My Story - Dr Prabath

By Dr. Prabath, Founder of Millionaire Health Habits & Owner of Unique Medical Cranbourne, Australia

Live Richer in Every Way

By Dr prabath

Newsletter 5

So now that we know how habits are formed and the four parts of habits, from cues to rewards, let’s focus on steps to encourage good habits

1. Make it obvious

Make a list of all your habits from morning to bedtime, from what you do first thing in the morning, like checking your phone, to nighttime watching TV, etc.
List the habits as harmful, neutral and beneficial.
Understand the cues behind each habit, like feeling bored and checking your phone, etc.
Throughout the day, observe your cues, cravings, actions and rewards for different habits.
By understanding your habits and the cues causing the habits, you can start to change the bad habits and enforce the good habits.

Best ways to start a good habit

1) Have an Implementation Intention

What does this fancy word mean? Let’s say you want to create a new morning routine of meditation. You can either say to yourself that I will do meditation daily, or you can say to yourself, I will do daily morning meditation right after having coffee in the study at 6am. With an implementation intention, you clearly state a time, location and sequence of events.

2) Habit Stacking

Dr BJ Fogg explains this concept in his book Tiny Habits and has been mentioned in the book Atomic Habits. Habit staking is the concept of linking a new habit to an activity or routine that’s already existing.

Imagine all the usual activities you do from morning to nighttime

Waking up and having your coffee

Brush your teeth in the morning

Put your shoes on

Have your breakfast

Put the kettle on

With habit stacking, you link another habit to the already existing habit. Example

Brush your teeth in the morning – Right after, do a few wall push-ups

Put your shoes on – Right after, do a few stretches

Have your breakfast – Right after, say three things to be grateful for

Put the kettle on – While waiting, do a few daily affirmations like it’s going to be a great day today, etc

After a while, you can stack multiple habits together to form a consistent routine. For example, I wake up daily at 5:30 a.m., then look at the US stock market and do a few trades. This is followed by meditation, reading a few pages of a book, listening to a book summary on Blinkist, writing a few sentences of my newsletter, 40 minutes of morning exercise, etc.