Well, that’s interesting to learn. I’m talking about my habits that I formed right out of high school, and it surprised me that I was doing exactly what was in Atomic Habits, well, at least from how far I got in the book. So these habits that changed my life, in a sense, weren’t huge; they were simple but monumental at the same time. The two that changed my life were lifting weights and writing. And I’m not talking about the guys at the gym; I used to just lift weights for 15 minutes a day, 30 reps total for each area; that’s it. Then I wrote whatever I felt like for 30 minutes, sometimes less, but it was around that much time. Thinking back on that time in my life, those habits changed a lot in my life.
I didn’t become the most fit person in the world; in fact, I ended up paralyzed 8 months after I started working out and gained all the weight I had lost back in a week. Yeah, I was diagnosed with MS at the point in my life when I worked out every day and ate super healthy. But the habit did make it so much easier for me to go through physical therapy and get better on my own also. However, the daily writing was the biggest because yes, I did lose the ability to use my hand, but I never stopped writing, and when I couldn’t at all 2 years later, I had written so much and so often that my very thoughts were expressed as if I was blogging. And now, that simple habit of just writing a few lines or a paragraph or two has turned into books and hundreds of pages online, even a writing class I did. All because it was a habit to write.
But there is something I don’t agree with in the book so far; he says massive action isn’t required to change your life or get better, but it’s the little things that make it better and get you where you want to be to have a better life. I don’t think that’s true; even from the examples he gave, it was all massive action that got him where he wanted to be. It takes massive action to start a simple habit. However, that massive action is not always something you see; it’s the trigger that gets you started. My 15-minute workout was started by getting a full gym set up at home, my daily writing was started when I bought a new laptop. Each thing was a huge deal that started my small habit that changed everything. Even with making videos, it started with a new phone, the LG V series that’s centered around video. So yes, simple habits will change your life over time, but you also need massive action to move you to start those little habits.
