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I was searching around the blogosphere and up came this great blog by Leo Babauta
His story begins where mine did, when he quit smoking. And the leverage he has got off that habit change is amazing.
He has a guest post on the site from Scott Young that deals with eliminating habits.
It’s a great post and you can read it here:
http://zenhabits.net/2007/07/20-tricks-to-nuke-a-bad-habit/
If you take an interest in Self Improvement then you will realize that it is a continuous process and success cannot be acheived through reading just one self help book.
One habit that Napoleon Hill discovered successful people practice was what he dubbed R2A2. To gain the benefits you:
Recognize - Recognize a principle, technique or improvement that will benefit you.
Relate - Relate the improvement to your beliefs, experience, business or life.
Assimilate - Assimilate the improvement into your daily routine.
Apply - Take action and make the Improvement a Habit.
Napoleon Hill’s Famous 17 Principles of Success…
If you do some research, and find out about his 17 Principles, what you are about to read may suprise you.
Hill didn’t seem to keep to the same 17 principles, In fact, from my research up till this point I’ve counted no less than 38 different Principles that he’s used throughout his books and publications.
There are a core number that Hill refers to in every publication I’ve read.
But the rest he seemed to pick sometimes calling it a different name, but meaning the same thing such as:
Pleasing Personality sometimes called Attractive Personality
or
Learning From Defeat sometimes called Profiting By Failure or Learning From Adversity and Defeat
Other times throwing in a completely new principle such as Positive Mental Attitude as he became acquainted with W. Clement Stone.
I’m still waiting for a couple more books to arrive before I publish all the different principles Hill came out with.
Let me know if you find any that are not in Hills more famous books Think and Grow Rich and The Law Of Success
“Success is a habit which can be acquired by the exercise of a moderate amount of intelligence, a great deal of hard work, and an unswerving sincerity of purpose.” - Major General Herbert Leonard Grills
Scott Young has a great series on his blog about mastering your habits.
I do not agree with the fact that he says quote
“Habits can’t be removed. They must be upgraded or replaced.”
Don’t think that’s true, I gave up smoking nearly 12 months ago. The technique was to contact my subconscious directly, and it’s not been replaced with anything, well, not consciously anyway!
Check out the link, you will find Scott’s series interesting…
Reading through one of Napoleon Hill’s books “How To Raise Your Own Salary” I come to a chapter about Learning From Defeat.
The Book is a breakdown of what was said between Hill and Carnegie during their meetings in 1908. In my search for confirming the link between Personal development, success and habit I am trying to link up as many connections as I can and here, in this book is one great big humdinger of a connection.
I quote…
Napoleon Hill: “From what you say about habits, I reach the conclusion that Success is a habit”
Andrew Carnegie: “Now you are getting the idea! Of course success is a habit”
“Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you; until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire; until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.” - Napoleon Hill.
Napoleon Hill. He knew the importance of Habit.
Can you learn the success habit?
Is it possible to get a list of the habits of successful people and then copy their habits until they become your own?
Also Is it just those habits that they DO or is it the Bad Habits that they avoid?
Benjamin Franklin had his theory of Moral Perfection.
His 13 ‘Virtues’ were as follows.
Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Looking at his virtues, it consists not only of habits to do, but of habits to moderate, or give up altogether.
Sometimes it is the things you don’t do, that are the hardest to control.
You can also see that a fine balance in the things you do is important too. Balance is one of the Keys to success.
I remember posting about the Basal Ganglia before in this post:
http://www.thehabitcode.com/2006/09/22/its-all-in-the-basal-ganglia/
In fact it was my second post…
Well after my other post today about the Insular Cortex I found another posting about the Basal Ganglia. What intrigues me about this post is the effect of Parkinsons Disease and the fact that many patients find that they cannot ’start’ an associated group of movements such as walking. We already know that the actual act of walking can be carried out autonomously by the spinal column alone. What is intriguing is the starting of the sequence. maybe it is that that is controlled by the higher brain functions such as the Insular Cortex and Basal Ganglia.
Another thing about the post on the Insular Cortex is the fact that the smokers had no craving or even recolection that they smoked. The trigger of smoking never actually occured. Although the motor reflex action is probably stored somewhere the actual visual/emotional stimulus did not trigger the urge to smoke.
Read more about Habit Formation in the Basal Ganglia at :
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/habit.html
Or Here:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro05/web1/mmcgovern.html
Smokers Quit After Damage to Brain Region
“Nicotine Addiction Depends on a Healthy Insula” Say Researchers From the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California (USC).
Smokers with a damaged Insula – a region in the brain linked to emotion and feelings – quit smoking easily and immediately, according to a study in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Science.
The study provides direct evidence of smoking’s grip on the brain.
It also raises the possibility that other addictive behaviors may have an equally strong hold on neural circuits for pleasure.
The senior authors of the study are Antoine Bechara and Hanna Damasio, both faculty in the year-old Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, in collaboration with graduate students Nasir Naqvi, who was first author on the study, and David Rudrauf, both from the University of Iowa.
“This is the first study of its kind to use brain lesions to study a drug addiction in humans,” Naqvi said.
In the 1990s, Antonio Damasio proposed the insula, a small island enclosed by the cerebral cortex, as a “platform for feelings and emotion.” The Science study shows that the pleasure of smoking appears to rest on this platform.
“It’s really intriguing to think that disrupting this region breaks the pleasure feelings associated with smoking,” said Damasio, director of the institute and holder of the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience at USC.
“It is immediate. It’s not that they smoke less. They don’t smoke, period.”
The finding raises the question of whether damage to the insula also could cause a person to quit other addictive behaviors. Can a brain lesion cure someone of their bad habits?
The answer is not yet known, Bechara said, but he suggested the phenomenon could be “generalizable” with respect to alcohol abuse, overeating and other addictions.
The discovery of the insula’s role in addiction opens new directions for therapies, Bechara said, including possible drugs targeted to a region that “no one paid attention to.”
“There is a lot of potential for pharmacological developments,” Bechara said.
Any treatment would need to preserve the beneficial functions of the insula. But Bechara noted that the region appears to be involved specifically in “learned behaviors” rather than the fundamental drives necessary for survival. As a result, it might be possible to target one without disrupting the other.
Hanna Damasio, co-director of the institute and holder of the Dana Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, also stressed the difference between habitual and instinctive behaviors.
“Because the insula is now recognized as a key structure in processes of emotion and feeling, the fact that insular damage breaks down a learned habit such as smoking, demonstrates a powerful link between habit and emotion or feeling,” she said.
The finding that one small region could be the Achilles’ heel of smoking addiction is especially surprising, given the brain-wide effects of nicotine on the nervous system.
The study considered smokers with damage that did not include the insula, but the likelihood of disrupting the smoking addiction was many times greater when the insula was involved.
Funding for the research came from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The University of Iowa provided access to its extensive database of patients with brain lesions.
The mission of the Brain and Creativity Institute is to study the neurological roots of human emotions, memory and communication and to apply the findings to problems in the biomedical and sociocultural arenas.
The institute brings together technology and the social sciences in a novel interdisciplinary setting. For more information, go to www.usc.edu/schools/college/bci/index.html
Link to the Science Journal article: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/125/1
