bad habits

1. The more you deal with your negative emotion in a healthy way such as by journaling, the better you will feel and the stronger will be your motivation to continue with your positive habits.

2. Always have compassion for yourself as you begin and continue with your journey of self-improvement.

3. Always consciously cultivate uphill habits: these are the habits that require ongoing attention to maintain and are tremendously beneficial in the long run. Example: Waking-up early in the morning

4. When you begin to create tiny improvements in your life, then it has the welcome side-effect of crowding out your other undesirable behaviours, that no longer fit in with the new identity of you as a successful person.

5. In order to wake up early in the morning, start eating dinner earlier - avoid blue light from screens and go to bed early.

6. A good habit from the life of Dr B J Fogg: "I don't have a desk chair in my Home Office in California - I removed it by design in order to make sitting all day harder to do - for the most part, I just keep standing."

7. Tremendous joy comes from watching the natural growth of positive habits you create - you will be equally happy when you see the bad habits, you have uprooted from your life lying on the composed pile.

8. And what is even more awe-inspiring is what crops up in the new space that you have created in your life. When you get rid of unwanted habits, what rises to fill that space are:

1. more time to devote your passion project,

2. greater productivity at work

3. expansion of your new successful identity

Chapter 8: How we change together

1. Golden maxims are: help yourself to do what you already want to do and help yourself to feel successful.

2. Feedback from authority figures is powerful. There is no more powerful praise than what comes from someone we admire.

3. Strengthen others in all your interactions: all you have to say is something positive which is sincere.

4. As you sit down to complete your task list, write down a guess of how long it will take you - this may only be a number written at the top of your list - but it will help you tremendously in time management.

5. Help yourself to reach your full potential: become the person you want to be.

Conclusion

1. Habit is the smallest and the most fundamental unit of transformation.

2. Habits are the first concentric circle of change that will spiral out. Think about it: - one person starts one habit - that builds to two habits - that build to three habits - soon that changes his own identity.

3. Garden analogy beautifully explains how our habits work. Our collection of habits is an ever-shifting landscape we can nurture by design: - we start a habit by planting a tiny seed in a good spot and then keep on nurturing it.

4. Have the focus on doing good in your life.

5. The quality of our life on planet earth depends on the choices we make every day - choices about how we spend our time and most important, how we treat ourselves.

6. Habits propel us toward our dream and add more shine to the world.

7. By embracing feelings of success and adding more goodness to your day-to-day life, you are making the world brighter for yourself and for others as well.

Part (B)

My Own Learning In Nutshell

1. I feel that, the mindset (prescribed by Dr Fogg) of "always catch yourself doing right" is truly stupendous.

2. This is because, it brings into life, a tremendously powerful mechanism.

3. This phenomenal mechanism is:

When our worth is recognized by our own self on scoring an authentic accomplishment, HOWSOEVER TINY, then we get blessed by authentic self-esteem.

4. And authentic self-esteem is the fundamental building block of a truly strong character.

5. Ultimately, it is strong character, that inevitably leads to our lasting success, as measured in our own terms.