"ATOMIC HABITS" By James Clear | Book Reflection + Review

Fate brought me to read this book in this particular moment in time.

I was scrolling through my camera roll and saw a picture, pre-Covid, of a stack of books I got from the library one day. I used to get about 10 books at a time, keeping my options open in case I didn’t like a certain book I would have others to explore. In that picture, there I saw “Atomic Habits” pressed down against other books stacked on top of it that took priority.

I never even opened the book when I borrowed it from the library, until 4 days ago when I went to a bookstore and saw it again. I knew the new year was coming, and I knew I wanted to start implementing better habits so I bought and decided to actually open it this time.

4 days and 264 pages later, I sit here typing this out as a brand new person.

I’m kidding. (Partially.)

Consistency and building habits for me has been one of my greatest struggles. I would consider myself ambitious, motivated, and hard working and yet you can find me banging my head over trying to do something as simple as waking up at a consistent time every morning.

I thought something was wrong with me.

But after reading this book, I have realized otherwise. And if you give this book a chance, if you haven’t already, I hope you get the joy of having the same realization.

You see, in order for us to build good habits, we need to make things work with the natural order of things. And for once in our life, NOT go against the grain. I look back at all the habits I tried to form and why they failed and now I realize it’s because I needed to go out of my way for nearly everything.

No wonder I gave up. No wonder I lost energy.

This book does a phenomenal job of breaking down the “4 Laws Of Behavior Change” and how to easily apply them in your own life. James Clear writes in a casual, informative way that stays in your brain for a long while.

After only reading the introduction, the next morning I got myself to wake up early even though I was tired. Something I couldn’t get myself to do my entire life —all because of what I learned from the book.

One of the things that resonated with me the most was that if we want to change our habits, we need to change our identity. Because any change of habit without an identify change is simply a temporary change of behavior.

What got me get out of bed that morning was the idea that if I called myself a business owner, are my actions showing that? Are my habits aligned with a successful business owner? By waking up early, it was a small vote for the identity of a business owner that I want to uphold. Would sleeping in everyday till 10 AM prove that I’m a business owner? No.

You can apply the same idea to whatever identity it is that you want to become and use that to guide your habit decisions.

I cannot do justice by trying to summarize this book so I suggest if any of this intrigues you in the slightest, go get yourself a copy of this book and dive in.

You won’t regret it.