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

Influence of Family and Social Connections

In this chapter of Atomic Habits, James Clear explains the powerful influence of family on habit formation through the story of a family of chess masters in Hungary. The father was determined to make all his children chess grandmasters. From as young as three or four years old, they were immersed in the world of chess — and remarkably, every one of them went on to become a chess prodigy.

This is an extreme example of the role family plays in habit formation. In my work for over twenty years as a family physician, I noted that certain families tend to go down the same pathway.

If mom and dad are typically overweight with habits of eating junk food and drinking soda, the kids are having the same habits and heading towards the same pathway .

You can’t change your family, so if you want to change, you must change with the family for the best results. That’s why I always get the whole family to change together, as it’s useless to change one person if others are still drinking soft drinks, etc. I still remember this lady who was desperately trying to lose weight, taking Ozempic and dieting, but failing miserably, as her partner kept on bringing soft drinks and chips home, and the poor lady couldn’t resist them

Practical Tips

If a husband wants to quit smoking, he needs to make sure that his partner also quits smoking at the same time, so it becomes a shared journey

If you want your kids to eat healthy, make an example and eat healthy yourself

If you want to exercise but others in your family want to be couch potatoes, find something that you all want to do as a family, like hiking, playing footy, etc

Social Cycle

It’s strange how much you crave belonging to a group. We humans are social animals, and if you look around you, you will notice overweight people tend to hang out with overweight people, video gamers with gamers, gym junkies with their perfect bodies with slim and sexy looking girls. You would never find an overweight girl in a group of health-obsessed, figure-conscious girls group

So how do you reverse engineer the stunning effect of group psychology to your advantage? In a way, you are piggybacking on your group’s strength to get to your health goals! How cool is that

Want to go walking? Join a local walking group

Want to quit alcohol when all your friends are heavy drinkers? Join a new group of people who are non-drinkers

Remember, your group will decide to a large part who you are, and it’s challenging to go against your group as you will be ostracised. So if your group is getting you down, dare to leave your group for another group that shares your values

I had to leave a social group that valued only materialism and status, and I was ostracised for being different. I had to be one of them, parading my new shiny car or leaving the group completely! I chose to leave the group to pursue my new values, and I am happy that I made that decision, even though it caused me stress and heartbreak

I can see this in my patients all over again, the drug addict hanging out with the wrong crowd, the junk food addict going out with the same crowd, the self-obsessed Ticktock influencer with fashion clothes craze only going out with the same crowd, etc

I would strongly recommend broadening your horizon by deliberately adding a group polar opposite to your habits without compromising your values. If you are a lazy person who doesn’t do any exercise and prefers to hang out with like-minded individuals to feel safe in your herd, be brave enough to have a lovely gym junkie friend, who will gradually influence you to be healthy

So my readers, think about who you want to be and look at your social cycle and then ask the question, are my friends going to help or hinder my new identity of quitting alcohol, quitting smoking, etc, or are they going to drag you to their level and keep me forever as a smoker or drug addict?

As I discovered the hard way, leaving a group can be painful, but the reward and relief are worth it!

Practical Tips

If a husband wants to quit smoking, he needs to make sure that his partner also quits smoking at the same time, so it becomes a shared journey

If you want your kids to eat healthy, make an example and eat healthy yourself

If you want to exercise but others in your family want to be couch potatoes, find something that you all want to do as a family, like hiking, playing footy, etc

Social Cycle

Want to go walking? Join a local walking group

Want to quit alcohol when all your friends are heavy drinkers? Join a new group of people who are non-drinkers

My Story - Dr Prabath

Live Richer in Every Way

Influence of Family and Social Connections

Practical Tips

Social Cycle

Practical Tips

Social Cycle

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