Stephen Guise - Elastic Habits: How to Create Smarter Habits That Adapt to Your Day

Elastic Habits

How to Create Smarter Habits That Adapt to Your Day

By

Stephen Guise

Blog: http://stephenguise.com

Book site: http://minihabits.com

Copyright & Disclaimer

Elastic Habits by Stephen Guise

Copyright 2019 Selective Entertainment LLC, All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations, without written permission from the author.

The information contained in this book is the opinion of the author and is based on the author's personal experiences and observations. The author does not assume any liability whatsoever for the use of or inability to use any or all information contained in this book, and accepts no responsibility for any loss or damages of any kind that may be incurred by the reader as a result of actions arising from the use of information found in this book. Use this information at your own risk.

The author reserves the right to make any changes he deems necessary to future versions of the publication to ensure its accuracy.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

What we do now echoes in eternity.

Marcus Aurelius

The world around us can get out of control. Nobody follows the exact paths they expect to take in life, and being detoured against our will is the rule, not the exception. In such a life of change, obstacles, pain, and surprises, our habits are there for us. By developing and practicing good habits each day, you affirm that you do have control over the very core of your life in the midst of the chaos.

Many people understand the importance of friends and family for external support, but not as many recognize the importance of their habits for internal support. Even with world class external support, many still fall into despair because they lack internal support.

Nobody else can live your life for you, no matter how much they love you.

Healthy habitual behaviors stabilize us in stressful times. If you dont have a habitual base of self-supporting behaviors, what do you think happens when your world is rocked? Habits are known wins, and a distressed mind wants and needs nothing more than a known win. If you dont have an internal foundation of good habits, then you will seek the only thing within your reachbad habits.

Whereas good habits help us recover from hard times, bad habits can deepen negative spirals. This is as blunt as it is important: habits are the most leveraged aspect of our lives, and we get to choose them .

Better Than Mini Habits

When I finished writing my first book, Mini Habits, in 2013, I predicted that it would be successful, purely on the strength of the strategy. I was right, as it became an international bestseller in 17 languages.

Mini Habits has changed thousands of lives all over the world. Six years later, this book and its strategy are even better. I dont mean it in an incremental sense, like with my second and third books. Elastic Habits takes a bigger step forward for habit formation than Mini Habits, not necessarily because it is more revolutionary (though it may be), but because it is complete .

Youre going to encounter ideas, physical tools, and strategies in this book that you never have encountered before. If mini habits are fun, rewarding, and effective, then elastic habits are super fun, extra rewarding, and paradigm-shifting. Elastic Habits is more than the evolution of Mini Habits : it re-thinks how to approach habits. It takes the base strategy of Mini Habits , maintaining all of its proven benefits, and adds the superpower of elasticity. Im so excited to tell you more, but first, let me tell you about the experiment I did to test this strategy.

The Slump

Since I was a kid, Ive been on the Ill just watch the movie end of the work ethic spectrum. Whether it was from birth (nature) or video game training (nurture Halo 3), I did not like to work. Thus, Im a different type of author from the ones people are used to reading in this genre. Im not some super-elite achiever telling people how they can be awesome just like me (!).

It would be generous to say I have an average work ethic, even now. But what I lack in work ethic, I make up for by using the very best strategies. The nice thing about winning strategies is that they help lazy people like me and natural world-beaters alike. Great strategies are scalable to all levels. As such, the strategies in this book can benefit anyone, whether theyre at the top of the proverbial mountain, at rock bottom, or somewhere in between.

About the time I graduated high school, I gained interest in doing something useful with my life. What a pesky internal conflict that turned out to be! With my lazy disposition and bad habits, I struggled to take useful actions. My entire teenage body resisted productivity, as if doing my homework would irreparably harm me. My desire to become someone greater outmatched my behavioral capacity to do so, causing significant frustration and inner angst. I needed answers.

First, I ran into the typical get motivated and just do it advice. It didnt work for me. Setting normal goals didnt work. My only reliable skill, it seemed, was finding an excuse to quit before I made meaningful progress in areas that mattered to me. I knew what I needed to do, but couldnt get myself to do it. I still needed answers.

After 10 years of mostly running in place, I stumbled upon the mini habits idea, which changed my behavior and my life. I finally found a strategy to take me where I wanted to go. After my success with the strategy, I excitedly wrote the Mini Habits book to share it with others.

Five years later, I had the idea for elastic habits. I had done well with mini habits, but one day I asked myself why my daily goal always had to be the same. Why couldnt my goals morph to match my needs each day? I wanted to explore this idea, but there was a problem.

I had already formed good habits with Mini Habits , and those once-elusive behaviors had become easy to do. Thats the beauty of habit! But I had a new idea to test (this book), and I wanted to know if it could help me, even if I was at rock bottom. I was doing well, so I needed to wreck my life to find out.

When others were making the New Years Resolutions that were destined to fail a month later, I decided to do the opposite. I would purposely fail for a month and a half to start the year, and then (try to) emerge from it like a dragon out of a volcano. I called it the slump. It worked. Good or bad habits wont go away permanently, but by abstaining from them for a month or two, they will go dormant from lack of activation. Mine sure did.

45 Days of Misery

I stopped exercising. I ate unhealthy food. I drank a lot more alcohol than usual. I gambled at local casinos frequently and stayed up late. I spent most of every day on the couch watching TV. In many ways, I lived the opposite life of the one I wanted. I indulged in every craving, and said no to every inclination to invest in myself.

The mental side effects were shocking, and worse than I expected. It didnt take long for me to start thinking terrible things about who I was and how little I was worth. Even though I knew this was a purposeful and temporary experiment, it didnt matter. The more you do something, the more it defines you.

After just three weeks, I felt defeated. Hope was gone. The slump had penetrated my soul . It saddened me to think of how many others have spiraled into and from this position. Once your spirit breaks, its shocking how easy it is to decline.

Heres what happened to me physically: I gained 10 pounds of fat, something I had never done before in my life, let alone in a single month. I couldnt sleep. My back was tight and spasmed constantly from poor couch posture. I had debilitating tension headaches and had to go to urgent care three times.