Issue 2: Habits

MIND CAFE EDITION 2 - HABITS

ON BEING PRESENT

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Welcome MAGAZINE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: CO-EDITOR: DESIGN: FOUNDER:

CONTRIBUTORS

Adrian Drew Gemma Steele Lee Caple Adrian Drew

Zulie Rane, Danny Forest, Matthew Hearnden, Roy English, Julia Pugachevsky, Stephen Moore, Mathilde Langevin, Anthony Moore, Dottie James, Adrian Drew, Tenzin Ozaki, Jordan Gross, Nir Eyal

PHOTOGRAPHY COVER: MAGAZINE:

Callum Shaw Joseph Marchant, Adrian Drew, Callum Shaw, Ryan Fleming

We are what we repeatedly do. That’s a quote from Aristotle, and it’s absolutely right. Our actions define who we are, and what we do every single day serves to mold us into a different version of ourselves in the future. Habits, defined by the dictionary as ‘a settled or regular tendency or practice’, form the foundation of our existence, and are responsible for either our astounding success or crushing downfall.

The interesting thing about habits is that they’re subconscious. Almost without thinking, I wake up in the morning, check my phone, and head downstairs to make coffee. I don’t have to think deeply about every step of the process in order to perform it effectively. Instead, my brain switches to autopilot and does what it knows best. And that’s precisely what a habit is: an almost automatic behavior. The influence of seemingly insignificant habits like these on the trajectory of our entire lives is profound. We are what we repeatedly do, after all. If, habitually, I exercise every day at the gym, I will become more muscular. If I smoke cigarettes every day, my health will decline and my blood pressure will increase. I become what I repeatedly do.

This information shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. You already know these things, of course. You’re aware of your existing habits and how they make you feel. Perhaps you’re satisfied with them, or maybe you’re not. I’d wager that, for most of us, the latter is true. We execute actions on a habitual basis that don’t serve to benefit us. We scroll through social media for hours on end, even though that voice in our mind is urging us to stop. We wish to exercise more and meditate often, but our habits pull us away from these healthy desires. It’s an issue that we all face.

But here’s an alternative thought for you. What might you become if your habits, all of them, were calibrated to maximize your success and happiness? If everything you did served to benefit you and drove you further to becoming the person you’ve been hoping to become?

You already know the answer to these questions, of course. You’d be unstoppable. You’d make great strides in the right direction every day, and a year from now, you’d look back, almost unable to recognize the old you. Isn’t that a wonderful thought?

Well, luckily for you, this magazine seeks to arm you with the tools you need to get to that point. It’ll teach you not only how to form new habits, but how to break bad ones. We’ll explore a range of different practices and work towards building them into your new, improved life.

That journey begins here.

C OV E R P H OTO G R A P H Y Joseph Marchant is a fashion and street photographer based in England, UK. You can check our more of his work at jmarchphotography.co.uk

WELCOME

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In This Edition BREAKING THE HABIT OF CONSUMERISM - P14

In our modern world, consumerism is a habit that is deeply ingrained into us. Danny Forest talks about how to combat that tendency.

MAKING WELLNESS A HABIT - P26

A strong, stable mind is the key to success in all areas of life. Making wellness a habit is the key to achieving that state.

N O T H I N G M AT T E R S - P 6 6

World-renowned artist Roy English delves into his life story, covering the key habits that helped him to become who he is today.

C O M PA S S I O N : B U I L D I N G A H A B I T O U T O F A F E E L I N G - P 94

Author and poet Dottie James discusses the importance of compassion and how to bring more of it into our day-to-day lives.

STOP CONFUSING HABITS WITH ROUTINES - 100

Bestselling author Nir Eyal knows a thing or two about habits. Learn how to distinguish between habits and routines and why the difference is crucial.

BREAKING SELF-DESTRUCTIVE HABITS WITH MINDFULNESS - P108

Sometimes, all it takes to break a bad habit is to learn how to be completely in tune with the present moment. Here’s how.

Mind Cafe Media Ltd. 2020

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IN THIS EDITION

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The Production of Mind Cafe Magazine

BEHIND THE LENS:

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very time I show up to a Mind Cafe photoshoot, sit down with my editors to review a batch of content, or communicate with our authors about new ideas and concepts, I’m blown away. Every single time, I can’t help but sit back, look at the magic unfolding in front of my eyes, and think, ‘Wow, this is actually happening.’

This dream of mine, this crazy little idea, is becoming a tangible reality - a reality that people know and love. It’s surreal. All of it.

Every achievement, big or small, in the past two years of Mind Cafe’s lifespan has left me feeling elated, filled with pride, and also a little skeptical, wondering if any of this is actually real or if I’ll soon wake up to find myself oogling at beautiful print magazines and wondering how on earth I could create my own.

What’s even more magical about all of this is how willing others have been to help. I’ll offer payment for time and services where I can, and as a startup, our financial resources are severely limited. And yet, even with the offer of a financial incentive, many people decline it. Alex Rainsford, one of our fantastic models (and my right-hand man with all-things logistics - not my strong point), has given up so much of his time to help without a single mention of payment. The same is true of Joseph Marchant, our photographer, as well as all of our models and editors. When offered compensation, they simply turned to me and said, ‘I believe in this project, and your passion inspires me. That’s enough for me. The money will come, but right now, I just want to be involved’. So many people have crept up out of the woodwork to offer their time and skills for the same reason. It’s surreal. And breathtaking. I’m quickly learning

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The Production of Mind Cafe Magazine

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that passion is infectious. If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, nobody else will be.

If you love what you do, on the other hand, the entire world will conspire to help you reach your goals. Isn’t that wonderful?

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

PA U L O C O E L H O

I’ve never been one for modeling.

It doesn’t come naturally to me, and that’s why you won’t find many photographs of me in this edition. In the last edition, I managed to dodge most of our shoots. Busy with planning and preparing everything else, there weren’t many days in which I was ready to have photographs taken of me. As a result, we ended up resorting to using photos from a shoot my best friend, Callum, ran on me years ago. I was seventeen.

I looked fourteen. I’m actually twenty-one. Anyway, my aversion to sitting in front of the camera enabled me to better appreciate the sheer talent of everyone involved in our shoots. Normal people, not experienced models or catwalk stars, rocked up to the photography studio, took their position, and managed to pull off poses worth of Vogue’s front cover.

Scrolling through the archives of edited photos sent to me a week after our final shoot, I was blown away. Modelling is a real skill, one that I’d never appreciated before.

It’s not easy to act candid when there are four cameras and an

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audience watching you have your photograph taken. That’s a skill I don’t think I’ll ever have. I’ll stick to business instead.

Producing a print magazine during a pandemic isn’t easy.

What was initially expected to be a worldwide expedition decorated with photoshoots in New York, Copenhagen, and London quickly turned into a haphazard attempt to throw together a bunch of wellmatched photos by connecting photographers from across the globe. For Roy English’s piece, I intended to fly over to LA and run the shoot myself. Optimistic during a pandemic, I know. Of course, that couldn’t happen, so Roy’s wonderful manager, Josh Hubberman, was able to sync us up with Ryan Fleming, a photographer out in the States, to take care of the shoot for me. Again, the results were astounding. Over in New York, we had Julia Pugachevsky’s partner running shoots for her, Dottie James’s fiance doing the same down in London, and Mathilde Langevin’s in Canada.

Back home in Birmingham, Joe Marchant and myself were doing what we could in a photography studio based in Digbeth. I emptied my bedroom of just about every piece of furniture and poster I own, while Joe’s girlfriend, Kaethe, brought no less than a car full of twenty indoor plants to the shoot. Limited to six people at a time, my wonderful submissions manager Jon Hawkins was forced to entertain people that had to swap in and out for their shoots. And, since our numbers were so limited, we were forced to reuse the same models for several shoots (which is why you’ll see plenty of Alex and Gemma in this edition). It was a mess, really. But a beautiful mess.

Sometimes you just have to make the best out of a bad situation, and that’s precisely what we did.

Rather than admitting defeat, we made it work.

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The Production of Mind Cafe Magazine

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All in all, it’s been a blast. Being able to produce content like this and call it ‘work’ is ridiculous. None of it is work. It never feels like work. Sure, there are long hours and difficult problems to solve, but I love it. We all do. When I held the first copy of edition one in my hands back in September, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was blown away. Edition two is a huge step up from that. Not only is the production value better, but being able to admit proudly that the second run of Mind Cafe magazine is filled with the works of authors that I’ve admired throughout my entire career is incredible. Roy English, a signed artist that plays alongside giants such as Avril Lavigne across the globe, is in my magazine. Dottie James, a novelist, and poet that I’ve looked up to for years, is in my magazine. Nir Eyal, a global bestselling author whose books I’ve always loved reading, is in my magazine. It’s like one by one, all of my childhood dreams are starting to come true. It’s incredible to watch, and mindblowing to be a part of.

Once again, to you, our loyal reader, I am eternally grateful. I owe everything to you, and it’s your love and support for this magazine that keeps this dream unfolding.

This book you’re holding in your hands right now, the people inside it, and the stories they tell, none of this would exist if it wasn’t for you. I have gigantic goals for this organization. Ridiculous goals, some might say (and to them I say this: If your goals don’t sound ridiculous, you’re not dreaming big enough). This magazine is just the beginning. There’s far more to come from Mind Cafe, and we’re only just getting started. I plan to take this thing to the moon and back. It is my hope that you’ll continue along this journey with me. That together, we can both work towards becoming the best, happiest, and most successful versions of ourselves. And it all starts here.

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The Production of Mind Cafe Magazine

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Joseph Marchant

MODELS

Arrahnne Allen

L O C AT I O N

Birmingham, UK

Breaking the Habit of Consumerism AU T H O R : DA N N Y FO R E S T

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lright, let me kick things off a little differently than what you’re used to when reading an article in a magazine. We’re going to start with a couple of little exercises. Don’t worry, they’re simple enough.

First, I want you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and picture what it would be like to be a single mother of four boys. Imagine what your day would look like. Imagine what your financial situation would be. What would you consume? I mean, what would your purchases look like?

How would you afford them?

This is the reality I grew up in. I was raised by a single mother of four boys. While some may see that as a curse, I think it was a blessing in disguise. I learned to be frugal from a very young age. We couldn’t afford any kind of luxury, including going to a restaurant or going on holiday.

My mom, due to her economic situation, ingrained in me a seed of minimalism and frugalism.

And I’m proud of being frugal. I’m proud of being careful with how I spend my money and other resources. I think deeper about my decisions. This allowed me to resist building the habit of consumerism. In a way, I was lucky.

Most of us aren’t. For many, the habit of consumerism is so deeply ingrained within us that it’s incredibly difficult to break. We have impulses and urges to buy things we don’t really need but advertisements convince us we do. With so many external forces entrenching it further into us, how on earth should we go about shaking off this habit?

Well, technically, to break your habit of consumerism, all you have to do is to think twice about every dollar you spend. But what does “thinking twice” even mean? It means you don’t only think about your own short-term benefits. It means you think about the impact your decision has on others and the world around you.

For the next exercise, if you’re at home, good. If not, do your best to visualize where you would typically read this magazine. Ready? Put the magazine down, look at every object in your room, and then pick the magazine back up. What do you see? Lots of things, right? If you live in the western world, I can almost guarantee you own more things than you really need.

How did that happen? Well, I don’t know you, but here’s a universal truth: the more space you have, the more things you’ll buy to fill up that space.

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Does someone living in a small apartment in New York City or London own fewer things than someone living in a house in the suburbs? Of course! But that doesn’t make them any better. They consume other things. They go out more. They spend more on food and activities that last for just a mere moment. My point isn’t to judge what type of consumerism is better or worse, but rather to prove that consumerism is all over the place. Unless you break the habit, you’ll be stuck in it.

When I left the comfort of my home in Canada to become a nomad, I gave all my furniture and belongings away. All I possessed had to fit in my backpack. Now that’s what I call a small space! If you only had a backpack to store your belongings in, what would you pack?

Now the question is, what’s wrong with consumerism? Oh, many things, my friend!

Firstly, it puts immense pressure on natural resources, further exploiting already limited resources and also polluting the environment.

Secondly, it contributes to moral degradation - that is, an increased focus on materialism and (pointless) competition. Thirdly, the shortterm loans people take out to accommodate their consumerism increases the debt levels in societies. And finally, the more you consume, the higher your stress and chances of depression. Spending when you have limited resources can be very exhausting. It forces you to work harder, borrow more and spend less time with loved ones.

Essentially, you have a moral obligation to reduce what you consume.

It helps yourself, others, and the planet you live in. This all sounds easy when I say it like that, but rest assured, I know it’s not. And there’s an easy answer as to why it’s not: it has become a habit. This whole edition of the magazine is on habits, so you’ll likely have read your fair share of what’s a habit, how it works, and why it’s both good and bad for you.

So all I’ll say is this: unless you manage your habits, they will manage you. And if you’re like most people, consumerism is a habit that has been managing you for years.

Can you break the habit? Not to sound grim, but the short answer is “no”. The vast majority of humans lack the motivation to break any habit, let alone this one when the stakes are high. Like, freaking high!

Breaking a habit doesn’t come from reading an article. Or three. Or ten. Heck, not even by reading one million articles will you ever break a bad habit! And don’t get me started on watching videos!

The only thing I can do in this article is plant a seed. A thought, if you will, that I hope will eventually become a belief for you.

Overconsumption is the root of the ever-increasing number of natural disasters we’ve been seeing. If everybody thinks it’s not their responsibility to act, then no one acts. Things get worse.

When you act, you’re more than the sum of your actions. Actions ripple, just like a rock you toss in a lake. You inspire others around you to act too. It might not be visible or immediate, but it happens. We are inspired to action by others who take action.

You are motivated by things you’ve seen other people do before you.

If you stop to think about your motivations right now, do you see that they come from someone (or maybe something) that inspired you in the past? Perhaps it was a celebrity, a friend, relative or historical figure.

You’ve come to believe that it’s achievable, and so you act too.

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BREAKING THE HABIT OF CONSUMERISM

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Do you believe that consumerism can bring the end of the world as we know it? Do you believe that it’s in your power to change that? You probably don’t. But if someone around you was to truly believe it and acted to prevent it, you’d know it’s possible.

Taking action can seem like an intimidating feat but in theory, it’s simple. It boils down to a single question that must always be in the back of your mind: “do I really need this?” But you won’t remember it just like that.

So what if you spent just one minute at the end of your day to reflect on what you purchased that day? Did you need it? How did it serve you? How did it serve others? Did it contribute to society’s general consumerism?

Remember, actions ripple. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good one or not, it ripples. Make the short reflection a habit. And if you can’t do it for yourself, do it for others you care about. The world you live in will be inherited by your children and your children’s children. When you leave it in a better place, you do so for generations to come.

Consumerism might sound like a petty problem, but it’s the root of many of the bigger problems the world is facing right now. Consume less to reduce the number of natural disasters. Consume less to give poorer people equal access to resources. Consume less to reduce the number of cases of depression.

This isn’t just a band-aid solution, it’s a proper solution to address the root of bigger problems. It’s technically easy to do. Simply review what you consume daily and ask yourself why you consumed it. I can’t convince you to stop consuming what you don’t need to consume, but hopefully I can convince you to reflect. I’m simply hoping to plant a seed in the same way my mom did with me, all those years ago. Her dismissal of consumerism rippled into me and now, I can only hope it ripples into you too.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Joseph Marchant

MODELS

Alex Rainsford

L O C AT I O N

Birmingham, UK

Building a Happiness Ritual AUTHOR: ZULIE RANE

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ll of us want to be happier all the time, but we tend to forget that happiness is something we can actively work to create for ourselves, rather than something that just happens to us. Seeking out happiness is of paramount importance - not just in times of crises, but in everyday life, too. While happiness can come in fleeting bursts due to external circumstances - getting a new job, your partner bringing you flowers, a climactic ending to a movie - it’s far better to create a happiness ritual you can rely on.

There are plenty of mindful habits you can cultivate that will make you happier and live a more peaceful life every single day. For instance, try switching off to create.

Our society has a habit of prioritizing “productivity.” This results in a lot of us finding it tricky to totally switch off - we check our emails, notifications, and to-do lists constantly, even when we’re supposed to be relaxing.

The reason we fall into this trap so easily is because we actually love creating, which is easy to confuse with producing. But creating

is all about you. Producing is more to do with what you make for others. Studies even show that by taking some time every day to create something - just for yourself, not for anyone else - you can become happier. It’s that simple.

Take ten minutes to doodle a quick scene, paint a landscape, or even just try your hand at calligraphy. Any act of creation that is just you, switched off from the world around you, will help build happiness.

Along similar lines, it’s worth actively finding silent times. Try to remember the last time you experienced actual peace, for example. No podcast, no chattering, no worrying. Just five quiet minutes that let you breathe, reflect on your day, or just look at the birds out of your window.

We’re prone to worrying as a habit and that’s normally a good thing, because worrying is what often motivates us to fix our problems, finish our to-do lists, and live better lives. And when we’re not worrying, we drown out our internal monologue with distractions like social media, podcasts, or TV. So, to counteract these tendencies, give yourself just five minutes free of worry and distraction.

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“When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things.

Where is beauty to be found?”

A Q U OT E BY M U R I E L BA R B E RY

Those five minutes every day are a chance for you to think about yourself. Are you happy in your job? Do your hobbies bring you joy?

What’s missing in your life?

It may be that one of the conclusions you come to is that you want to learn more, which is another habit that can make you feel happier. Humans love to learn. It’s something that’s built into us from the minute we’re born - learning by absorbing everything around us.

It’s a trait that helps us grow as individuals, communities, and even as a species. It’s easy to think of learning as just a way to become better at your job, or more likely to be successful. But learning is more than that - it’s a way to challenge yourself and satisfy your innate need to stretch your mind. It’s been demonstrated that learning is one of the things that makes you happiest You don’t have to take a class to learn. One of the best ways to learn is simply by reading.

Read self-help books if that is what brings you pleasure, but don’t forget that both nonfiction and fiction can also help you learn. Reading any literature can encourage you to learn a

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new perspective or a new way of thinking and teach you about yourself or the world you live in. Learn by challenging yourself with new ideas. Learn by discovering what someone else has created. Learning something new is not only easy, but it can also make you happier.

These three habits, built into your daily routine, can serve to make you happier and more peaceful. Life isn’t just about maximizing and monetising yourself into an efficient, productive machine. We’re prone to forgetting that. We’re used to thinking of happiness as something spontaneous that happens to us, when in fact it’s something we can and could be actively seeking out.

By building small, daily routines focused on proactively making yourself happier, you’re going to find it much more sustainable than relying on your happiness from outside sources.

Reset yourself, your priorities and your rituals: Create something just for yourself, take five minutes to experience true peace, and learn through reading to live happier and more peacefully, every single day.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Luca Marra

MODELS

Mathilde Langevin

L O C AT I O N

Canada

Making Wellness A Habit A U T H O R : M AT H I L D E L A N G E V I N

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eing well in our bodies is a privilege we can all sustain if we are open to it. Being well is not only being alive––it’s being able to experience all of the things the world has to offer us in a body and mind that keeps us safe, invigorated, and inspired.

Being unwell is also part of our wellness. We cannot know nor experience true wellbeing if we have not yet experienced what it’s like to be unbalanced or out of tune with ourselves.

Losing balance is part of a balanced life. With that being said, the responsibility of your wellness rests entirely between your hands.

While this is an honor, it’s also quite the task–– as anyone who’s tried to eat better, meditate every day, or quit a vice can tell you. However, the easiest way for you to integrate wellness into your life is to turn your wellbeing into a habit. Once you succeed in doing so, your life will begin to transform.

Habits are all the rage right now.

Professionals of all types continuously reinforce how habits are the gateway to

success, and there’s a reason for that. Good habits make you more productive, more efficient, and an overall better person.

Ingraining these habits into your mind makes it easier to follow the steps required in order to become the person you wish so strongly to be.

On the other hand, bad habits won’t necessarily make you a bad person––they just won’t push you towards becoming a better one. The decisions you make on a day-today basis can be as detrimental as they can be beneficial to your wellness, and that is something solely you control. In case you forgot––occasionally, we all do––you are in the driver’s seat of your life. That is not only a huge responsibility, but it’s a huge privilege.

So how exactly do habits work? Remember how a dirty CD would get stuck in its player and start to skip, playing the same part of the song over and over again? Or (depending on your generation, I assume), how an old and dusty vinyl needle would get caught in the same groove and keep the track looping in place? Habits are the same.

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The process of building a habit is called creating a habit loop. Our prefrontal cortex (the forefront and most evolved region of our brain) is responsible for interpreting cues and saving them as triggers for specific behaviors.

When we engage repeatedly in these specific behaviors, our brain assigns it to a reward. For example, if you go for a run every morning, your brain will associate lacing up your running shoes with heading outside for a jog, regardless of how pleasant (or unpleasant) it may be.

Over time, the simple act of lacing up your shoes will become the cue that is associated with the feel-good endorphin rush you experience after every workout. Therefore, lacing up your shoes will be associated with a positive reward, and consequently, become a healthy habit. This new behavior creates what psychologists call a pathway. The pathway to this novel action is then moved from the prefrontal cortex to the part of your brain that is responsible for automaticity, emotion, and memory: the basal ganglia. This is the pathway’s final resting place, where it remains permanently stored––allowing your brain to work less and less each time the behavior is repeated.

Ladies and gentlemen: we now have a habit. This is the process we use to create and recognize both memories and emotions. This process, explains Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit, is called “chunking”— converting a sequence of actions into an automatic routine. And essentially, that’s all our life is: thousands of chunks, tons of heuristics, and a whole lot of routine.

‘All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.’—William James A cue triggers an action which we then associate with a reward. With repetition, that action becomes automatic. So why is it so damn hard to form a habit? There are many reasons. A common problem people face when looking to implement new and better habits––or break old, detrimental ones––is that they find themselves excellent at some things, and unable to pursue others.

Experts have studied thousands of techniques, routines and habit hacks to help you improve your wellbeing. We have all the tools we need, so why don’t they stick? And why are we addicted to bad habits, selfsabotaging our efforts building better ones?

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It’s a lengthy and scientific debate that could go on for hours, but all you need to take away is this: forming habits is such a difficult task because it is a personalized process that we’ve tried to generalize with self-help books and productivity advice columns. We find it so hard to implement a new habit and end up hitting the same roadblocks each and every time because our focus is simply in the wrong place. We think we have to adopt every single wellness habit in order to experience a healthy and meaningful life. We think that getting up early, eating more vegetables, and stretching more often will camouflage the fact that we can’t properly manage our stress nor build healthy relationships with ourselves first.

If you find yourself feeling stuck time and time again, unable to break the cycle of bad habits that get in your way–it’s probably because you haven’t done it right. You haven’t tailored your efforts to your needs, nor have you stopped to examine what it is that you really need. And luckily for you––that’s exactly what I’m going to teach you.

So where do we begin? Well, first of all, congratulate yourself for recognizing your desire to change. That’s the most important step. Next, recognize that you are designed to want to improve, and therefore the habits you decide to incorporate into your life should be habits that reflect the type of person you want to be. However, they should also represent the person that you are today. Your sociodemographics and your personality type play a huge role in determining what defines your wellness, so stop trying to squeeze yourself into something you don’t truly believe in.

“You can see why being vegan becomes part of people’s identity, too. If it was just about choosing not to eat any animal products, the diet would be extremely difficult to adhere to.

But because it is a lifestyle and an ideology, vegans are willing to push through all that.

They don’t see it as a choice, but rather as the right thing to do.”—Ryan Holiday A lot of people think that because I am so passionate about wellness, I have everything put together. The reality is, I only engage in a select few wellness habits––including journaling, working out, and breathing exercises––depending on what my schedule looks like, what season it is, and so on. I don’t force things that aren’t in their place.

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Wellness is the complete integration of body, mind, and spirit - the realization that everything we do, think, feel, and believe has an effect on our state of well-being.�

A Q U OT E BY G R E G A N D E R S O N

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“The cues that trigger many of our bad habits indicate a deeper emotional lack.”

A Q U O T E B Y M AT H I L D E L A N G E V I N

For example, I don’t meditate anymore.

When I attempted to do so or when I skipped a day, I ended up creating more anxiety than if I didn’t in the first place. And I’m not worse off for it, because I shifted that habit into a different one: I engage in a daily meditative activity instead. Furthermore, I don’t force myself to do it if it doesn’t feel right–doing so would eventually cause me to give it up entirely out of hatred.

At the end of the day, all that matters is that the results average out. Not every habit needs to be an everyday thing and you don’t need a routine that is set in stone. In fact, you’ll benefit much more from a routine that is flexible.

As well as forming new, healthier habits, breaking habits can also be very difficult but is essential to our growth as individuals. Turning your life around means breaking the habit loops that do not compliment your wellbeing.

Many of the habits we wish to break (excessive drinking, mindless snacking, etc.) exist to fulfill a deeper need. Alcoholics, for example,

“rarely crave the feeling of being drunk––they crave the escape and relaxation having a drink (or 5) will provide”, says Duhigg. People who chew their nails until they rawly bleed don’t do so because they enjoy the taste––they do so because it redirects their stress towards something else.

The cues that trigger many of our bad habits indicate a deeper emotional lack.

By simply providing someone with a list of healthy habits and tricks on how to adopt them, you won’t change why they turned towards the bad ones in the first place. The trick is to replace the toxic habit with an action that provides the same relief as the unhealthy one. For example, if you want to quit that extra glass of wine at dinnertime, find a routine that will satisfy the emotional craving that the alcohol truly fills.

As so well presented by James Clear in his 2018 release Atomic Habits, the most effective thing you can do when it comes to building better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal

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one. We are most influenced by the people around us, so regardless of the goals you set for yourself, if the system around you won’t help push you towards them, you won’t get anywhere.

“The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. The task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.” —James Clear The next pillar of building sustainable habits is to cultivate intrinsic motivation. This is usually the step where things go awry. We have the external motivation: we want a fit body, we want the digits in our bank account to reflect our success, and we want the things that give us social approval or status. Intrinsic motivation, however, isn’t as easy to find.

Meditation sounds appealing when we want to reduce our stress, for instance, but engaging in it because we feel we have no other option is nothing near motivating.

Working out because you enjoy it rather than to get rock hard abs is a perfect example of intrinsic motivation. The reward doesn’t matter.

You just feel good doing it, and that’s all that counts. Over time, habits that are intrinsically motivated are the only ones that stick. You’re much more likely to enjoy reading if you’re intrinsically motivated to learn, as opposed to if you’re forced into your boss’ book club.

You can, however, use external motivation to your advantage. Kenneth Silverman, Ph.D., explains how creating some sort of reward calendar for yourself is highly helpful for habit building––especially if you know you respond well to incentives. Thousands of tracking apps are also designed for this purpose and relying on an accountability partner is just as powerful of a technique until you learn to rely solely on yourself.

Oftentimes, one of the most common pitfalls we face when building habits is overcomplexity. Feelings of boredom and frustration ensue when people try to adopt a habit that involves too many steps–leaving themselves feeling defeated as soon as they skip a day or don’t see it fully through. When you need to create new habits to start a habit, it’s no wonder you don’t progress!

Take journaling, for example. Journaling is a practice that is so straightforward and simple, yet for some, it’s impossible to upkeep.

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That’s because instead of using it as a rapid and effective tool to manage anxiety or boost productivity, people turn it into a 10-step process that they must repeat two times a day because that’s what they were led to believe is effective.

Neuroscience tells us that small accumulations build up in a big way. Instead of promising yourself to read more, try reading one page a day. A study by Benjamin Gardener called Making Health Habitual states that automaticity is readily achieved with simpler actions (such as drinking an extra bottle of water) than for more elaborate routines (such as getting up an hour earlier and doing a full-body workout.

Another great way to simplify habit building is to piggyback new habits on old ones. One of my favorite authors, Ryan Holiday, repeatedly explains how habits are buildable––meaning you can implement even better habits on top of your good ones. For example, if you’ve already built the habit of working out every other morning, why don’t you add five minutes of stretching?

Gardener confirms that after an average of 66 days, habit formation hits a plateau. This means the habit pathway is entirely ingrained, and you can easily build on it. Trying to do so within the first 66 days not only makes the task less desirable, but also more difficult.

“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.” -James Clear Luckily for us, evolution is what we are made for. Our brain wants to build better habits, and our body wants us to maintain them––it’s how we optimize our wellbeing.

I know changing your habits can feel paralyzing, but don’t let it be. There is no right path nor a specific set of steps that guarantee success for each person. Know that change can happen when we approach it with openmindedness, commitment, and self-confidence.

Hopefully, the most important thing you take away from this article is that you are a human being––not a human doing. There’s a lot of productivity advice out there that will certainly help you get more done, but what’s even more important is that you achieve your goals in a way that is healthy, balanced, and that sticks.

That, more than anything else, is how you’ll truly make your wellness a habit.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Joseph Marchant

MODELS

Alex Rainsford

L O C AT I O N

Birmingham, UK

The Habit of Resilience AUTHOR: STEPHEN MOORE

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here it was. Our work, splintered and broken, crooked and bent, lying out in the street like discarded trash. And there we were, sitting in the van across the street, trying to summon up the courage to walk up to the shop to collect it, dreading the fact that we were going to have to confront the shop owners in the process.

My heart sank. This was by far the worst day since I started my own business. It might very well end up being one of the worst days of my life.

I had been friends with the client for a long while, as he was my barber. I saw him once or twice each month, going back years. He’s a genuinely great guy: ambitious, inspiring, and the kind of person who knows — and is known by — everyone. So when he pitched me the idea of opening up his own barbershop, asking my business to design, build, and install his work stations, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.

At the time, he was still getting all the pieces in place, but everything was progressing smoothly. I told him we’d be ready to pull the trigger on the project by the time he had acquired a location for his shop.

The day he got the keys, we were there. We measured up, discussed ideas, and ended the meeting with a couple of beers in the local beer garden. The mood was one of excitement, and the feeling was one of ‘this is going to be an amazing project’. We couldn’t wait to get started.

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THE HABIT OF RESILIENCE

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Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.”

A Q U OT E BY ST E V E M A R A B O L I

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“You call yourself professionals? I think you are really taking the piss with this. We want you to get rid of it,” I have never had words hit so deep.

I was standing there, the day after we had installed our work, talking to the client and his dad. I had walked into the premises under the impression that everything had gone as planned. We had all left the shop in great spirits the previous night.

But as soon as I had stepped into the doorway of the shop, I could sense there was something toxic in the atmosphere. The excitement had left the room; tension now filled every inch of it. My friend looked unbearably uncomfortable, and for good reason: he was about to give me devastating news.

His dad then cut to the chase: “We don’t want this, and we won’t pay for this.”

He proceeded to destroy me. He took apart my work. My professionalism. My integrity. He accused me of trying to rip them off.

He told me they wanted us to take away our work immediately, and to forget about being paid. I glanced at my friend, hoping for some show of support — but he was staring at his feet.

I was caught so off guard by this that I almost started crying. Or maybe I did. I can’t remember exactly. The whole conversation has since become a blur. It was an emotional gut-punch so strong that it hit me like a wrecking ball. Stumbling over my words, I tried my best to explain myself. As far as we were concerned, the work we had done met quality standards, and we had effectively satisfied the brief. Nevertheless, I offered to make any changes the clients deemed necessary.

Wondering if they thought the price was too high, I offered them a ‘friends rate.’ I even offered to finish the work for free. I didn’t care about the money; I just wanted my friend to be satisfied with the work we had done. But it was all in vain. They had made up their minds, insisting we come back later in the day to collect the rubbish we had in their shop.

As I left, a tidal wave of raw emotions and confusion slammed down on me. It was like nothing I had felt before. And this time, I definitely did cry.

I toyed with the idea of quitting altogether in the hours and days after. The experience had been enough to make me reconsider everything. But I didn’t. Life is full of gut punches. It has a knack of pulling the rug out from under your feet just as you’re starting to feel grounded. Though this experience is the one that cut the deepest for me, there have been countless others; projects gone wrong, clients refusing to pay, publications rejecting my work, bad reviews, missing out on huge contracts — I’ve seen the lot. Yet I’ve never jumped off the train at the first available stop. Instead, I’ve gripped on with all my might and refused to let go.

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It all comes down to how you handle these blows. With every one I’ve taken, I’ve become better at overcoming them, even if they still leave me winded for a moment. If business has taught me anything, it’s how to build resilience.

It comes down to perception and perseverance.

When something goes wrong, stop for a minute, and try to flip it on its head. Those who are resilient view difficulties as a challenge, not as a crippling event. To build the habit of resilience, you need to reframe the problem - and while cliche - try to see the lessons and opportunities for growth within the failures and mistakes.

A little bit of positive thinking goes a long way. When I have a bad day, I remind myself of what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. “I’m building a company because I want to follow my passions. This will be worth it.” “I’m writing to take control of my life, and help others in the process.” These affirmations reassure me and get me back on my feet.

By reminding myself of my mission, I don’t let problems derail me.

Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.

And that perseverance, that unwavering commitment, is the second tool needed to build resilience. Like a boxer picking themselves up from the canvas, the only way to get better at overcoming problems is to get back up and take another swing.

As Nelson Mandela noted, “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” After summoning up enough strength to hold ourselves together, we crossed the street and swiftly gathered our work in silence.

As we finished loading it into the van, my friend approached, saying: “Look, guys, I…I didn’t want it to turn out this way. I really hope you can swing by some time once we’re open”.

I tried my best to smile before turning away to hide the impending tears. “Maybe one day,” I said as I stepped into the van.

And with that, we set off back to our workshop — not with the usual satisfaction from a job well done, but with heavy hearts, battered pride, and the remnants of what could have been.

As we drove away, the scene of this disaster became smaller and smaller in the wing mirror. As we reflected on what happened, it quickly faded into the distance; a perfect symbol of our resilience, our desire to take our medicine, to stop dwelling on the past, to absorb our lessons, and to come back the next day stronger and better.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Joseph Marchant

MODELS

Gemma Steele

L O C AT I O N

Birmingham, UK

A Five-Step Morning Ritual for Finding Peace of Mind

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AU T H O R : J O R DA N G RO S S

was slightly overweight growing up.

Okay fine, I was fat. Quite fat. When I was about 10, I remember going to lunch with my friend, his two sisters, and his dad. We had this waiter, Bruce, who really made our table feel special. He cracked jokes with us, gave us free samples, and seemed to take extra good care of us five specifically. Toward the end of the meal, as the conversation got more personal, he mentioned that my friend and his sisters must be related, and I wasn’t part of the family. A curious child, I asked why and how he knew that.

First, he looked at my friend. Then he looked at his sisters. Then at me. Then my friend’s dad. Back at my friend. Then his two sisters. And finally, he looked me right in the eyes, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Well, those three are skinny.”

I knew I was bigger than my friends. I wasn’t blind. I knew I sometimes had to wear a bathing suit at a friend’s house that belonged

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to their dad. I knew people whispered in one another’s ears and giggled while looking at me, then looked away when I tried to stare back. But I never heard the words aloud.

Nobody ever had the courage to ever look me in my face and tell me I was heavy. But Bruce did, and although to you it may seem like he was a jerk, to me, he was a slap right across my face. Bruce was a wake-up call.

He was that alarm that rings and rings and rings next to your bed until it becomes so unbearably annoying that you just have to take care of it. Bruce’s words transformed my mind and my body.

So, I began with some minor changes.

They were tiny habits I could control that I knew would be good for me. Sure, I was only ten, but I had this intuitive feeling to use this experience as a turning point, not a moment of sorrow. So, I jogged in the shower. I ran up and down the stairs. I stood to watch TV instead of sitting. I worked harder on my sports teams.

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You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

A Q U OT E BY E C K H A RT TO L L E

Little by little, my body changed and so did my mentality. But this story is not about weight loss. It’s not about feeling ugly, disliked, or unusual. This is not a sob story, and it’s not the journey from zero to hero either. This story is about a certain mindset. It’s about the routines and habits I implemented into my life, that I practiced every single morning to revolutionize my day, my body, my mind, and my life. It’s a true representation of how I was able to get comfortable in my own skin, with who I was bit by bit as I put in the work necessary to do so.

It’s the mindset to make a change, to do something different, to assess exactly what’s holding you back, and to turn these seemingly uncomfortable experiences into ones where you can thrive. It’s a morning routine I created called Getting COMFY. According to Dan Arley, Duke University professor, “people have the most productive potential two hours after they wake up.” However, unless we ignite

our productivity engines by being cognizant of this time, we waste the opportunity for maximum efficiency.

I’m not here to tell you to wake up at four in the morning, and I’m not here to tell you to spend five hours at sunrise concocting a complex set of tasks that absolutely must be adhered to in order to achieve an ideal output.

But, I am here to tell you that what I have created is fun, it’s effective, it’s simple, and it gives me the thirty minutes I need to charge my batteries and approach my first task of the day with deep focus, intensity, and passion.

Hal Elrod mentions in his morning routine masterpiece, The Miracle Morning, that all we have to do to maximize our day is just wake up a little bit earlier and focus on ourselves. I urge the same. If you give yourselves 30 minutes to focus on you and the things you want to do rather than have to do, your happiness, productivity, and overall fulfillment will soar.

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This routine can make you happier than ever. It can make you more creative than ever. It can help you be more energetic than ever. And these are just a few of the handfuls of positive results I’ve experienced. Let’s overcome this sleep inertia, beat our alarm clocks, and approach the rest of the day knowing we absolutely crushed the morning.

Getting COMFY is a five-step acronym.

The order and recommendations outlined in this routine are based on you. I’m simply acting as a tour guide here, working through these activities with you rather than definitively mandating exactly what you need to do. Below are the five parts.

Calm

The alarm clock goes off and we’re immediately startled. Our hair is a mess, our perfectly calm dreams were so rudely interrupted. We need to calm our bodies.

Stress and anxiety are at their peaks when we wake up, but this can be easily remedied by taking care of our minds. A few recommendations for this would be yoga, stretching, meditation, washing dishes, walking, and simply making the bed. We essentially want to do something that doesn’t take too much brainpower and gives us an immediate win to begin the day.

Openness

The second part of this process is all about

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vulnerability. Being honest with ourselves and others right when we wake up is the best thing to put our mindsets on a path for success.

There are two ways to do this: opening up to others, and opening up to yourself Opening up to others includes activities like sending a birthday text; sending a gratitude message; checking in with a friend or relative; thanking somebody; contacting a hero of yours. We want to express gratitude, appreciation, and do something bold right when we wake up. We want to overcome fear and also do right by others.

Write down gratitudes in a journal; share your accomplishments, strengths, weaknesses, and you’ll be feeling confident about the day ahead.

Movement

This one has absolutely changed my life.

Getting your body going is incredibly important for energy and productivity. I won’t go too deep with this one because there’s so much research and information out there, but the go-to for me is HIIT — High-Intensity Interval Training. Short bursts of energy and quick rest periods for a great sweat.

Movement is about so much more than looking physically fit. Exercise is about being present, being in the moment, and accomplishing something that you’d never expect to do. It’s truly the best way to begin each day.

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Funny

This one is my favorite. So many people wake up, drag themselves out of bed, and immediately consume news-driven media.

Unfortunately, in this day and age, the news is plagued by tragedy, crime, racism, and hatred.

Why would we want to start our day with such pessimism and negativity about this world?

Rather than watch CNN, I say watch PNN. PNN is my Positive News Network. It’s a collection of websites, videos, shows, and more that allows me to surround myself with positivity and optimism, rather than what the news normally provides. It’s imperative to start the day with a smile. A cute puppy or a giggling baby gets me every single time.

Figure out what makes you laugh, make a collection of these videos, articles, and memes, and bring yourself the happiness you deserve each morning.

You

A morning routine is supposed to provide you with something that you want to do, rather than have to do. Focusing on you at the end of your morning is the perfect segue into a great rest of the day. Focus on your passion, focus on your choice, and do something that you love to do each and every day. Dance; sing; learn a new language; learn a new skill; write; read. Do something unrelated to the mundane realities of your everyday life that you can truly call your own.

Morning routines are commonplace. It’s a saturated space filled with people giving advice about how to maximize your potential right when you wake up. But there’s no one morning routine that suits every person, which is why getting COMFY is a collection of recommendations that emphasizes trial and error and provides actionable steps, so you know when a routine has become right for you.

Bruce’s remarks forced me to wake up and make a change. And by waking up with this new routine, I totally transformed who I was.

Now, it’s your turn.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Joseph Marchant

MODELS

Alex Rainsford

L O C AT I O N

Birmingham, UK

On the Importance of Reward Systems AUTHOR: ANTHONY MOORE

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s human beings, we have the capacity to smash through every obstacle in our path.

Nothing can stop a truly motivated person with everything to gain. However, without a good rewards system, many people lose motivation, making it impossible to change their habits. There are really only two reasons why people change: When the pain is bad enough, or the reward is big enough. So instead of waiting for the pain in your life to get so bad that you feel you have to change, the key is to set up a good rewards system for yourself that creates motivation and upgrades your habits quickly, in a fun and exciting way.

Many people don’t utilize the power of rewards systems. Instead, they rely on willpower to pull them along the long and windy road to success - but the truth is, willpower isn’t very effective. You need more — you need a reason to get out of bed, put your hands on a keyboard, and work, consistently. See, consistently performing a difficult new habit doesn’t seem that appealing if you don’t have a good enough reason to do it. And if you’re always fighting against yourself, odds are you’ll probably quit early on.

So what’s the solution? Well, you have to reframe your mindset and make doing the work the most appealing option. If I told you I’d give you a million dollars if you promised to wake up at 5:00 am every day for a month,

would you do it? Hell yeah, you would! You’d probably spend hundreds of dollars on an alarm clock that would absolutely ensure you wouldn’t oversleep. But promising yourself a million dollars probably isn’t a possible reward right now. In fact, maybe even a hundred dollars might be too high. Your rewards system needs to utilise great rewards you can actually afford.

Before you create your rewards system, you have to rethink your mindset to favour personal investments.

After all, you are your most important asset. It’s crazy to prioritize external gadgets over your internal well-being.

In the words of Neil Patel, “It’s absurd that we would prioritize the hottest new device, the cool car, or trendy toy over owning that which makes us feel the most engaged and most alive.” If you want to have good output, you need healthy input that sustains your wellbeing.

If you set up the right rewards system, you can evolve so much that it might become difficult to recognize yourself.

That’s what happened to me — I went from being a noname blogger with a handful of followers to a professional author who created a six-figure business, gained millions of readers, and started making enough to work whenever I want to. I wouldn’t have gotten here if I didn’t learn how to create good habits — writing every day, waking up early, consistently putting in work on my projects. And I needed a great rewards system to keep me motivated.

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“We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”

A Q U OT E F RO M A R I STOT L E

When my wife and I moved to South Korea to teach English, we didn’t have a lot of money. I was busy creating my writing business, and I needed good rewards to keep me motivated. But I didn’t have a lot of money to work with. I knew how important a good rewards system was, so I divided my rewards into three categories: cheap fun, exciting experiences, and serious investments.

It worked. Using this system, I was able to consistently stick with good habits that eventually helped me achieve big goals like writing a book, starting a business, and quitting my job so I could work for myself.

First, I focused on cheap fun, rewards for small wins. If I finished the videos for an online course or wrote three articles in a week or even just woke up early a few days in a row, I’d allow myself one of a few options: A new book, a nice t-shirt, an expensive coffee, even a nice bottle of scotch. These small wins were what could motivate me through each day, so I gave myself lots of these cheap, fun rewards.

For bigger wins — waking up early every day for two weeks, recording all the videos for an online course, writing my book proposal — I told myself I could indulge in some more exciting experiences: A nice dinner, a day trip, going to a show. I recognized that gadgets and “things” didn’t matter to me as much as experiences did.

Finally, I reserved my biggest rewards for last: Serious investments. This included things like a new computer or a week-long vacation. These were my biggest motivators, and they kept me consistently motivated to stick with my important habits.

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None of these rewards were that expensive, and the serious investments actually made me more money because I attached those rewards to money-making victories like hitting an income goal or selling a certain number of online courses. The week-long vacation might cost me two thousand dollars, but I’d need to make ten thousand dollars to get there.

Having the right rewards system helped me consistently stick with good habits to achieve big goals, and I didn’t even spend that much money.

“95% of our society — the ‘mediocre majority’ — fail, time and time again, to start exercise routines, quit smoking, improve their diets, stick to a budget, or any other life habit that would improve their quality of life.

Why? Most people don’t realize the seemingly unbearable first 10 days of a new habit is only temporary.” - Hal Elrod The most important part of building new habits is creating momentum. Most people quit early on, not realizing it gets easier over time. But you have to survive

that first difficult phase — long-term consistency beats short-term intensity. If you can build momentum, you’ll become unstoppable, and sticking with good habits actually becomes an easier option than breaking them.

You can build momentum well by being generous with yourself. Living in South Korea was tough, I had an extremely difficult day job teaching young students, learning a new language, and navigating a new country.

It was exhausting . The thought of waking up a few hours earlier each day seemed impossible.

That’s why I was overly generous with these small wins, especially at first. If I woke up early just once or wrote just one new article, I allowed myself to splurge on lots of cheap fun (coffees, books etc.). I knew I was building momentum, becoming a new person in the process. I knew I needed to nurture that behavior, or I’d quit. And it worked. For me, waking up early two days in a row was a huge feat, so I treated it as such. Eventually, waking up early became routine, and I didn’t need as many rewards. I had created a new habit, and it stuck.

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

A Q U OT E BY JA M E S C L E A R

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I also started being much kinder with my self-talk. I had a basketball coach in high school whose main form of “coaching” was criticizing and tearing us down. If we did something right, he wouldn’t yell at us. If we made a mistake, he’d stop practice and single out each player who messed up. Sadly, many people treat themselves the same way. If they do something right, even if it’s new and difficult, they don’t congratulate themselves; if they do something wrong, they berate and criticize themselves. This mindset doesn’t work. Instead, focus on giving yourself lots of positive self-talk, making a big deal out of small victories.

The goal is to build momentum, and recognizing and rewarding your wonderful work will help get you through the first few weeks of a new habit. After that, the habit becomes routine. By focusing on the generosity and positivity of your rewards system, you will be able to build that momentum.

The right rewards system can inject incredible motivation into your day-to-day life. The biggest goals require massive action: Start a business, write a book, make a million dollars. When faced with such intimidating goals, most people are so blinded by the goal that they don’t see the process and don’t take the right action early on. For the few people that know how to motivate and reward themselves, they can eventually achieve whatever goals they want.

Oftentimes, you just need to learn how to set up the right rewards. Without these rewards you’re making an already-difficult journey much harder. You’ll travel much farther if you know something incredible is waiting for you on the other side.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Ryan Fleming

MODELS

Roy English

L O C AT I O N

LA

Nothing Matters A U T H O R : R OY E N G L I S H

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t seems like telling the truth is easy.

Well, I’m sitting down to write this article about healthy habits now, and I’ve been putting it off for over a week. I tell myself I don’t know how to write an article, or I don’t have anything to say, but then I look at where those thoughts are coming from. Are they my own? Is that the truth? To find an answer to this type of question, and any question at all for that matter, I have developed a daily meditation and contemplation practice. The purpose of this practice is to create space and clear my mind of the endless chatter and streams of informational noise coming from external worlds. Once the space in my mind is cleared, it’s like an empty container that can be filled up with wisdom and insight. Maybe it comes from something beyond me, maybe it’s all my imagination, or maybe the two are the same thing simultaneously creating each other.

Either way, I get the answers I am looking for. The trick is to then tell the truth when

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I receive or imagine the information, to ask myself: Is this coming from me? Does this feel right and true in my heart? I can only relate this idea of telling the truth to my personal experience. Through years of discovery, uncertainty, failure, and evolution, I’ve come to understand the importance of telling the truth from your own individual perspective.

When I was in high school, more than anything, I wanted to be a rockstar, but there was one serious roadblock in the way of living out that dream. I was a terrible singer. I mean, really bad. I thought that the louder I sang, the closer I would be to hitting the note, and I can tell you from experience, that is not how the singing thing works. I was so bad that the older kids at my high school made fun of me and would post comments online about how bad I was. I was even kicked out of my first band, but I wanted it more than anything. I didn’t know why, but I felt it somewhere deep inside of me like there was never another option.

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The truth had a sound, but I wasn’t consciously aware of it.

I think we have all heard and felt this phenomenon at times, consciously or unconsciously.”

A Q U OT E BY E R N E ST I N E G I L B R E T H C A R E Y

One day after I got home from school I sat down at my family’s Bondi Blue iMac G3 computer to surf the world wide web, as I often did. I came across some of the things kids at school were saying about me. I sank lower and lower into myself as I read down through the comments. To give you an idea of the general tone, one person said “You sound like you have Down Syndrome when you sing”, which really struck me because my mom had long worked as an Occupational Therapist with those who I can only describe as beautiful human angels with an extra chromosome. Their words were base, unintelligible, and toxic. After that day, and some tears shed, I promised myself I was going to do whatever it took to become a great singer. I focused and began practicing on my own, alone in my room, eight hours a day. I didn’t party, or drink, or smoke, and hardly even went out for lunch with my friends. I would come straight home from school and practice after doing my homework.

I kept this up for about two years, making a tiny bit of progress here and there each day.

By my senior year of high school, I was decent

enough to carry a tune, though my pitch and tone still had a very long way to go. The funny thing I started to realize while singing was that my vocal tone would change when I believed in myself more. I always had the same physical material, the same vocal cords, throat shape, mouth size, etc, but when I was singing a song that really mattered to me, my tone would change and I could physically feel a difference in the way the sound would flow through me. There was some connection to the sound of my voice and to the truth that was beyond my understanding at the time and beyond any semblance of technique.

The truth had a sound, but I wasn’t consciously aware of it. I think we have all heard and felt this phenomenon at times, consciously or unconsciously. Maybe even when listening to a great singer. A great singer, and I would say a great artist in any discipline, is someone capable of connecting to truth - sometimes a hidden truth - understanding it, and then passing on that truth through whatever medium they have chosen to create in. Maybe those are the ones we call masters.

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Maybe that’s what we’re getting at when we say someone has a soulful voice. We mean that their voice is full of soul and maybe in these brief communications between creator and observer are seeds of truth that can grow in our own souls. Maybe the success that often follows great creators is just a byproduct of living from a place of truth and being a clear mirror. But being a clean mirror for others means also seeing ourselves in them and learning from the truths we find. We are living in an age of great polarity, separating further from each other and further from the truth. But the truth is never one-sided. It isn’t even two-sided. It’s more like a sphere where we all see it slightly differently.

We need everyone else’s perspective to see the whole truth with love and mutual respect. But I wouldn’t start learning this until much later.

When it became time for graduation from my senior year of high school, most of my classmates had already picked out where they were going to college. My family, friends, and teachers kept asking me what college I was going to attend. But the truth was that I didn’t even want to go to college. It wasn’t because I was lazy or didn’t want to set myself up for my future, a narrative that seemed to have

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been formed from the prevailing propaganda of an older generation, but there was a feeling deep inside of myself that I was meant for a different path. However, I kept questioning it.

The feeling I had didn’t make sense to anybody else and I still wasn’t a very good singer or songwriter. I was okay, but I still struggled to sing in tune, my voice cracked often, and my songs didn’t say much because I wasn’t telling the truth. At the time, I was making screamo music, which was a popular genre at the time.

Truth wasn’t my barometer then, but being “cool” was. How much personal growth has been lost to the unattainable, ever-elusive, evil idea of what is ‘cool’? After all, Evil is just the reverse of what it is to Live.

I ended up enrolling in a small community college up the street from my parent’s house because I had convinced myself that it was the sensible thing to do, however, if I would have listened to my senses, I would not have come to the same decision. As I bought my books and enrolled in my classes, I kept having this feeling that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing, even though I was doing what the society around me said it was exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

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The months of summer passed quickly and the first day of school came in September. I woke up that morning and drove my family’s old Dodge Grand Caravan with chipping white paint up the street, still in a haze. As the Grand Caravan and I made our grand entrance to the grand college parking lot I was overcome with anxiety. This dance with anxiety happened a lot during my high school years and for years following. I took a deep breath, got out of the van, and headed to my first class. It felt like I was walking in reverse. When I got to the classroom I sat down at my alphabetically assigned seat and stared up at the sterile fluorescent lights as the teacher introduced himself. There was one of those motivational posters on the wall that said “Excellence” with a picture of a majestic lion at sunrise, but as I sat through orientation, I became more disoriented and an overwhelming feeling came over me that I was in the wrong place. I can’t describe the feeling much more than that, but it felt like a message from the future or like something that I knew in the past had been forgotten. I wanted to change the world. I didn’t know what I wanted to change, or why, or how, or even if the world wanted to be changed at all, but when the bell rang and my first college class ended I walked back through the halls, down the steep

concrete steps that led to the parking lot below the grounds, hopped in the Grand Caravan and drove away. I never went back.

When I think about it now, it was so out of character for me to do something like that.

Doing reckless spontaneous things wasn’t a normal thing for me. In fact, my behavior had been historically quite the opposite and I usually played by all the rules. It was almost as if some force possessed me, or maybe I possessed myself, but that decision at that moment put me on an entirely different life path that I am still on to this day. Almost everyone I know and love is a result of that redirection. It has led me to experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world of things. I mean nothing. I don’t necessarily recommend dropping out of school, this is just my story. Everyone has their own path and their own inner voice to help guide them to their great story, and it is true that each and every person does have a great story to tell.

However, to tell that great story, one must be true to one’s heart and follow that small voice inside. It often requires sacrifice, but sacrifice is like a bargain with the future and it is remarkable that human beings are capable of comprehending this kind of thought. This is not an easy path. It is filled with both joy and sorrow, but it is the path worth taking.

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ON BEING PRESENT

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The months that followed turned into years, and the reality of my decision to go my own way set in. I was writing, playing, and producing music every day but as more and more time went on without a “break”, I began to grasp desperately at any kind of success or validation. I spent two years playing music in dive bars and tiny clubs across America while living in a 15 passenger van with 8 other guys living off $5 a day for food and sleeping in Wal-Mart parking lots. There were bills to pay.

I needed to find a way to eat, and a way to get into the “right rooms” with the “right people”.

It was becoming increasingly harder and harder for me to listen to that voice inside and to tell the truth about myself to myself. I wasn’t even aware that I wasn’t telling the truth. It was a slow gradual decline disguised with ideas and ideals that began outside of myself. I started dressing in clothes that I thought other people would think were cool. The illusion of glamour has been known to be extremely enticing and deceptive. I moved to LA, started going out to clubs and drinking a lot whenever I would go out. I was making friends with famous people and meeting girls and, on the surface, it seemed to be working for me. I guess people thought

the metaphorical mask I was wearing was cool, and maybe I wore it so well they didn’t even know it was a mask. Actually, on reflection, I also wore it so well that even I didn’t know I was wearing a mask. Every day was Halloween.

Trick or treat?

I started to get into different studio sessions to create with and for some of the biggest producers and artists in the world, but a pattern started emerging. I would get in the sessions and people would like me, or the person I was unknowingly pretending to be, but 9 out of 10 times nothing artistically would materialize from the sessions. I made a lot of friends, but nothing created ever mattered or amounted to anything real. I didn’t know why.

Soon, I got a smooth-talking manager and eventually, got a big record deal as a solo artist and I started to make a million-dollar album with one of the biggest producers in the world, but a few months into the process the record company listened to some of the song demos and dropped me. I was so confused. It was like no matter how hard I tried, nothing I did mattered... and that was exactly the problem. Nothing I did mattered.

“Happiness is a direction, not a place.”

A Q U OT E BY S Y D N E Y J . H A R R I S

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This led me to a very dark period of having nothing, being nothing. I became empty, but becoming empty is one of the most important things that ever happened to me. In my state of emptiness, I was able to see that I had filled myself up with external thoughts and influences and had become an amalgamation of things internalized from outside of myself.

Someone once told me that everything comes from nothing and nothing creates everything, I don’t remember where I heard it or if I just made it up, but I know it to be true. So then the question arises, does anything matter? Perhaps a thing only matters if there is a purpose behind it. Meaning that a thing only really becomes matter, materializes, or takes form if it serves a purpose. That purpose can either be your purpose or someone else’s purpose.

This is why creation is so important for human development. We are all destined to be creators.

Whether that creation is music, or a film, a painting, a business, a conversation, or a family.

Creation, by design, must lead to self-discovery, and in self-discovery, one finds their purpose.

That is the real value of creation. I had been

depressed and anxious because nothing I was doing or creating mattered. It didn’t matter to me and therefore didn’t matter or materialize into the form of matter. I was trying to create something and be someone for everyone else but myself.

What if how much one’s creation mattered to the world, in its meaning and in the success of the materialization of its form, was dependent on how much truth was communicated in the creation? And even more so, what if how successful one’s life became was dependent on how much one told the truth? The evidence in our world certainly seems to point to something along those lines. The fairy tales, Jesus, the Buddha, and all the great myths also seem to point in that direction, but we won’t know unless we try.

In any case, that’s the world I want to live in.

A world where we tell the truth, to ourselves and others, and see where it takes us, knowing that the answer to every question is in our reflections. If nothing creates everything, and everything is born from nothing, then nothing matters. Nothing matters a great deal.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Joseph Marchant

MODELS

Alex Rainsford

L O C AT I O N

Birmingham, UK

Simple Ways to Supercharge Your Productivity AUTHOR: TENZIN OZAKI

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gained a lot from my university experience. I learned to be independent, I made lifelong friends, and I developed a pretty strong caffeine addiction. But at the end of it all, all I earned was a $50,000 piece of paper with my name written on it.

That said, I’m not entirely dismissive of the educational aspect of universities. I learned lots of new things, and I developed valuable mental models that I frequently use in my life. But as they say, universities don’t prepare you for work. I rarely use specific knowledge that I learned at school in my job. The A’s and B’s on my transcript don’t mean anything anymore.

The most important thing that my university education gave me is a set of working habits. I developed these habits through a series of trial and error — from low marks and unpolished projects to suffering late nights in the library, poring over textbooks and class notes because of my historical propensity to procrastinate.

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I’ve realized that my university habits are responsible for my current ability to be productive and creative. While the habits themselves didn’t earn me a certain grade on a project or the degree at the end of the journey, their usefulness has been immeasurable.

The first habit is the most important in terms of productivity. I consistently leverage the habit of scheduling “intentional flow sessions” in my professional career. I came across the idea of flow during my second year of university and, at the time, I was having trouble focusing. I couldn’t sit down in the library and study for more than ten minutes at a time because my mind would start to wander. I would lose focus, daydream, or sit counting the number of dots per square of ceiling tile. I would do everything to avoid actually studying.

So, I referred to the internet and I looked up ways to optimize my study sessions to be more productive. I came across the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experiences

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

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“You’ve gotta keep control of your time, and you can’t unless you say no. You can’t let people set your agenda in life.”

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Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as being the ultimate path toward life satisfaction and happiness. The book suggests techniques to refocus our attention from external rewards toward internal rewards known as intrinsic motivators. Once we get into the mindset of pure intrinsic motivation, we enter a state of flow where we don’t care about anything else. We simply exist in our own world, doing our best work in total bliss. In short, these flow sessions aimed to remove the many distractions we face each day.

Flow sounds nice, but it isn’t easy to achieve.

It took an entire undergrad of trial and error to optimize my flow sessions. But I can proudly report that I discovered a system that works for me. My routine allows me to enter flow quickly and remain in a flow state for a few hours at a time — hence, my intentional flow sessions.

The first step of my intentional flow routine is to prime my mind. Step one is a poor man’s version of Pavlov’s conditioning experiment — except instead of dogs, the subject is me. Essentially, it’s a mental warmup that I constantly repeat so that my mind creates the association between warmup and flow.

I listen to a specific song — Arrival of the Birds from The Theory of Everything soundtrack. While I listen to my music, I read my life goals aloud a few times to create a concrete mental image and reestablish my conviction to deem these goals essential and necessary. I also make sure that I arrange my entire workspace exactly how I like it. I have my snacks, a jug of water, pens and notepaper, my laptop, and a pair of fully charged headphones.

The second step of my intentional flow routine is to write down a list of tasks that I want to complete. For example, my last list had the following: Prepare an outline for a piece of writing, research and create a list of at least 20 qualified leads, and draft the workflow of an upcoming project.

I like to ensure that each task will take between thirty minutes to an hour and a half.

During each flow session, I typically aim to complete three to five tasks. I also try to make sure that the tasks are individual work. I don’t want to be halfway through a task and realize that I need a colleague’s input to complete the rest of the deliverable. And that’s it. The third

step is to sit down and work. No distractions.

No cell phones. No emails. Just you, your work, and flow.

I can confidently attribute most of my career success to intentional flow sessions because our modern existence is rife with distraction. Everything is tugging at our attention. Everything is competing for those extra few seconds of mental real estate.

Consequently, it’s easy to get sucked into these distractions, wasting valuable time, and ultimately succumbing to whatever attentionpoaching medium is on the menu that day.

I firmly believe that the ability to work undistracted in a state of flow will become an invaluable competitive advantage. Why not prepare for the future by developing and practicing this skill now so that you can differentiate yourself from those who cannot complete focused work?

The next productivity habit is opposed to intentional flow sessions, but can be used in tandem to maximize productivity throughout the day. While flow sessions are individual, this habit suggests putting yourself in an environment where other people are around you. I’m lucky to have a flexible job that allows me to work outside of the office. I can work in a coffee shop or the library, and sometimes I even work at restaurants.

I love working in these alternative work environments.

In a given workday, I typically combine intentional flow sessions with working in public. My day starts with a few extremely productive flow sessions. When I feel that my mental capacity is waning but I still want to be productive for a few more hours, I often go out and work in public. Working around other people isn’t for everyone — I have friends and colleagues who cannot work productively around other people under any circumstance.

But I urge you to consider it, and explore the benefits it could offer.

During my undergrad, I loved to study in high traffic areas. My favorite spot was in the main building adjacent to the big lecture halls.

The area is for socializing — large tables for large groups to meet, study, and hangout.

There was a lot of foot traffic as students walked to and from the lecture halls, consistent background noise, and a coffee stand and washroom within a thirty-second walk.

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I like working in environments with lots of people. Part of this has to do with growing up in a big city. I feel more comfortable knowing that there are other people around.

But it also has to do with the way I prefer to be distracted during my working breaks. I wouldn’t say I like watching YouTube videos or scrolling through Instagram. I prefer to people-watch.

When I took breaks from studying, I leaned back in my chair and observed everyone around me. Not in a creepy way, but in a way that acknowledges everyone’s unique existence. There’s a word, sonder: the profound realization that every random passerby lives a life as vivid and complex as your own. Everyone has dreams and ambitions. Everyone has fears and insecurities.

Everyone has struggled through adversity.

Everyone has a story.

When I take a break from my work, I like to reflect on the feeling of sonder — the thought that everyone’s story is as complex as mine, but also incredibly similar. In university, I knew that most people would rather be in the gym, playing ball, or hanging out with friends instead of studying. I knew that most people’s reason for persisting through school’s challenges was to create a better future for themselves — to open doors of opportunity.

It’s easy to become convinced of individualism, the idea that your challenges,

problems, dreams, and goals are unique.

We tend to disassociate ourselves from the universal collective. And from our granular perspective, driven by a tendency toward introspection, we fail to recognize that we are part of something bigger. No matter how unique our lives may seem to us, the same thing is probably happening to someone else.

I take comfort in knowing that my challenges aren’t unique. And if somebody else can work through them, then maybe I have the strength to work through them too. This realization ultimately encourages productivity.

The feeling of sonder also fosters a sense of compassion and empathy. By realizing the individual within the stranger, we may begin to empathize with them. We come to realize that we are just one person in a collective, forever oscillating between suffering and happiness. To uncover our innate membership within humanity, we develop deep feelings of love for our fellow people.

In the book Deep Work, author Cal Newport describes that our attention dictates how the brain interprets experiences, thereby shaping our emotions and eventual results.

Newport emphasizes the importance of working on creating a positive reality for your work. The challenge is to redirect attention toward deep work so that the state of flow essentially becomes its own reward.

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I’ve extrapolated this idea of redirecting attention by applying the same fundamental principles to the breaks between work. I believe the mindset that we carry in our breaks influences the quality of focus during working periods. If you’re taking a break and your focus turns to social media, the news, or something as benign as cat memes, it doesn’t do anything to catalyze a positive and productive work session.

I’ve discovered that by being around people, I can tap into the feelings of sonder. I allow those feelings of empathy and compassion to bubble within me. And then, with the mindset of loving-kindness for those around me and a deeper appreciation for my existence within the complexities of a greater collective, I approach my work productively with a positive frame of mind.

Finally, the last habit that I adopted in my undergrad that I’ve taken into my professional career is working with friends. My friends and I often take our laptops to a restaurant, or a cafe, or even a lounge. None of us have the same job or even work in the same industry, but we are all aligned on doing good work and being around people that we like. We work, take a conversation break, and then get back to work — just like in university.

As an undergrad, one of the best ways to motivate a study session was to study with friends. In my experience, study sessions with other people aren’t the most productive if the definition of productivity is completing the most work. Working sessions are interrupted by conversation, jokes, random observations of our environment or an anecdotal story of a particularly embarrassing moment from the fifth grade. You could label these interruptions as distractions. But I consider

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them an incredible opportunity for creativity and innovation — a way for the mind to take a necessary pause from working on the current task and switching to something less intense and intellectually relaxing.

I found that my most inspired thinking came during these moments of interruption.

For example, my friends and I would study and take notes on our pre-readings for the next lecture. One of us would read something funny in the textbook, share it with the group, we’d laugh and contribute our own opinions, and then we would get back to work. The brief moment of switching the mind’s focus to another topic is incredibly powerful for creativity.

There’s a creative process called mental incubation, which is the process of unconscious recombinations of previously conscious ideas.

Our consciousness is narrow, meaning that it can only focus on one thing at a time. But our unconsciousness is broader and is always working on many different things in the background. By switching between conscious thoughts, the brain redistributes elements in the unconscious. Therefore, a slight disruption to the system, and new ideas and thoughts become more or less salient within the mind.

I’m sure you’ve experienced this before.

You’re working on a seemingly unsolvable problem. You’ve been tackling this problem for hours, but for some reason, you can’t crack it. You’ve looked at this problem from every single angle possible. You looked at this problem upside down, lying down, but to no avail. In your frustration, you go out to get a coffee. And somewhere in between leaving the office and having your name misspelled by the Starbucks barista, the answer suddenly pops in your head.

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This example is a representation of incubation. The mind was so focused on a problem that it could not take a step back and consider the problem from a different perspective. But by moving that task into the unconscious, suddenly, that laser-like focus is no longer applicable, and the mind can recombine other elements into a creative solution.

I leverage incubation by doing working sessions with my friends a few times a week. Not only am I opening myself up to an opportunity for incubation, but all of my friends are also a lot smarter than me. When we take our conversation breaks, I’m still intellectually stimulated. And I’m often intrigued by something that they say. An element of their idea stands out to me as a potential component of a problem I’m trying to solve.

As a generality, our society undervalues other people as an essential source of positive distractions. My experience living in North America is that there’s an idealization of achieving success individually, of working hard individually, of achieving individually — even though reality could not be farther from that belief.

Every successful person has a team. Every successful person has friends and a support group. Every successful person could not have been successful without other people. I think that all of us can take a little bit from this statement and apply it to our own lives. You can try working with your friends or hopping on a zoom call during a break for a coffee chat, or even just being in the presence of your peers while you’re working on something by yourself. The company of people you enjoy spending time with and that you enjoy talking to can have a massive positive influence on your creativity levels.

As the saying goes, diamonds are formed under pressure, but they’re not formed overnight. Tested through pressure and over the length of an undergrad, these productive and creative habits have ultimately survived the transition from school to career. These habits are my diamonds — diamonds that are worth much more than a piece of paper.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Patrick Walters

MODELS

Dottie James

L O C AT I O N

Brighton

Compassion: Building a Habit Out of a Feeling AUTHOR: DOTTIE JAMES

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hat would humans be without love?

RARE.’ If there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing, it’s that a well-placed quote by fantasy author Terry Pratchett will often sum up in a single sentence something that I’ve spent a thousand words trying to pin down on paper. Humans without love would get themselves into so much trouble that there would be no humans left. By this logic, the key to humanity’s success is compassion. We’ve been taught this from a young age; we’ve been told to share, to consider others’ feelings, to treat others as we would like to be treated.

We are told to practice compassion, but what we aren’t usually instructed on is where to most effectively aim it.

Compassion, kindness, love, whatever you want to call it is preached in almost every major religion on the planet.

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As such, I was ever so tempted to begin this article with a small twist on ‘love thy neighbour as thyself,’ instead, making it ‘extend to yourself the same attitude of love and patience that you insist on giving to your dog,’ which is only marginally less catchy. Notice that I didn’t begin the article this way. I thought it was too lazy, too overused, a cliche to reach for one of the most worn-out Bible verses to prove my point. Unfortunately, I have now inadvertently included it in the article. Instead of berating myself for my own perceived laziness, I’ll take it as a practical example of self-compassion. I understand that Terry Pratchett or the Bible have often already summed up what I want to say long before I’ve thought to say it.

Sometimes the words of others will best express your own ideas.

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“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”

A Q U OT E BY J O H N G R E E N

The idea of sending compassion your own way when you feel less than great, or feel you have messed up in some way, might at first seem like a cop-out. The idea of ‘deserving’ guilt is often taught in our society. To hate yourself into being a better you is pushed by the fashion industry, gyms, and self-help guides. Simply put: we are too harsh on ourselves.

One problem with guilt as motivation for selfimprovement is that it burns out quickly. We will not always feel bad about ourselves just as we will most definitely not always feel good about ourselves. When that guilt vanishes, so will the determination. The second problem with selfimprovement is the term ‘self-improvement’. The notion that we need to be any different from how we are is false.

Ironically, understanding this can change your life.

We are fine as we are. Unless we are endangering ourselves or others, the need to change how we are, or who we are, is non-existent. You might have a desire to cultivate healthier, kinder habits, and that’s fine; there is a radical internal shift that comes with the realization that no matter how much room for improvement you’ve pinpointed within yourself, you are actually, this very second, just fine the way you are. The fear of missing out on a ‘better’ self due to our own perceived failures can hinder any positive outlook changes. If it helps, and if you are so inclined to believe it, you possess the same measurement of cosmic purpose as the cat you saw in the street last Thursday.

I personally find that idea freeing, others may find it terror-inducing, or they might just plain disagree. We’re all different, and that’s fine too.

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In my lowest moments, I find myself critical of almost everything I do, haven’t done, don’t want to do, or even do want to do. I never measure up to my own estimation.

However, I’ve begun to extend to myself the same level of understanding, compassion, and patience that I give to my good friends. I love them for who and where they are right now. In fact, I have very little inkling of whoever they desire to be but aren’t. I’ve begun the delicate process of showing myself the compassion I would show to a friend.

Brains love habits, at least I know mine does. They like to stick to what they know and, unfortunately, when what it’s used to is being hard on itself, your brain finds it incredibly uncomfortable to veer off course and start the baby steps of being kind to itself. The first issue I encountered upon learning self-compassion comes down to memory. I kept forgetting to be compassionate to myself.

Whether it was for running late, forgetting to reply to a text, or making an embarrassing faux pas, my brain would dig deeper into its usual grooves of shame or guilt. In

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those moments, it’s only when I remember to be my own best friend that I feel my brain forging an unfamiliar yet increasingly pleasant pathway, one filled with, you guessed it, compassion for myself. This leads me to my one and only tip for this article.

In the endless slog to better ourselves, we can forget to appreciate the effort that goes into just living. The only way I’ve found that compassion becomes a habit is by simply remembering to use it. Once a day perhaps, set a phone reminder, write it on the wall, or, if you’re like me, in grubby biro on the back of your hand. Whatever it takes to get a break from your criticizing brain and just be alright with yourself for a minute.

‘Love thy neighbor as thyself ’ would be a horrible curse on the neighbor if you didn’t routinely show yourself some compassion. After reading all of this, I know you’re thinking ‘easier said than done,’ but the truth of it is that some things are worth the effort. After all, what would humans be without love? Rare.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Joseph Marchant

MODELS

Alex Rainsford

L O C AT I O N

Birmingham, UK

Stop Confusing Habits With Routines A U T H O R : N I R E YA L

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elf-help articles extol the power of habits and books on the topic sell by the millions. Yet, like many pop psychology topics, the conventional wisdom about the effectiveness and application of habits is frequently outdated, misapplied, or flat out wrong.

Building habits to change behavior the right way can be a wonderful tool to improve your life. But false notions about what habits are and what they can do can backfire.

The idea of building a habit is very appealing. The popular notion that tasks can be put on autopilot makes habits sound effortless.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply make a habit out of doing tasks like exercising, journaling, paying bills, or running a side business? Unfortunately, you can’t. Habits don’t work that way.

Why? Well, let’s first examine how habits operate. According to Dr. Benjamin Gardner, a habit researcher at King’s College London, “habit works by generating an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought.” Habits are a type of learning. By forming a habit, the brain frees the mind to do other things without deliberation.

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As a child, you needed to be reminded to wash your hands after using the toilet. Children must focus on the task of turning on the water, dispensing the soap, lathering up, and cleaning their hands. As an adult, you do this automatically (hopefully) and you’re able to think about other things as you take the steps to wash your hands.

The truth is, only some behaviors can actually become habits.

By definition, behaviors that require concentration, deliberation, or extended effort, are not habits. And this isn’t just semantics. We shouldn’t try to form a habit out of a task that can never become one.

If we do, will be sorely disappointed.

When we fail at forming a habit, we tend to blame ourselves, rather than the bad advice we read from someone who doesn’t understand what can and cannot be a habit. But if behaviors that require conscious thought, like cleaning your apartment or writing in a journal daily, are not habits, then what are they? They are routines. A routine is “a sequence of actions regularly followed.”

To change a behavior, therefore, you first need to understand the difference between a habit and a routine. Otherwise, it’s like using the blunt end of a screwdriver to bash in a nail. It’s possible, but you’re likely to give up or hurt yourself. You should have used a hammer instead.

How do we tell the difference between behaviors that are good candidates to become habits and those best left as routines? To answer that question we need to start with a more fundamental question, “Why do we do anything?”

What is Motivation?

For years, we thought that Sigmund Freud’s “pleasure principle” is the basis of human motivation. He promoted the idea that behavior is driven by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Behaviorists like B.F. Skinner popularized the notion that reinforcements and punishments drive conditioned behavior.

But, we now know that motivation is not driven by pleasure and pain. Rather, neurologically speaking, motivation is the desire to escape discomfort. All human behavior, even the itch of desire to do something pleasurable, is in fact prompted by pain. It’s called the homeostatic response.

Our brains get our bodies to do what they want through discomfort.

When we’re cold, we put on a coat. When we feel hunger pangs, we eat. Does feeling warm again or eating food bring pleasure? Of course.

But that good feeling comes after we’re spurred into action by an uncomfortable sensation prompting us to take action.

The same rule applies to psychological discomfort. When we feel lonely, bored, or uncertain, we act to relieve our emotional disquietude.

We might see a friend to relieve loneliness, or watch a television show when we’re bored. We may look up something online to satisfy our uncertainty - all because we seek to escape these uncomfortable sensations.

The Difference Between Habits and Routines

If all behavior is prompted by discomfort, then habits and routines must follow the same rule. How and when we feel the discomfort of doing, or not doing, a behavior is critical to understanding the difference between habits and routines.

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Recall that part of the reason people find the idea of building a habit so appealing is the notion that they can put unfun tasks on autopilot.

Tasks like paying bills or doing the laundry annoy us. They hang over our heads until the pain of not doing them gets to be too much.

However, if some magic laundry-folding fairy appeared and told you not to worry about the task, you’d happily go about your day. Well, it turns out that your brain comes built-in with such a magic pixie, and it’s called procrastination.

When we procrastinate, we tell ourselves we’ll avoid the task for later.

Doing so is a telltale sign the task is a routine and not a good candidate to become a habit. Imagine intending to wash your hands and the water suddenly shuts off. If you’re in the habit, not doing the behavior would feel strange, even uncomfortable. Even if the magic habit fairy told you your hands had been cleaned and there was no need to wash them, it would take you several days, if not weeks, to undo this habitual behavior.

I recently experienced just such a predicament when the water to my bathroom sink was shut off because of construction in my building.

I needed to use the kitchen sink to wash my hands for a week. Even though I was fully aware that the bathroom sink wasn’t going to work, I kept turning it on day after day out of habit. Every time I lifted the faucet handle and no water came out, my habit was interrupted and I’d get annoyed. I knew the faucet wouldn’t work, but I kept attempting to do the behavior with little thought.

A habit feels uncomfortable when we don’t do it, exactly the opposite is true of routines. This is where people get into trouble confusing habits and routines. They expect routines to be as effortless as habits, while the only thing about routines that’s easy, is how easy they are to skip. Not doing an effortful task, like doing the laundry or writing in a journal, is easy to forget because such behaviors are not habitual, but routines that require effort.

How Habits are Formed

Some self-help books claim habits form by simply providing a reward after a cued behavior. In the behaviorist tradition, they base their claims on research showing how a lab animal, like a mouse, can be taught to memorize a path through a maze in search of food. However, while this form of learning, called operant conditioning, works well for a mouse in a maze, the model is often misapplied for humans in the real world.

Operant conditioning can be effective when a scientist in a lab coat sets up the task for test subjects to complete. However, in life, we are thankfully not trapped in cages and mazes, we must moderate our own behavior. Unfortunately, we must be scientists attempting to design our own actions. Offering ourselves extrinsic rewards makes conditioning our own behavior very difficult. It can be exceedingly hard to resist cheating. Setting up arbitrary prizes risks overemphasizing completing a goal for the sake of the reward, instead of learning to enjoy the process.

That said, let’s run over some key practices and principles that you can utilize when seeking to form a new habit.

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“All humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek hope and avoid fear, and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection.”

A Q U O T E B Y N I R E YA L

Start with a Routine

First, we have to accept that only certain kinds of behaviors can become habits and that certain behaviors will never become habits.

Only then can we take the first step towards changing our repeated behaviors. For those actions that can turn into habits, we can begin by making them into routines. As long as we know the difference between a habit (a behavior done with little or no thought) and a routine (a series of actions regularly followed), we can plan accordingly and not be disappointed.

If you desire to go to the gym regularly but dislike exercise, find ways to see it differently. Envision every drop of sweat as a sign your body is getting stronger. Learn to see the burn as tiny muscle fibers getting better at doing their job while your body rises to the challenge.

Perception is a matter of perspective; no matter the routine, you can choose to re-imagine your discomfort as a good thing. This may seem like a stretch for someone who hates exercise, as I once did. But it’s useful to remember that many people have learned to love the very same difficulty you despise. If they can see it differently, why can’t you?

Hold the Time

Pre-Commit

Since we can’t count on routines to happen automatically the way habits do, we need to make sure to allocate time for them. Many people go through their days with aspirations to accomplish a list of tasks. But without dedicating time on their calendars to do them, they never get everything done.

Setting an “implementation intention,” which is just a fancy way of saying that you will plan what you are going to do and when you are going to do it, has been shown to boost the likelihood of following through. Without a dedicated time reserved for your new routine, chances are it’ll never get done.

Welcome Discomfort

It’s important to expect that learning and repeatedly doing a new behavior requires effort. Expect discomfort and know that you’ll have to push through it. Along with setting expectations that new routines won’t be effortless, you can learn coping techniques to deal with discomfort more healthily.

For instance, you can learn to re-imagine the difficulty positively by telling yourself a different story. Instead of focusing on how hard writing or exercising every day can be, think of the difficulty as part of the journey. Know that everyone who has ever made a routine out of this behavior has struggled at some point.

Before a behavior can become a habit, it needs to become a regularly performed routine. But given how effortful routines can be, it’s far too easy to skip a difficult task. Thankfully, making a pre-commitment is a fantastic way to ensure you do what you say you will do.

For instance, if writing or exercising daily is a routine you want to adopt, finding someone to hold you accountable will increase your odds of success. Sites like FocusMate make finding someone to work alongside easy (note: I liked FocusMate so much I decided to invest in the company). You can also pre-commit to a routine by using software like Forest on your phone and Freedom on your computer to prevent distraction and keep you on task.

By not expecting every aspiration to become an effortless habit, you increase your odds of success. If it’s the right kind of behavior, one that can be done with little or no conscious thought, the routine can become a habit.

It’s important to remember not to try and turn hard-to-do behaviors into habits. Doing so risks frustration and failure. Instead, accept that it’s perfectly fine that some behaviors will remain routines and expect them to never become effortless. By focusing on forming solid routines through the steps outlined above, you’ll have a better chance of sticking to what’s important to you, while increasing the odds that some routines may blossom into habits.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Callum Shaw

MODELS

Various

L O C AT I O N

Birmingham, UK

Breaking Self-Destructive Habits Using Mindfulness A U T H O R : M AT T H E A R N D E N

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t started when I was about 8 years old, this habit of grabbing little bits of skin on my fingers and picking and pulling at them. It didn’t hurt. Well, it barely ever hurt. Only on rare occasions did I pick them so much that they’d bleed. That’s when I’d think, Okay, I’ve gone too far. And then, a few moments later, I’d go right back to picking and pulling at the skin of a different finger. I just couldn’t help it.

My mum had asked me to stop so many times over the years and I never did. I never even tried, to be honest. Not really. Because, in my mind, it wasn’t that bad.

My fingers looked a bit messed up, sure, and yes, they occasionally bled and hurt.

But that didn’t seem to stop me.

I also remember, in my teenage years, seeing someone else picking and pulling at their fingers. I’d never seen someone else do it before but I remember my reaction: I was repulsed. I cringed. It was like they were hurting themselves. Mutilating themselves. No wonder my mum didn’t like me doing it.

That made me stop for a few hours. Then I forgot and just went right back to doing what I always did. It’s not an exaggeration to say I used to pick and pull at the skin on my fingers about fifty times per day. If anything, I’m underestimating. I did it more than I checked my phone, and that is alarming.

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Imagine if someone said they smoked fifty cigarettes per day. You’d be worried about that person. You’d say they were addicted to smoking, and you’d be right. It was an addiction - a self-destructive habit - and I couldn’t and wouldn’t see that. At least, not until I started to study mindfulness. I’d read about habits in the past, but for me, combining habits with mindfulness is what led to the breakthrough.

James Clear, author of the #1 New York Times Bestselling book, Atomic Habits, says that “the process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.”

He goes on to give a few examples: “You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides.

You are not motivated by brushing your teeth but rather by the feeling of a clean mouth. You do not want to turn on the television, you want to be entertained.”

Being aware of this is useful because it shows us what we really want: a change in our internal state. We feel uncomfortable, we don’t like it, and we do something to relieve it - even if these reliefs are short-term and temporary.

Understanding this helped me realize that I wasn’t craving the chance to pick at and mutilate my fingers; what I was craving was to relieve any anxiety I was feeling. I realized that I never picked consciously; it was only ever when I was lost in a train of thought that was producing feelings of anxiety in me. I’d get lost in thought, feel some kind of general anxiety, and then I’d pick at my fingers in an effort to relieve those feelings. It was like I didn’t believe I could handle feeling anxiety, and mutilating my fingers gave me a sense of control to compensate for that.

The insidious thing about this - about any self-destructive habit - is that it worked.

No, they don’t work long-term, and no, they’re not healthy, and yes, some are so bad that they could end up killing you. But the only reason we engage with them and continue to engage with them is that, even if only for the briefest of moments, they work. The anxiety we feel? Gone. Ah. What a relief. This is why it’s quite a challenge to break a self-destructive habit. Dr. Joe Dispenza puts it well: “In order for us to create something new in our lives, we have to leave behind a portion of the known and familiar. This includes familiar thoughts, behaviors, emotions, and sometimes even relationships. For most people, leaving behind the illusory security of the known and stepping into the unknown can be a terrifying place. This is why change is so hard.”

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The mind is just like a muscle - the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand.�

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Anyone who’s trying or has ever tried to break a self-destructive habit knows how hard it can be. That’s where mindfulness comes in. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as follows: “Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally.”

Basically, being mindful means being “there,” as opposed to where we are a lot of the time, which is lost in our thoughts or perhaps trying to avoid feeling our feelings.

Another quote that helped me to understand mindfulness is from Michael Singer, author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller, The Untethered Soul: “There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it.”

This is a realization that comes with being mindful. Because when you’re mindful, you’re present - and when you’re present, you become aware of your thoughts instead of getting lost in them. It’s fascinating to realize that you’re the observer of your thoughts, rather than the thoughts themselves. (If you’re skeptical, just make your mind say “Hello!” over and over. The distinction will become clear.)

Being mindful when breaking any self-destructive habit is crucial because - as we’ve discussed - to break a habit, you have to become aware of the cravings you feel. I’d sit there, watching TV or something, and the thoughts would arise. Maybe I should be working. Am I being lazy? What am I doing just sitting here, being unproductive? I gotta work harder. I should be doing more but I’m not. Why aren’t I? Why can’t I? These not-so-much-fun thoughts would create a feeling of anxiety in me. Not about anything specific, just general, low-level anxiety. At that point, I’d notice myself wanting to pick at my fingers - because it would make me feel more comfortable. It would make me able to handle this feeling of anxiety. It would distract me.

But this time, rather than indulging in the bad habit, I took the time to recognize where it had come from and why. I sat there with the anxiety and noticed it and let it come up and let it be. I stayed present with it. I’d had enough of running from it, of trying to soothe it through self-destruction. I wanted to experience it. I wanted to prove to myself that I could handle it.

I sat there with it, I didn’t pick, and then it passed. Because, sooner or later, everything passes.

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Now, I have to be honest. This wasn’t easy. It was, by definition, uncomfortable. It’s exactly like Dr. Joe Dispenza said: “leaving behind the illusory security of the known and stepping into the unknown can be a terrifying place.” I’d been doing this habit for so long. It had taken up a significant portion of my three decades here on this planet. Who was I going to be when I wasn’t doing it?

This is where mindfulness helps because a vital component of mindfulness, as Jon KabatZinn said, is being non-judgemental. Yes, I had these not-so-much-fun thoughts. Yes, I had feelings of anxiety and realized I’d probably had them for almost my entire life. To not judge myself - to have compassion for myself - was so liberating.

There’s something about mindfulness that’s inherently compassionate. It’s kind of like watching a toddler having a tantrum; they’re just being a toddler. Of course they’re going to have tantrums. You don’t blame them for it, you don’t judge them for it; you simply understand it.

Through understanding both habits and mindfulness, I’ve gone from picking and pulling at my fingers at least fifty times per day to doing it zero times per day. My dear mother was shocked, to say the least. And you know what else? Those anxious thoughts have much less power. They still come and go from time to time, but the urge to give into them has all but disappeared. That’s the real win here.

As you may have gathered, this process can be applied to any self-destructive habit. Smoking, overeating, toxic relationships - they can all be broken in exactly the same way. After all, as we’ve discovered, your thoughts and feelings are things you can simply experience; you don’t have to act on them.

Does mindfulness take practice? Is it impossible to be perfectly mindful right away? Is it hard?

Yes, yes, and yes. Is it worth it? Seeing as your entire quality of life is directly related to your internal state - and mindfulness calms your internal state to the point you don’t feel the urge to engage in self-destructive habits - I’d say that yes, it’s worth it.

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