Hey, it's Cory. 👋🏼
Welcome to the 4:3!
On the 4th of every month, learn about 3 things worth your while, either my take on the latest movies, or my philosophical findings. Plus, enter to win a free movie ticket each month!
This month's issue won't be film-related since I haven't been watching movies lately—my business, Behind The Film, has been busy!
For those of you who don't know, I do video production, marketing, online course launches, and YouTube channel growth. So if you or someone you know is looking for any of that, feel free to reach out!
Now, onto the topic at hand:
1. There's a science to habit-building
Have you ever wanted to kick a bad habit, but it always seems to come back? Or build a new one, but you fall out of it after 2 weeks or 2 months?
Well, same here.
One month ago, I started reading a book called Atomic Habits, by James Clear.
This is a book I've been meaning to read ever since it was published in October of 2018 (almost 5 years ago). If I'm not mistkaen, my oldest brother did some uncredited advising around the title of the book—it may have been named something else entirely.
I have't finished reading it yet, but the biggest thing I'm internalizing is this:
I'd suggest reading that again. It's simple, yet quite eye-opening when you think about it.
Of course, since that's a bit of a paradoxical statement, you'd want to open the book to understand the how and why behind the statement.
James demenstrates the difference in approach to changing one's behavior (habits), showing how people tend to view goals through an outcome-based lens, whereas he makes the case for taking an identity-based approach to behavior change.
Here's a powerful exerpt from the book:
2. Building good habits & breaking bad ones
In the 3rd chapter of Atomic habits, James talks about the four stages all of us go through that influence nearly everything we do; cue, craving, response, reward.
Example 1:
Example 2:
With that, he then outlines what he refers to as The Four Laws of Behavior Change:
How to create a good habit
- Make it obvious (cue)
- Make it attractive (craving)
- Make it easy (response)
- Make it satisfying (reward)
How to break a bad habit
- Make it invisible
- Make it unattractive
- Make it difficult
- Make it unsatisfying
Even without picking up the book for yourself, feel free to try out this approach!
I imagine you might see more success while having a better grasp on everything the book has to say, but some of us can do a lot with just the key concepts.
3. A question for you…
What's something you've always wished was a part of your life, but have either never made any attempts, of have tried and failed?
This could be:
- Speak another language fluently
- Learn a skill (VFX, play an instrument)
- Pick up a hobby (rock climbing, hiking, tennis)
My hope is that you'll see that thing in a new light with the little we touched on today.
Start with the belief that it IS attainable, and then, as we learned from James Clear today, shift your view around it from being outcomes-based and instead identity-based.
Who do you wish to be?
Email newsletters are more fun when it's seen as a conversation—human-to-human interaction—instead of a one-way street. So never hesitate to hit reply here or reach out online. 👋
See you next month (I may have a little film project announcement 👀)