Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(47)

I took this insight and applied it to how individuals can change their behavior. It mapped perfectly: Success comes from helping ourselves do what we already want to do. When you follow Maxim #1 and match yourself with Golden Behaviors, you don’t need to work hard to sustain or manipulate motivation. You are able to say good-bye to the Motivation Monkey and create lasting change.

The time has come to share Maxim #2. It’s every bit as important as the first one.



Fogg Maxim #2: Help people feel successful.



Just four words. But so important.

Note that this maxim doesn’t say, “Help people be successful.” It’s about feeling successful instead.

Every product or service that is growing and thriving today does this well. They help us feel successful. Look at the products and services you love—from shopping online to the clothing you wear to the apps you use every day for driving, communicating, or playing games. You’ll see that you’re getting a feeling of success from them.

When Instagram was duking it out with its many competitors back in the day, my former student Mikey and his cofounder won the race because they created the simplest and best way to help people feel successful.

If you try a product and it makes you feel clumsy or stupid or unsuccessful, you will very likely abandon it. But when something makes you feel successful, you want more. You engage. You make it part of your life.

This also applies to how we design for change in our own lives. Helping yourself feel successful is what Tiny Habits is all about.





How to Celebrate the Tiny Habits Way


Here’s how to help a habit root quickly and easily in your brain: (1) Perform the behavior sequence (Anchor ?? Tiny Behavior) that you want to become a habit and (2) celebrate immediately.

So simple! Right?

But celebration is both simple and sophisticated. So, let’s talk a little more about the nuances of this technique.

First of all, when I say that you need to celebrate immediately after the behavior, I do mean immediately. Immediacy is one piece of what informs the speed of your habit formation.

The other piece is the intensity of the emotion you feel when you celebrate. This is a one-two punch: you’ve got to celebrate right after the behavior (immediacy), and you need your celebration to feel real (intensity).

When I first started doing my after-pee push-ups, I did a double fist pump and said, “Awesome!” For me, that was a good celebration because it created a positive feeling immediately. However, some people may see my celebration as silly or even embarrassing. That’s okay. Just make a note that BJ Fogg’s celebration is not the right one for you.

A big physical expression of celebration is not necessary. A simple smile or saying a quiet affirmation in your head can work.

Begin your exploration now: Search for celebrations that feel authentic to you. If you feel awkward or phony when celebrating, your attempts will backfire. Your brain doesn’t want to feel awkward—it wants to feel good. Celebrations are personal. What makes me feel good (and not lame) is probably different than what makes you feel good (and not lame).

The first part of the one-two celebration punch—immediacy—is usually easy for people to get, but finding a celebration that genuinely creates a good feeling is more challenging. The solution may depend on personality type and culture. Some people are naturally more inclined to celebrate their successes. If you are an enthusiastic and optimistic person, you might find celebrations easy to do—even fun. In fact, you may already be celebrating; you just don’t have a name for it. However, if you tend toward self-criticism or have a bit of a pessimistic outlook, celebration may not be as natural.

I’ve also found that certain cultures (hello to all my British and Japanese friends!) are more comfortable being self-deprecating or self--effacing, qualities that don’t lend themselves to celebration quite so easily.

Regardless of where you come from or who you are, you do have access to a natural celebration that will help you wire in habits quickly. You just have to discover what works for you.

Take my Uncle Brent. He’s a former hard-nosed attorney in Utah now in his mid-seventies. He’s more comfortable arguing with people and handing out reality checks than celebrating anything. A few years ago, I was teaching Tiny Habits and explaining the concept of celebration to my huge extended family at a reunion. Uncle Brent gruffly interjected that he didn’t have a celebration, so this didn’t apply to everyone, thank you very much, BJ.

I asked Uncle Brent what he did when he realized he’d found his winning arguments. With a grin, Uncle Brent jabbed a finger in the air, and said, “Bingo!”

Everyone laughed because it was such an Uncle Brent thing to do, but I said, “There! Saying bingo is your natural celebration.”

So, reader, I’m here to say that if my salty dog of an uncle has a celebration so do you. You’ve just got to find it.

Your celebration does not have to be something you say out loud or even physically express. The only rule is that it has to be something said or done (internally or externally) that makes you feel good and creates a feeling of success.



What might surprise you is this: In English we do not have a perfect word to describe the positive feeling we get from experiencing success. I’ve read piles of scientific literature on related topics, and I’ve done my own research in this area, and I am convinced that we are lacking a good word. (The closest label is “authentic pride,” but that’s not an exact match.) So, with the encouragement of three of the world’s experts on human emotion, I decided to create a new word for this feeling of success.