As a member of Birchbloggers (a group for Birchbox subscribers who also have a blog) I get to be part of a book giveaway each month! Between 100 and 200 bloggers that enter are chosen to receive a copy of the month's Birchbox Book Club book! In March, I was a winner of Gretchen Rubin's new book Better Than Before, which came out on March 17th (we got it before it was released)!
Here it is next to some elastic I bought that came in the mail on the same day and matched perfectly :)
I was really excited to get this book, because I've heard so many great things about other books Gretchen has written (i.e. The Happiness Project).
Better Than Before is a book about habits. How to start and keep good ones, how to get rid of bad ones, how to decide what activities should be made into habits, and just about how different people are when it comes to habit building! I loved this book and I learned so much from reading it!
Gretchen analyzes every single aspect of habits: forming, breaking, changing, keeping. She also talks about the differences between people and helps you figure out which of the four "tendencies" with which you identify. Most people fall into one of these groups: Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, Rebel. Throughout the book, Gretchen lists different approaches toward her habit-helping ideas for the different tendencies.
She splits up habit into four pillars: Monitoring ("If we want something to count in our lives, we should figure out a way to count it"), Foundation (sleep, move, eat and drink right, and unclutter), Scheduling ("Habits grow strongest and fastest when they're repeated in predictable ways"), and Accountability ("If we believe that someone's watching, we behave differently"). This section shows you different ways to go about looking at the habits you may not even realize you have and gives you a lot of good options for starting new ones.
The next section is about beginning new habits, and the different circumstances that may be good (or just necessary) to form new good habits. Moving into a new apartment, for example, may be enough for some people to start and keep new habits, but for others, something more significant may have to be the trigger (i.e. a doctor telling you that you need to change your diet).
Here is a quote that starts off the next section, on page 133:
"We want good habits - but we also want to make life easier and more pleasant. Because these aims often clash, this section encompasses many strategies. The Strategies of Abstaining, Convenience, and Inconvenience examine how we can shape our habits by adjusting the amount of effort involved. Safeguards, Loophole-Spotting, and Distraction address the challenges of failure and temptation. Reward, Treats, and Pairing focus on exploiting pleasure to strengthen our good habits. By guarding against excuses and justifications, and by making our habits as enjoyable we as possible, we help ourselves succeed."
I think this part of the book was my favorite. She talks about how abstaining from something (like deciding to never eat french fries) can be much easier for some people than deciding to just occasionally eating french fries. When talking about safeguards, she tells a story about how her daughter decided to stop walking a specific route home from school because she didn't want to buy candy at the store everyday. When she didn't walk past the candy store, she didn't want candy. Loopholes are very interesting, and I liked how she broke them up into categories (Tomorrow Loophole, False Choice Loophole, Arranging to Fail Loophole, etc.). It's funny to read her examples on paper, because sometimes they make so much sense in my head! Comparing the Reward section to the Treat section was really interesting, too. Rewarding yourself for "good behavior", or the keeping of a good habit, can actually be a negative and counterintuitive, while giving yourself a treat (that isn't "earned" or based on good behavior, but just because you want it) can be very beneficial.
The final section, Unique, Just Like Everyone Else, focuses on figuring out what makes you you, and using that information to help you with habits in the best way.
"Decide, then don't decide." That is the main idea of the whole book. Once you decide on a habit, like brushing your teeth when you wake up every morning, you don't have to decide it anymore. If you decide to set an alarm and wake up at 6am every week day, then you don't have to decide whether or not you're going to wake up at that time. Turning activities into habits decreases stress about deciding whether or not you should do something and increases the time you have to spend thinking about other things. I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to take a closer look at everything having to do with habits!
Thanks for reading!
Better Than Before is a book about habits. How to start and keep good ones, how to get rid of bad ones, how to decide what activities should be made into habits, and just about how different people are when it comes to habit building! I loved this book and I learned so much from reading it!
Gretchen analyzes every single aspect of habits: forming, breaking, changing, keeping. She also talks about the differences between people and helps you figure out which of the four "tendencies" with which you identify. Most people fall into one of these groups: Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, Rebel. Throughout the book, Gretchen lists different approaches toward her habit-helping ideas for the different tendencies.
She splits up habit into four pillars: Monitoring ("If we want something to count in our lives, we should figure out a way to count it"), Foundation (sleep, move, eat and drink right, and unclutter), Scheduling ("Habits grow strongest and fastest when they're repeated in predictable ways"), and Accountability ("If we believe that someone's watching, we behave differently"). This section shows you different ways to go about looking at the habits you may not even realize you have and gives you a lot of good options for starting new ones.
The next section is about beginning new habits, and the different circumstances that may be good (or just necessary) to form new good habits. Moving into a new apartment, for example, may be enough for some people to start and keep new habits, but for others, something more significant may have to be the trigger (i.e. a doctor telling you that you need to change your diet).
Here is a quote that starts off the next section, on page 133:
"We want good habits - but we also want to make life easier and more pleasant. Because these aims often clash, this section encompasses many strategies. The Strategies of Abstaining, Convenience, and Inconvenience examine how we can shape our habits by adjusting the amount of effort involved. Safeguards, Loophole-Spotting, and Distraction address the challenges of failure and temptation. Reward, Treats, and Pairing focus on exploiting pleasure to strengthen our good habits. By guarding against excuses and justifications, and by making our habits as enjoyable we as possible, we help ourselves succeed."
I think this part of the book was my favorite. She talks about how abstaining from something (like deciding to never eat french fries) can be much easier for some people than deciding to just occasionally eating french fries. When talking about safeguards, she tells a story about how her daughter decided to stop walking a specific route home from school because she didn't want to buy candy at the store everyday. When she didn't walk past the candy store, she didn't want candy. Loopholes are very interesting, and I liked how she broke them up into categories (Tomorrow Loophole, False Choice Loophole, Arranging to Fail Loophole, etc.). It's funny to read her examples on paper, because sometimes they make so much sense in my head! Comparing the Reward section to the Treat section was really interesting, too. Rewarding yourself for "good behavior", or the keeping of a good habit, can actually be a negative and counterintuitive, while giving yourself a treat (that isn't "earned" or based on good behavior, but just because you want it) can be very beneficial.
The final section, Unique, Just Like Everyone Else, focuses on figuring out what makes you you, and using that information to help you with habits in the best way.
"Decide, then don't decide." That is the main idea of the whole book. Once you decide on a habit, like brushing your teeth when you wake up every morning, you don't have to decide it anymore. If you decide to set an alarm and wake up at 6am every week day, then you don't have to decide whether or not you're going to wake up at that time. Turning activities into habits decreases stress about deciding whether or not you should do something and increases the time you have to spend thinking about other things. I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to take a closer look at everything having to do with habits!
Thanks for reading!
