Small Steps, Big Changes|The Power of Habits | Saurabh Bothra | TEDxYouth@TheShriramMillenniumNoida

[Music] so I'll begin with a question did you brush your teeth today I hope yes and uh if I ask you why you would probably say cavities or my mouth should not smell and who doesn't brush teeth today in in today's time right but if I have to ask you another question did you exercise today ah come on I know for a fact 80% of of us don't do exercise every single day but when you say that I brush my teeth because I want to care for my oral health we don't do exercise when it

comes to our physical health why you might say that brushing our teeth is pretty easy but exercise is tough no here is where we are wrong brushing our teeth is easy because it has become our habit and exercise is difficult for us why because we have not yet developed it as an habit okay almost 40 to 60% of our day goes into autopilot mode like you use your mobile phone you keep scrolling and you don't even realize when it is half an hour 1 Hour 2 hours and then suddenly you realize oh my God I

wasted so much time this happens every single day we are on autopilot mode for 40 to 60% even 90% for some people so here is what is important when you talk about habits it's the the most important thing if you talk about physical fitness if you talk about your professional success or if you talk about anything that you want to learn unless and until it becomes part of our habit or I would say if unless we are consistent with it it's not going to work for us and I'm sure we have had our experiences now

let me tell you why I talk about habits so much and what has it created in my life so I started teaching yoga online I was teaching it before also but I started teaching it online 22nd March 2020 the day of lockdown that was day one and I had three people joining my yoga session after 1,63 days where I have taken a live session every single day even after I had dingu I had covid twice I had a knee injury or I have fallen sick once in a while still I ensured that I follow a

routine I take my yoga session every single day in the morning today I had 279,000 ,40 people attending a live yoga session now thank you this is absolutely magical if you tell someone when you are teaching three people in an online medium that one day you will be teaching three lakh people they would probably think you're joking and that was the case with me also I did not realize or I did not even think or even aim in my life that I would want to teach three lakh people people in an online yoga session but

it happened why not because I wanted to come first like we do in our classes or I wanted to reach X number of people I just wanted to follow a habit of teaching every single day now the interesting part is of course uh we just heard that we have the online largest online yoga class we have a Guinness record on that but the interesting part is not this the interesting part is on day one I had three people on after one year of regular teaching I had 120 people in my yoga session after 2 years

I had 1,30 people after 3 years I was at 81,000 here I have stopped expecting anything more than what I have in my life I was so happy but when you are happy and you continue following the process this is what happens in any habit when you start doing it consistently you never get results never if it's a good habit by the way uh whenever we keep doing it keep doing it keep doing it you keep improving on it magic happens and I still don't believe today that I'm teaching three lakh people in an online

session we have in the past four years we have touched 60 lakh people can you just imagine how many people we have taught and honestly speaking when I was teaching three people in my first class I thought the maximum that I can teach teach is 1,000 that was an impossible number you say now that you aim for the moon and then you reach the sky some some prb like that but this is phenomenal and that's why I keep telling people that focus on building a process building a habit and becoming consistent rather than aiming for

your Target because your target will always be limited by your mind you will be able to think oh I want to just Excel or I want to come first in my classroom but the the life is much much more beyond that yeah so now the obvious question is bad habits are so simple right you just keep scrolling and time is gone but when you want to build a good habit it is challenging of course yes what is the difference or why is a bad habit easy and why is it a good habit difficult or challenging

the answer is pretty straightforward whenever you do something which is bad so now uh we have to also Define bad bad is not necessary neily bad like scrolling your mobile phone or eating a junk food is not necessarily bad but we consider that for some time as a bad habit whenever you are doing something like eating pizza burger or anything junk you get some pleasure right and the second point is you don't have any negative impact if you do it once if you know that eating cyanide is poisonous and it's going to take your life

you will never dare to eat it but eating a pizza is not once it's not but if you build it as a habit eventually you end up having a sedentary lifestyle similarly for good habits doing a good habit might not necessarily be pleasurable or rather starting a good habit let's take example for exercise starting that that initial momentum of exercise is really difficult but once you do it you might feel that oh yeah I'm feeling more energetic I'm feeling more flexible great but starting is always tough and second point is there is no immediate result

you do exercise once nothing happens you do it twice nothing happens you do it Thrice one month two month probably not like that result that you might be expecting that's why bad habits are easy to form and good habits are difficult to form they are not difficult necessarily it's just like brushing your teeth and surpr surprisingly you know what brushing your teeth is easy but brushing your teeth before going to bed is still tough because it's not your habit and exercise can also become a habit and it can become very easy for you we have

seen it across three lakh people join my sessions average daily attendance in our classes is 70% you would not even get like in an offline setup if 10 people have joined a yoga session seven people don't come but in an online setup building a habit becomes so so easy and people want to exercise with us and why does that happen how do you make a good habit easy this is what I'm going to share there are three simple things that you need to do if you follow these three things you can make any difficult habit

which might seem difficult literally easy for you like brushing your teeth would you be interested to know perfect thank you so much at least two people said okay so if you want to make any good habit easy or you want to stay okay let me ask you one question how many of you struggle with consistency of practice you can raise your hand you have started something and you couldn't follow it and you know that it is so important for you thank you hands down but you couldn't do it here are three things that you can

do first do not get into All or Nothing trap let me ask you another question how many of us have got that super solid motivation on a Monday morning or first of uh any month or first of January and then you picked up okay I'll wake up early I'll eat clean food I'll read a page every single day I'll read one book in a week and I'll complete 52 books in a in an year and you decided like multiple things you probably followed it also for a week but after that when your motivation went down

you stopped doing literally everything raise your hands if you have experienced something like this this is precisely called as the All or Nothing trap either we do everything or we stop doing everything so next time whenever you start a habit never rely on your motivation when your motivation is high you take wrong decisions for your habits so whenever you are motivated to start something always choose the least possible action that you can do when you are not motivated suppose you not motivated to read you can still read one page at least a page Ag and

I'm sure if you decide that you want to read one book A Week in 12 months you will read zero books but if you read one page a day you'll probably end up reading much much more than even what you thought so never ever start doing everything at once take small steps and so let me also give you another example of exercise whenever we think of exercise we feel we should sweat we should feel exhausted we should feel like we have done something then we feel that we have done Exercise not really true exercise can

be as low as 5 minutes 10 minutes but our mind sets an expectation what is the expectation the exercise is complete only when I do it for an hour for 45 minutes or I sweat that's not necessarily true you can do even 10 squats five squats 5 minutes of high intensity exercise everything is okay until and unless it is nonzero so when you are good when you have energy do 100 but when you are not good when you are not motivated do one just don't do zero is that clear okay perfect so that's step number

one step number two very important how many of you have said this I'm going to start doing X activity tomorrow and tomorrow we have said the same thing please raise your hand thank you now you know what motivation is not the missing Factor here you are motivated that's why you are at least thinking about doing it you know what is missing setting intention now what do I mean by setting intention let me tell you this first setting intention is going to help you 40 like it is more 40% more likely that you will do an

activity if you set an intention Now setting intention is as simple as taking the decisions before like one day before and not just before the activity suppose like uh I usually teach yoga so my normal examples are all about exercise but you can relate to your activity also so someone says I want to start doing yoga tomorrow very important for them to decide what time are they going to do where are they going to do with whom they are going to do are they going to do inside the house or they going to go to

the gym or they're going to go to the Garden or a Yoga Center why because next day when they get up and if they have to take 10 decisions when where how what they will end up saying I'll do it tomorrow is it making sense to you yeah so setting intention means simply deciding beforehand and probably writing it down so that you have more clarity that is how you convert your motivation into an actual action motivation is Never Enough you always need an intent of when what where how etc etc to actually converted into an

action so that is Step number two you always decide write down send in WhatsApp message to your friend or or anyone whom you want to be your accountability partner so that you are clear what to do and this is applicable not just for habits it's for everything any single task if if you're not able to do it just write down when where what how will I do it and you are 40% more likely to actually attempt and do that task okay that's step number two third and the most important task set an intention yeah very

important very very important how many of you have said this I am lazy come on don't be shy okay perfect what you tell yourself is what's going to happen if you say you are a lazy person you will be a lazy person forever no scientific tool no motivational speaker not even God can help you here if you say you're lazy that's true that's just true yeah very important of what you say now I am not saying you should lie to yourself you're waking up at 10:00 and you're saying to yourself no no I'm a very

active person not going to work so you don't have to lie to yourself but very important that you don't have negative selft talk now what does this mean if you say I'm an active person or let's take example of you want to become a morning person so for example you're waking up at 9:00 and you want to become a morning person that does not mean you have to wake up at 4:00 a.m. you just have to wake up at 8:30 you have to do something very similar very small that justifies what you want to say

to yourself is that clear so very important what you talk and I'm telling you a secret to actually change this join a group if you want to be a morning person join a group where everyone is a morning person if you want to become an entrepreneur join a group where everyone is doing business or talking about ideas if you want to be a guitarist join a group where everyone is playing guitar your group will create an identity for you so when you talk about habit building and consistency identity creation is supposed to be the notar

what you want to achieve eventually is not habit it's an identity today I say I'm a yoga person why because I've done yoga for 1,600 days today I say I'm an entrepreneur because I'm running a company it's an identity that I live with once you have your identity set you do not need any support any motivation you will do it is that clear so that is the last thing and the most most easiest thing to do join a group where your desired outcome is a normal behavior everyone behaves in a way how you want to

be is it making sense yes so your friends will Define your identity if they do wrong you are very likely I'm not saying you will 100% do wrong but you are very very likely to do wrong and if they are doing good you are very very likely to actually do good so you have to ensure that your surrounding also supports your good habits that's the last thing I want to say if you build your habits today your habits will build your tomorrow thank you so much