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Take Control Of The Secret NINE FACTORS That Really Control Your Life

By Dr. Jon Finn

If we did not already recognize that it is challenging for anyone to build new helpful habits, a story about former US president Barack Obama can help us understand more. It is also worth noting that Obama was not just the first African American president but
the third youngest in over 100 years.

CBS News showed Mr. Obama taking questions from the press shortly after announcing new laws to regulate the American tobacco industry. A reporter asked him several questions about his own smoking habits. How many cigarettes does he smoke every day? Does he smoke in the presence of others?

Barack Obama is regarded by many as a consummate statesman, a highly capable leader, and a powerful role model. But even he admitted that stopping smoking was a “struggle.” “Have I fallen off the wagon?” he said. “Occasionally, yes.”

He added: “I’d say I am 95 percent cured, but there are times when I mess up. Like folks who go to Alcoholics Anonymous…smoking is something you continually struggle with.”

In this article, we’ll explore the science and the simple practice steps you can use to build the sustainable new habits that will make it easier to be your best.

Verbal Persuasion Doesn’t Work!

Changing our habits (the foundations of all human behavior / at least 98% of what you are doing and thinking at any given time) is complex. We often fail because we do not understand the science of behavioral change.

When we try to build a new habit in any area of our life, the default (but faulty) behavior change technique we have been taught is what I term “verbal persuasion.”

We notice an unhelpful habit (e.g., worrying, beating yourself up, procrastination) and persuade ourselves we really DO need to stop. For example, we tell ourselves, “We are beating ourselves up too much…we must stop.” We may even tell somebody else of our intention to stop this unhelpful behavior.

We use the same verbal persuasion technique if we want someone else to change a behavior. You might say: “I think it would be a good idea if you turned up for meetings on time, because this would be helpful for team performance.” But even if people agree
that your behavior change suggestion is a good idea, this is not enough to help people build the new habits that will deliver the change.

The behavioral science is clear: this traditional approach to changing our habits is overreliant on Will Power. Wanting to make a change is not enough to build a new habit. To make sustainable change, we must use insights from behavioral science to create a precise step-by-step approach.

Will Power Is the Conduit for Change—but It Is Limited

All behavior change begins with using Will Power to resist the old habit. For example:

Trigger and Limbic Brain Region rewards: You notice the urge to check your phone, NOW, meaning you will have to break your focus on an important piece of work you need to complete ASAP. This is HUE (Horribly Unhelpful Emotions – the boss of your Limbic Brain) looking for short-term gratification. Having the phone in your eyeline is part of the trigger for your desire to check it.

Routine: You use Will Power to regulate your emotions and resist the temptation of entering the old routine of checking the phone. By doing this, you are starting to create a new routine, that is, when you feel the urge to check your phone, you show resolve and stay focused on the task on which you are working.

But if you only rely on your Will Power, it is likely HUE will eventually win and you will check your phone.

Although Will Power is the conduit for building new helpful habits, it is a limited resource. So we need to use Will Power PLUS behavioral science to secure new habits.

Habit Architecture: The Nine Action Factors Framework

To help people regulate their emotions and supercharge the habit building process, I used the latest insights from behavioral science to create the proprietary Tougher Minds “Nine Action Factors” framework. I use this framework, and the 200+ tactics I have created, to help my one-to-one clients create personal change and my business clients to create habit-based cultural change (i.e., helping them to create a habit-based business strategy that delivers organizational Key Results and Objectives 20%-80% faster than a traditional business strategy). Here I will show you how to use a simple version to help you build new habits that last.

All of the nine factors are interconnected. Here is a simple overview of the nine factors (I will explain each in greater detail later):

1. Habit Mechanic Mindset Factor

Figure 1.1: If you don’t believe you can improve, you never will. The right mindset is essential for changing
your habits.

2. Brain State Optimization Factor (Training; APE Incentive)

Figure 1.2: To successfully build new habits, your brain needs to be neurobiologically ready for change.

3. Tiny Changes Factor (APE Incentive)

Figure 1.3: You can change but only one tiny step at a time.

4. Personal Motivation Factor (APE Incentive)

Figure 1.4: It is easier to change if there is a meaningful reason why.

5. Personal Knowledge and Skills Factor (Routine)

Figure 1.5: Building new habits often requires you to learn new things.

6. Community Knowledge and Skills Factor (Routine)

Figure 1.6: If the people around you already know how to do the thing you want to learn (e.g., manage stress),
it will be easier for you to learn it.

7. Social Influence Factor (APE Incentive)

Figure 1.7: If the people around you are already doing the thing you want to do, it will be easier for you to do it.

8. Rewards and Penalties Factor (APE Incentive)

Figure 1.8: Rewards encourage behavior and penalties discourage it.

9. External Triggers Factor (Trigger)

Figure 1.9: It is easier to do things if you get triggered (reminded) to do them.

Figure 1.10: Activating all Nine Action Factors together makes building and sustaining new habits easier.

Why Do We Need to Know So Much to Build New Helpful Habits?

Many of the thoughts and actions that are unhelpful for our health, happiness, and performance are what I call simple behaviors, like eating donuts, checking your phone too often, and beating yourself up. These behaviors are Limbic Region Brain–friendly and driven by human instincts connected to staying alive, achieving and maintaining social status, and conserving energy. These simple behaviors are increasingly agitated and exploited in the ‘Emotional and Attentional War’ we are all fighting.

Unfortunately, many of the thoughts and actions that are most helpful for being our best in the modern world are what I call complex behaviors, like sleeping well, eating healthily, exercising sufficiently, not dwelling on negatives for too long, and becoming
an outstanding leader. These behaviors are not Limbic Region Brain–friendly. They require us to learn new knowledge and skills and become expert habit builders or, in other words, Habit Mechanics and Chief Habit Mechanics.

The Nine Action Factors are constantly influencing your behavior (for better and for worse), but we are largely unaware of them. To help you take more control over your own thoughts and actions, I’ll show you how to use the Nine Action Factors framework to your advantage.

Using the Nine Action Factors
I use learning to drive as an example to understand more about how we can use the Nine Action Factors to help us build new helpful habits. Just like many of the things we would like to improve, driving is also a complex behavior, which is why it is a good example to use. Even if you haven’t learned how to drive, this example will still make sense. Here are the nine factors and how they influence us when we learn to drive.

1. Habit Mechanic Mindset
Think of mindset as belief and what we believe. People with a Habit Mechanic Mindset believe they can improve anything with practice and take responsibility for being their best. People with an Fixed Mindset believe they are only good at certain things, and
cannot change. If we did not believe we could learn to drive and were not prepared to put the effort into learning, we would not have achieved this milestone. A Habit Mechanic Mindset is essential for learning to drive.

2. Brain State Optimization
In simple terms, this relates to how ready your brain is to learn (i.e., building a new habit is underpinned by learning to do and think in a different way). If you were sleep-deprived and took a driving lesson, you would unlikely be in the right Brain State to concentrate or gain anything helpful from the lesson. Equally, if you are stressed or in a bad mood, it will also be more difficult to learn (i.e.,
motion drives attention; attention drives learning).

If we want to learn something new, we must be in the right Brain State.

3. Tiny Changes
This factor relates to the size or scale of the change we want to make (e.g., lose 15 pounds, get an extra hour of sleep per night, become the best leader in my business). In simple terms, we can make changes to behavior, but we can only make one tiny change
at a time. If we want to learn to do something new, it is far more efficient to do it in stages and focus on making one tiny change at a time. For example, we learn to drive over extended periods and build a surprising amount of tiny new interconnected habits.
We do not simply climb in the car and immediately gain a complete understanding of how to drive. Often, many first lessons just
nvolve the student working out where all the controls are in the vehicle.

So, to best use the Tiny Factor, we should work toward an accumulation of tiny changes and improvements, instead of trying to make a single massive leap of progress. Here are some other examples:

• Want to lose one stone (or 14 pounds)? First focus on losing half a pound.
• Want to get an extra hour of sleep per night? Aim for one minute of extra sleep tonight, then build up to five minutes and so on.
• Want to be the best leader in your business? Start by building one tiny new habit that will improve your leadership.

4. Personal Motivation
It’s easier to make a change or build a new habit if you can connect it to a bigger meaningful goal in your life. In the case of driving, you may have needed or wanted to learn how for work reasons, or to take your children to school, or to be the first qualified driver in your peer group, or some other reason. If we can connect the change we want to make to our bigger goals, dreams, and desires, this will provide motivation and make it easier to keep persisting with difficult changes.

5. Personal Knowledge and Skills
We do not need to acquire new knowledge and skills to eat a donut, but it is often essential for complex behavior change—like learning to drive, improving our confidence, or enhancing our sleep or productivity, etc.

6. Community Knowledge and Skills
What knowledge and skills do our families, peers, and communities have that might help us? Having a parent who knows how to drive can be helpful if you also want to learn (think of free driving lessons in supermarket car parks). A colleague knowing how
to build better stress management habits is helpful if you also want to develop some. The reason I try to make all our insights simple is so they can be easily shared among colleagues and families and across the Habit Mechanic community. The more people
there are in your network who understand the Habit Mechanic Tools and language, the more powerful they become.

7. Social Influence
We implicitly worry about how we are perceived by people we look up to and respect because we want them to like us. In the case of learning to drive, if our parents think that speed limits can be ignored or there is no need for car insurance, they won’t be
good role models for us as learner drivers.

8. Rewards and Penalties
The Limbic Regions of our brain are strongly influenced by rewards and penalties. These can be social, intrinsic, or extrinsic. In the case of driving, people are rewarded for driving well and penalized for driving poorly. If you drive well, you will eventually pass
your test and gain a full license (a reward). A long period of accident-free driving usually means a lower motor insurance premium (another reward). But breaking the speed limit can mean a fine, points, higher insurance, and, if you do it too many times, a
lost license (in other words, penalties!). We can use rewards and penalties to help us build new helpful habits.

9. External Triggers
External triggers in our modern world can be physical and digital. The smartphone is one of the most powerful external triggers ever designed. In a vehicle, we are surrounded by triggers. The speedometer shows us how fast we are traveling. A line in the middle of the road indicates which side we should drive on. A pedestrian crossing will remind us to stop. All of these are triggers, and they are often loaded with rewards and penalties.

Summary of the Nine Action Factors

Think of each factor like a switch that you can turn on or off. If you “turn the switch on” for each factor, they will work for you, and building a new habit will become easier. But if the “switches are turned off,” each factor will work against you, and building the habit
will be more difficult. Learning how to turn each switch on is an essential Habit Mechanic skill, and something I will help you to learn how to do.

This was adapted from chapter 18 of Dr. Jon Finn’s best-selling book, The Habit Mechanic (currently you can get a paperback copy for FREE + shipping)

By Tyler Mongan

We have all had that moment in life where the future was uncertain. For some it was a moment of excitement before opening a present. For others it was a moment of anxiety while awaiting a final grade in a class.

Interestingly, both those moments of uncertainty triggered a similar electrochemical cocktail in the body, but our cognitive analysis of the situation elicited a different interpretation of the experience; excitement or anxiety.

Stanford neurobiologist Andrew Huberman has been studying vision and fear for over 20 years. His work concludes that excitement and anxiety are states of autonomic nervous system arousal that are designed to align metabolic demands with the situations we find ourselves in.

Anxiety coupled with uncertainty leads to fear, while excitement with uncertainty leads to curiosity. Our physiological state, and how we interpret it, influences how we see the world and respond to it.

Huberman’s research demonstrates that the state of anxiety causes a shift in our physical vision.

Pupils dilate, eyes focus, and the rest of the world becomes blurry. The anxiety actually controls the visual field and shifts the physiology into a sympathetic (fight or flight) state. Subconsciously we start to see the world from the perspective of a predator or prey. Further, our heart rate, blood pressure and breath rate all increase, alerting the brain that we have moved out of homeostasis.

The amygdala, a primitive and instinctual part of the brain, can hijack the entire system and we become reactive in response to environmental changes. In a sense, we lose control and everything feels uncertain.

Fortunately, humans have a prefrontal cortex which provides the cognitive capacity to rise above the primitive, reactive mechanisms of our physiology. We can consciously shift into a state of curiosity and create an openness to exploring new possibilities and adapting to change. And we can find ways to create stability and a feeling of certainty and control. This allows us to discover novel pathways from the present and into the future.

So if you are in a state of uncertainty and anxiety, and you want to take back control of your mind, there are two simple things you can do to create a feeling of certainty and embrace uncertainty to inspire curiosity.

But First, Let’s Make Tea!

I was working with the executive team of a large Fortune 500 aerospace engineering firm in the UK, helping them look 25 years into the future to explore new innovations and strategies to deal with the uncertainty of their industry. My main contact at the company worked in the innovation department, and he loved his English tea.

Before we did anything he would say, “but first, let’s make tea.” If we were about to plan out the details of a foresight session, review the session results for presentation, or develop a framework for scaling future intelligence throughout the organization, it always started with, “but first, let’s make tea.”

Personally, I wanted to get down to business…making tea seemed like a distraction from the task at hand. But in reality, making tea before doing important work, especially things that may trigger anxiety and uncertainty, is a brilliant idea.

Making tea is a simple task that you can complete within a short time frame. It has very clear and specific steps. And it has a clear and desirable outcome…warm liquid and caffeine in the body.

Making tea helps to establish certainty and manufactures stability in an uncertain environment. It can also entices us away from feeling anxiety, because typically it is familiar and calming and brings back memories of all the enjoyable moments of having tea in the past.

Interestingly, Hershey’s company found that during Covid lockdowns, many people turned to baking as a form of “self-care.” Again, baking is a simple, step-by-step process that can be completed in a short-time frame and yields clear, desirable results…a warm, chocolate-chip cookie for example. Similarly, athletes use simple step-by-step process in the form of habits or rituals, to manufacture certainty within the context of uncertain performance outcomes.

So when we feel anxious about an uncertain future, simply stop and make tea. Or do any activity that is familiar, with specific steps that lead to a certain outcome in a short-time frame. This will help to create an environment of certainty, even within the uncertainty, and shifts the physiology into a state that gives you more control of your cognitive and emotional resources.

Now Take a Second to Look Up

In the movie, “Don’t Look Up”, there is a large object hurtling through space on a path to destroy the earth. People are told “don’t look up”, and to just ignore the uncertainty of their fate. The movie highlights how a world of constant distraction, within a background of uncertainty and anxiety can lead us on a pathway to self-destruction.

Oftentimes when we have uncertainty or anxiety, we want to be distracted. We try to ignore it, even though it is constantly whispering in our ear. So we turn on the TV, check social media, or play a game on our computer. We think these distractions might be distancing us from the uncertainty and anxiety, but they can result in the opposite.

Recall that anxiety leads to convergent eye patterns, where we focus on things that are close to. At the same time, convergent eye patterns can also lead to more anxiety. As we spend more and more of our time on computer screens, TVs and smartphones, our eyes are constantly in a convert, close-range focused pattern. Our distractions from uncertainty are simulating eye patterns associated with uncertainty and fear. Subconsciously driving us into a low-level sympathetic, fight or flight, state.

One simple thing we can do to disrupt this pattern is Look Up.

Looking up can seem risky because it disconnects us from the immediate environment and shifts our focus to the unknown. Yet, when the situation we find ourselves in feels uncertain or causes anxiety, the best thing we can do is Look Up. We move our eyes into a more divergent pattern, we expand the vision and the mind is free to wander.

As the mind wanders we activate more of the Default Mode Network (DMN) of the brain. This system allows for self-reflection, creativity, ah-ha moments, and long-term thinking. We start to see ourselves and the world differently and novel solutions to current problems emerge.

As we look up we consciously enter a state of uncertainty, but the anxiety gives way to a sense of curiosity and uncertainty becomes a place for play and improvisation.

At the same time the DMN helps us to bring attention to things that are most relevant to us, and allows us to sustain focus on them. We can more clearly distinguish the things that are distracting from the task at hand, from the things that are relevant and useful to deal with the challenges we face.

So, if you are feeling uncertainty and anxiety, take a moment and pause what you are doing. Set a timer for 3 – 5 minutes and just look up into the horizon and allow your mind to disconnect from the present and feel more relaxed.

Give your eyes a break from the divergent pattern that can lead to a sympathetic, stressful state. Allow the mind to wander into the future, where new opportunities can emerge.

Get Cozy With Uncertainty

The future has alway been uncertain. However, due to constant developments in AI and technology the world is exponentially changing. The uncertainty that was waiting for us in the future, now pervades the present. Getting cozy with that uncertainty is essential for thriving now and in the future.

When the uncertainty becomes overwhelming and anxiety starts to set in, just remember to pause and find those moments of peace….by simply making tea and looking up.