4 Books for Building Better Habits and Breaking Bad Ones

There are probably habits that we may want to build and stick with.

There may be habits that we want to break.

It would either go really well, or we would instead go back to our old routine and completely let go of the changes that we have attempted to make.

I’ve watched YouTube videos before on how to build habits and how to break habits. However, what I have seen in some, if not most, is that they just simply outline the steps towards building or breaking the habits, without specifically mentioning context behind it all.

It’s like someone trying to sell us something without actually explaining what the product does and why we should buy it.

The four books that I am about to mention are books that include very helpful concepts when it comes to building good habits and breaking the bad habits.

I have found each of these books quite valuable because not only had they discussed how to acquire and break habits, but also provided context beforehand why we need to do those steps.

And the great part is that each of these books have approached the building and breaking of habits in different ways which I have found very beneficial.

I’m going to break each book down like this:

1. Approach to Habits – how each book had approached the idea of habits.
2. How to Break Habits – the book’s method on how to break habits
3. How to Build Habits – the book’s method on how to build habits
4. Overall Rate on how helpful it was – I didn’t give it a number score, it was either a high rate or a good rate. Spoiler alert, there’s no “bad” rate, because if it was, it was not included on this list.

Here are the four main books below:

Book 1 – The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

The Compound Effect is one of my favourite books for creating and breaking habits. It provides a valuable insight on how everything in our life is a reflection of our habits.

It swipes the assumption that success is built from an overnight transformation. Instead, it emphasizes that it’s the little habits we do that seem insignificant in the moment, that leads to our eventual results.

For instance, the good habits that we have, they don’t seem like it’s working in the moment, but will eventually show benefits in the long run.

Same with our bad habits. They don’t seem like it’s impacting negatively in the moment, but will become detrimental in the long run.

Then the reflection of those habits are shown through our results – if someone has achieved high grades, then they’ve likely built effective study habits. If someone had came first in a running marathon, then they’ve likely built regular training habits.

Approach to Habits

This book’s approach to habits includes the following key points:

1. Thinking our Way Out of the Instant Gratification Trap

If someone was late for work once and immediately got fired, then they probably will make sure that they are always arriving to work on time.

If someone had binged on snacks one night and immediately got skin breakouts, then they’ll probably have a second thought about binge snacking.

In the moment, since those long-term consequences wouldn’t immediately happen, then it’s easy to think about the instant feeling we’ll get from doing those actions.

This is a trap that we want to avoid falling into. We have to keep in mind that even though those bad habits seem harmless in the moment, we would see the eventual results of those habits in the long run.

2. WHYpower Over WILLpower

I had written a blog post about this as well, where it states that instead of relying solely on willpower to help us stick with our habits, we focus on the whypower instead.

Sometimes the reason why we may have let go of some of the habits we tried to build, or fall back into the habits we had tried to break, is because we lack the why.

Finding the WHY involves knowing our core values, and then eventually put our WHY to the test to see whether it is strong enough for us to keep going with our habits, and stops us from falling back into our old habits.

Since we are thinking long-term with our habits, the WHYpower would keep us focused on why we are building or breaking those habits in the first place.

How to Break Habits

Applying the concepts mentioned above, these are the steps to eliminating the bad habits mentioned in the book:

1. Identifying the Triggers
2. Clean House
3. Swap it
4. Ease in
5. OR Jump in

How to Build Habits

Again, applying the same concepts mentioned above, these are the steps to building good habits mentioned in the book:

1. Set yourself up for success
2. Think addition not subtraction
3. Make a Public Display of Accountability
4. Find a Success Buddy
5. Competition & Camaraderie (I had to look up that word too)
6. Celebrate

Overall rate for how helpful this book was to my habits – A very high rate. Knowing about the compound effect had really helped me in being more conscious on the habits that I was doing, and how it was impacting me. I do personally think that this book would really benefit everyone because it provides something more than just steps on how to break and build habits.

Book 2 – Atomic Habits by James Clear

This is also one of my favourite books, something that I’ve read more than once, even the audiobook version of it.

It’s similar to The Compound Effect in terms of emphasizing on how small habits do make a big difference. How it’s so easy to underestimate the value of those small habits in the long run. Those 1% actions. Those actions that aren’t really noticeable.

It also swipes the assumption that massive success requires massive action. Instead, it focuses on the importance on how it’s those 1% small improvements that would eventually accumulate to something much more.

Approach to Habits

This book’s approach to habits focused on these points:

1. 1% Better Every Day

I personally really love this concept. It mentions how habits are the compound interest of self-improvement, the same way on how money compounds through compound interest.

The effects of our habits, even those small ones, multiply as they are being repeated.

In the moment, they seem so insignificant but they deliver a larger impact over the long-term and become apparent.

If we make good 1% choices, then it would compound into beneficial results in the long-term. If we make 1% errors, day after day, it would accumulate to a decline in the long-term.

2. Focusing on Systems Instead of Goals

Atomic Habits had mentioned the idea to focus on systems instead of goals. This is because goals are just simply the results that we want to achieve, and don’t mention much about the actual processes to achieve them.

Systems would allow us to form those habits and processes that will bring us closer to our goals. It’s quite simple, if we find that our system is bringing us closer to our goals, then it means that it’s working. If we find that it’s bringing us further away from our goals, or we’re not really going anywhere, then it means that it’s not working and we need to revise it.

It is the systems that would differentiate those who are able to stick to their habits or can effectively break their habits, to those who aren’t.

How to Build Good Habits

Applying the concepts mentioned above, Atomic Habits introduces a habit loop that forms the four stages of a habit. The four “laws” to creating a habit. These are:

1. Cue – make it obvious
2. Craving – make it attractive
3. Response – make it easy
4. Reward – make it satisfying

How to Break Bad Habits

The formula to break bad habits is actually no different to the habit loop mentioned above, except it is actually inverted:

1. Cue – make it invisible
2. Craving – make it unattractive
3. Response – make it difficult
4. Reward – make it satisfying

You may have noticed that when it comes to breaking bad habits, all the steps are the exact opposite to building good habits.

Overall rate for how helpful this book was to my habits – Again, a very high rate, I’ve read it more than once, and I’ve listened to the audiobook more than once. It is one of those books where the concepts mentioned are common sense but we just never realized it.

The concepts behind building and breaking habits are simple, but are valuable. These are one of the main books that have helped me develop the habits that I have today, and have helped me break some of my bad habits.

Book 3 – The Delusion of Passion by Mark Nathan and David Anderson

Unlike the first two books mentioned above, this book isn’t focused entirely on habits. However, it does have a good chapter on developing daily habits, providing context on how passion fits in.

I know that I was wrong about passion most of my life. Being passionate about something doesn’t mean that we’ll never experience problems and we have to be passionate about everything. Instead, experiencing problems and getting through them is part of passion, and also going through the boring stuff. These all include the habits that we have to form, as well as the habits we have to break.

We develop habits to go where we want to go.

Approach to Habits

The Reality of Change

The truth about change is that it is going to be hard. However, what is even harder is having the patience to change.

I have found that this is true – I have felt how it’s hard to leave something that I was used to and then get out of my comfort zone. That’s why before I tend to stick to my routines of my old habits, and slip off the new ones that I build.

And when we do want to change, especially if the life we strive for requires it, we need to keep in mind that change is not an overnight accomplishment. Therefore, our habits are not going to be automatically developed overnight.

It mentioned how we just have to change something we do consistently every day if we want to change our life, and it will take some time before we would start to see a noticeable change.

How to Break Bad Habits

Although the book doesn’t have a step-by-step process on how to break bad habits, it does provide a valuable analogy that is helpful in breaking them.

This is called replacing your furniture.

Pretty much, we imagine having a house with old furniture in it and deciding that we’re sick of it because all of it are in terrible condition, so we get rid of all of it. Now since we have gotten rid of it, we don’t have that old furniture anymore, and we are now in an empty house.

BUT because the house is empty, and we don’t have a couch to sit on, a table to put our food, and our bed to sleep on, we start to think about the old furniture we got rid of. Yes, we may survive a few days without it, but then eventually it would be time when we remembered how comfortable the old furniture was and bring it back in.

The reason why we would bring back that old furniture was because we never got anything to replace it with.

It’s the same with our bad habits.

Even though it’s hard to eliminate, it would be easier to replace it. We get rid of our bad habits by replacing it with better ones. Once we think of a good habit to replace, we follow the following steps mentioned below:

How to Build Good Habits

Applying the concepts mentioned above, The Delusion of Passion outlines these steps to developing good habits:

1. Start small
2. Attach it to something else
3. Don’t overwhelm yourself
4. Consistency is everything
5. Tell someone
6. Talk about it

Overall rate for how helpful this book was to my habits – A good rate, only because unlike the first two books mentioned above, it’s not a book dedicated to habits. However, its chapter on developing daily habits was very helpful and did link really well to passion. I personally think that this book is good for those who are unclear on specifically what they want to do. It goes through the delusions of passion, and then discusses the steps on creating that life of passion, including developing those habits.

Book 4 – What to Say When You Talk to Yourself by Shad Helmstetter

So this book is also not entirely focused on building habits, but it is focused on building a specific habit – self-talk.

If you’ve read my blog post on how to lie to yourself (content inspired by this same book), self-talk is specifically the directions we give to our mind, regardless on whether we say it out loud or not.

It is where we repeatedly tell words and statements about ourselves, and we eventually believe it and then also live it. This is regardless on whether it is positive or negative.

So if we say positive statements to ourselves, we would eventually believe it. The same with saying negative statements to ourselves, we would eventually believe it. Changing our self-talk pretty much means conditioning what we want to believe, assuming that it is all the positive stuff.

Approach to Habits

Habits come from our Self-Talk

There may be habits that we want to change. We may want to break a bad habit because it’s causing us problems and hold us back. We may want to acquire good habits because it would benefit us and move us forward.

When we think about it, our habits do come from our previous conditioning, things we learned to do, practice, and then it becomes a natural way for us to behave.

The self-talk comes in when it helps us work on a specific problem. Since the self-talk directs our mind to either stop doing something or do something, that is what we would end up doing.

It is the self-talk that would either work for us or against us when it comes to doing the things we need to keep doing or stop doing. It’s pretty much our GPS to our goal, but it will be elaborated further below.

How to Acquire Good Habits

There’s no specific step-by-step method, since the way to building habits here is through our self-talk.

Like mentioned above, our self-talk is the GPS system to get to where we want to go. Just like traveling on a plane to get to another country, the pilot would need to determine the course, direction, altitude, and speed to arrive there. It wouldn’t be of much help if the course just tells us to go left, without telling us the compass direction for it. It wouldn’t be helpful if the pilot got only vague directions to where they want to go.

It needs to be specific. The course from the beginning to the end needs to be clear so that they don’t lost. The direction must be clear so that they don’t end up somewhere else or worse, hit another plane and end in disaster. Everything needs to be clear and specific.

It’s the same with building habits through our self-talk, we can’t be vague with our self-talk. For instance, it’s not enough to simply say that we are going to be healthy or we are going to get more fit without actually being specific on how we have to do it. Instead, we need to be specific such as saying that we are going to cut junk food out of our diet, and we are going to go on more runs, that would give our brain more specific instructions.

How to Break Bad Habits

Like mentioned above, our habits come from our previous behaviour and self-talk. These may include procrastination, making excuses, or being easily forgetful.

Just like we had also mentioned above on how continuously saying something would make us believe it, these would form the habits we already have.

We probably have heard someone say that they easily forget names (that someone is me). The more times they say it, ,the more times they believe it, and then the more times they believe it, they’re still bad at remembering names. So pretty much, their self-talk isn’t helping much.

That’s something to think about with the bad habits we have, is it a result from our self-talk? From the things that we have repeatedly said to ourselves?

If that is the case, then that’s where we need to change the self-talk and put it into present tense. It is where we using “lying to yourself” to our advantage. Whether we say it out loud to ourselves or in our mind, we say the change as if it has already happened.

We change the habit by changing the words. Once we choose the habit we wanted to change, we change the words that describe the change, as if we have already made the change.

Similar to all the other books, this point is still the same – the change isn’t going to happen overnight. Obviously, saying a lie to yourself once wouldn’t make us believe it, only when we say it over and over again. It’s not going to be an overnight transformation, but when we repeat it over and over again, little by little, we would eventually see a difference.

Overall rate for how helpful this book was to my habits – A good rate. Again, this book is not entire focused on habits, but it is entirely focused on self-talk which is a habit. Reading this book, I did start to realise the role that self-talk does play in building habits or breaking habits. It’s a bit underrated on how self-talk can help us build habits that are beyond our comfort zone, and break bad habits that we are so comfortable with.

I do think that this book is beneficial for everyone as well, because not only is developing good habits important, but also having good self-talk that comes with it as well.

The links to the books:

(not sponsored in any way!)

• The Compound Effect – Darren Hardy
• Atomic Habits – James Clear
• The Delusion of Passion – Mark Nathan and David Anderson
• What to Say When You Talk to Yourself – Shad Helmstetter

Disclaimer: If you think that any of what I had written was good, the credit actually belongs to the one whose book was the inspiration for this post. If there’s anything on here that you think is quite stupid, that’s 100% blame on me 🙂

Share This Blog Post Here:

Related Articles:

The ones that feature the above mentioned books:

The Compound Effect:

How the Compound Effect Works

New Year, New WHY… Stop Using Willpower!

The Best Ways to Set Goals! (it will change the way you look at your goals)

Atomic Habits:

Before You Start a New Habit… Read This!

Systems Over Goals! – why you should focus on systems

Delusion of Passion:

Things I Was Wrong About Passion

What to Say When You Talk to Yourself:

How to Improve Your Self-Talk

---

---

CONNECT with ME!! 🗯

Instagram:

@laurenlbarri (blog Instagram)

---

---