How To Build Habits That Could Make You Rich | Business Insider

According to a 2006 Duke University study, 40% or more of our daily activities are habits.

Habits have a very important purpose: They save the brain from work by relegating certain repetitive tasks to a walnut-sized area in the middle of the brain called the "basal ganglia."

By isolating certain repetitive functions to this very small, almost fractional area, the brain frees itself to expand and perform higher level functions.

Habits control our lives, unconsciously moving us either toward success and happiness or toward failure and unhappiness.

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Regular exercise is a habit worth building

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In my five-year study of the daily habits of 233 wealthy people (those with an annual income of $160,000 or more and a liquid net worth of $3.2 million or more) and 128 poor people (those with an annual income of $35,000 or less and a liquid net worth of $5,000 or less), I uncovered ten keystone habits that separate the rich from the poor.

I call them the Rich Habits.

Those who learned the Rich Habits from their parents, mentor, or through the school of hard knocks, excel in life. Those who never learned these habits, and instead are saddled with what I call Poverty Habits, eke out a living, struggle financially, have poor health, and live unhappy lives.

In order to better understand the process of adding and removing habits, it’s important to understand how habits are formed and removed physiologically within our brains.

Habits compete within the brain.

Neurons (brain cells) compete for something called "cortical space" inside our brains. Think of cortical space as brain real estate. Just like there is strong demand for waterfront property, there is a strong demand for this brain real estate. In order to learn a new skill or fact, or introduce a new habit, we must create a new neural pathway inside our brain.

Creating a new neural pathway, however, is not that easy to do. This is because old neural pathways are very greedy, and don’t like to give up any of their brain real estate. They fight to keep that real estate from other intruding neurons. New activities that are trying to create new neural pathways have to compete for this brain real estate with old neural pathways (old activities).

This is why breaking an old habit is so hard. There is a brain real estate war waging inside our heads when we introduce new habits.

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When building new habits, think of them as passengers on a train

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Use your old habits to build new ones.

The best way to co-opt brain space taken up by old habits is to stack a new habit on top of an old habit.

Think of an existing habit (existing neural pathway) as a train on a track, except it's inside your brain. If you add your new habit to that same train, as if it were a new passenger, the brain won't put up a fight because you're not trying to take control of the train or the track. You're just taking a ride. When an old habit does not perceive a new habit as a threat, no brain real estate war occurs. And viola, a new habit is born.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you want to add a new Rich Habit of reading 30 minutes every day for self-education and let’s say you have an old habit of exercising aerobically on the Stairmaster 30 minutes every day. If you were to put a book on the Stairmaster and read that book while you’re exercising, you would form a new joint habit that sticks.

Another example:

If you have an old habit of drinking coffee every day and you want to add a new Rich Habit of drinking a glass of water every day, you could drink a glass of water either before or after every cup of coffee. That new joint habit would also stick.

By using this habit formation strategy, you can effortlessly form new, wealth-building success habits that stick. Each habit you add to your life has a cumulative effect. They are like an investment in your success. Over time these success habits move you closer and closer to achieving success in life.

The more good daily success habits you add over time, the closer you get to success. And wealth will eventually follow.

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How To Build Habits That Could Make You Rich | Business Insider

Thomas Corley, Contributor

Thomas Corley is the author of "Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals," and "Rich Kids: How To Raise Our Kids To Be Happy And Successful In Life."

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Aug. 18, 2014

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