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Zusammenfassung von Better Than Before

Name: Better Than Before
Rating: 4.1 (276 reviews)
Author: Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin

Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

4.1 (276 Bewertungen)

15 Min.

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Better Than Before
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What’s in it for me? Kick your bad habits, and stick to your good ones.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.” And if your destiny isn't reason enough to improve your habits, then nothing is.

The truth is, we all have good habits and bad habits, and we want more of the good ones and less of the bad. But how to achieve that?

Starting with understanding what kind of person you are, and then suggesting specific, simple strategies that you can use this very day, these blinks provide a roadmap to conquering our bad habits and sticking to our good ones.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

how a Swedish musical staircase convinced people not to take the elevator;
why men gain weight after getting divorced; and
why some burglars found chocolate in a millionaire’s safe.

In order to take control of your habits you must know thyself.

Aristotle’s imperative – “Know thyself!” – still rings true today. To ditch bad habits or stick to good ones, you need to know who you are. And you’ll likely fall into one of these four personality types:

If you’re an Upholder, you find it easy to respond to your own and others’ expectations. You always do everything on your to-do list. However, you tend to dawdle when there are no clear-cut rules or expectations.

For example, if going to the gym is in the calendar, an Upholder will go even if the weather is terrible, or she’s tired from work. If it’s not in the calendar, though, she’d probably skip it even if it would be a fine day to work out.

If you scrutinize what’s expected of you and comply only if they make sense to you, you’re more of a Questioner. This usually means that when you want to start a new habit, you take forever to gather momentum.

A Questioner wanting to start a gym habit can benefit from exercise apps or other data sources, because when he sees statistical proof that he’s losing weight, he’ll be more motivated to stick to his gym routine.

If you’re an Obliger, you have no problem meeting expectations when they’re imposed on you, but you find it difficult to impose expectations on yourself. Therefore if you as an Obliger want to go to the gym more, you should get an exercise buddy who’ll pressure you into going.

Finally, if you’re a Rebel, you resist all expectations, whether they come from you or other people. Authenticity and self-determination are your guides. If you're a Rebel you should refrain from putting things in your calendar (if you have one at all) and just say to yourself you're going to the gym today because you want to, not because it's in the calendar.

Which type are you? Knowing this will help you form new habits.

Using a calendar and monitoring your habits will make creating and maintaining the good ones easier.

You know the feeling when you’re at a restaurant, and there are so many tasty options of the menu that you just can’t decide? The simple truth is that for us humans, making decisions is hard.

That’s why when you’re trying to pick up a new habit like say, going to the gym, you have to take decision-making out of the equation. If you need to separately decide each and every day whether to hit the weights or not, you’ll probably end up skipping most of your workouts. So don’t think – just do! Make the decision today to put your workouts for the next months in your calendar, and you’ll no longer need to make any other decisions. Just follow your calendar!

New beginnings are great for introducing new habits.

Ever tried to change a nasty habit, like nail biting? It's not easy. Changing our habits is notoriously difficult because our daily routines are so ingrained in us.

But when a major change occurs in our life, like moving house, getting a new job, or even finding new love, our routines suddenly change, or even disappear altogether. Such times are ideal for creating new and better habits!

It’s easier to positively shape our lives when we make good habits convenient and bad ones inconvenient.

Let’s face it – most of us are pretty lazy. So if we want to maintain our good habits, we need to make them as convenient and easy as we possibly can.

Say you want to start socializing more. If you have to go to the trouble of making arrangements and calling your friends every time you feel like socializing, you’ll often end up by yourself because you can’t be bothered. However, joining a group that has regular meet-ups, such as a book club, can make things far easier because it minimizes the effort needed.

Safeguard against temptation and don’t use excuses.

Do you ever feel like your entire life revolves around resisting temptation? Well, you’re not entirely wrong. Research has found that we spend around a quarter of our waking life struggling to resist some kind of temptation. It is no surprise then that often our success in adopting good habits or ditching bad ones depends on our ability to resist temptation.

How can we do this effectively?

It’s easier to form good habits when you find the right distractions and learn to work without the promise of rewards.

Why do we always view distraction as a negative thing? When it comes to refraining from bad habits, distractions can be a real blessing.

So the next time you feel the need to fight off unwelcome thoughts and cravings, try to distract yourself.

Pair good habits together, and give yourself a treat now and then.

We’ve seen how rewards aren't always useful when we want to stick to our good habits. Luckily, there are other approaches we can use. One is called pairing.

Pairing is simply taking two activities, one that you enjoy doing and one that you want to do but find a bit more difficult, and making them dependent on one another. This makes it easier to keep up good habits.

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Worum geht es in Better Than Before?

Better Than Before (2015) gives you the strategies to both create and maintain good, healthy habits, and break the habits that don’t serve you.

Bestes Zitat aus Better Than Before

Decide, then dont decide.

—Gretchen Rubin

Wer Better Than Before lesen sollte

Anyone who wants to pick up and maintain good habits
Anyone wishing to kick a bad habit

Über den Autor

Gretchen Rubin is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Happiness Project, a book that has been translated into over 30 languages and instigated a movement of people wanting to live happier lives.

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