Page 210 - Ray Dalio - Principles

Then I read Charles Duhigg’s best-selling book The Power of Habit, which really opened
my eyes. I recommend that you read it yourself if your interest in this subject goes deeper than
what I’m able to cover here. Duhigg’s core idea is the role of the three-step “habit loop.” The
first step is a cue—some “trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which
habit to use,” according to Duhigg. Step two is the routine, “which can be physical or mental
or emotional.” Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular
loop is “worth remembering for the future.” Repetition reinforces this loop until over time it
becomes automatic. This anticipation and craving is the key to what animal trainers call
operant conditioning, which is a method of training that uses positive reinforcement. For
example, dog trainers use a sound (typically a clicker) to reinforce behavior by pairing that
sound with a more desirable reward (typically food) until the dog will perform the desired
behavior when it merely hears the click. In humans, Duhigg says, rewards can be just about
anything, ranging “from food or drugs that cause physical sensations, to emotional payoffs,
such as the feelings of pride that accompany praise or self-congratulation.”

Habits put your brain on “automatic pilot.” In neuroscientific terms, the basal ganglia takes
over from your cortex, so that you can execute activities without even thinking about them.
Reading Duhigg’s book taught me that if you really want to change, the best thing you can
do is choose which habits to acquire and which to get rid of and then go about doing that. To
help you, I recommend that you write down your three most harmful habits. Do that right now.
Now pick one of those habits and be committed to breaking it. Can you do that? That would be
extraordinarily impactful. If you break all three, you will radically improve the trajectory of
your life. Or you can pick habits that you want to acquire and then acquire them.
The most valuable habit I’ve acquired is using pain to trigger quality reflections. If you can
acquire this habit yourself, you will learn what causes your pain and what you can do about it,
and it will have an enormous impact on your effectiveness.
e. Train your “lower-level you” with kindness and persistence to build the right habits. I used to think that the
upper-level you needed to fight with the lower-level you to gain control, but over time I’ve
learned that it is more effective to train that subconscious, emotional you the same way you
would teach a child to behave the way you would like him or her to behave—with loving
kindness and persistence so that the right habits are acquired.
f. Understand the differences between right-brained and left-brained thinking. Just as your brain has its
conscious upper part and its subconscious lower part, it also has two halves called
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hemispheres. You might have heard it said that some people are more left-brained while
others are more right-brained. That’s not just a saying—Caltech professor Roger Sperry won
the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering it. In a nutshell: