A good life is one where we continuously grow, manifest our potential, and put forth our

best fruit.

I want you to keep this image in your mind as you watch the video: your best life is

the one in which you fully bloom like a tree.

And the difference between living your worst life and your best life depends on your habits.

And the secret to building good habits and breaking bad ones is contained in this simple,

but powerful image, in which there are two key components: the forest and the tree.

As I break down each component of the image, I'll give you the ultimate guide to building

habits.

Before I show you the new way to understand and build habits, let's take a look at the

current way.

Most books or videos on habits teach some variation of this loop: a cue leads to a craving

leads to a response leads to a reward.

Some variations use cue-routine-reward instead,

And some use stimulus-response-reward.

But as far as I'm concerned, they're practically all the same, so let's consider the newest

version: cue-craving-response-reward.

A cue is an external or internal trigger that signals the potential for a reward.

Your phone dings for example, which is a cue indicating that you have a notification, and

this leads to the craving of a potential reward.

Craving is a feeling that motivates you to take action, and the strength of a craving

depends on how you interpret the cue.

For example, when your phone dings, your brain begins to predict what the ding meant.

Did you receive a message from someone you like?

Or did you receive a message from someone you don't like?

The prediction you make determines how strongly you crave, or don't crave, checking your

phone.

Craving leads to a response, and response is the actual action or habit you use to satisfy

a craving.

In our example, our response means checking the notification.

And finally, the reward is the thing that actually satisfies the craving, closes the

loop, and encourages us to repeat the action in the future.

In our example, we see that we got some likes on our Instagram, and this makes us feel good

and more likely to check our notifications again in the future.

In this model, you can play with any of the four components—cue, craving, response,

reward—to encourage good habits and discourage bad ones.

When you want to encourage a good habit, make the cue obvious, the craving attractive, the

response easy, and the reward satisfying.

If you want to discourage a bad habit, make the cue invisible, the craving unattractive,

the response hard, and the reward unsatisfying.

Let's look at how the whole model works in practice.

Let's say I want to introduce the supposedly good habit of taking multivitamins each day.

So I buy a container of gummy multivitamins and place them on my nightstand.

The cue is obvious: I'll see the gummies every time I reach for my glasses in the morning.

The craving is attractive because I know the gummies will make me healthier.

The reward is satisfying because the gummies taste good.

And finally, the response is easy because, after the initial set up cost, all I have

to do each morning is walk over and eat them.

So that's an example of introducing a good habit using the current model, but how do

you get rid of a bad one?

Let's say I want to stop getting distracted by my phone when I'm working, so I give

my phone over to a friend before I start.

This helps because the cue is invisible: I no longer see my phone vibrating and receiving

notifications while I work.

The craving is unattractive because I have to embarrass myself by asking for the phone

back.

The response is made harder because I have to go through the trouble of negotiating to

get it back.

And lastly, the rewards are less satisfying due to the increase in work required to even

get them.

So the current model is easy to follow and implement.

Just modify the cue, craving, response, and reward depending on whether the habit is good

or bad.

“So what's the problem with it?” you ask.

While the current model has many good qualities, I think it has one massive flaw that makes

it less useful than you might think,

and that's what I'm going to discuss next.

The main problem with the current model is that it's solipsistic.

What do I mean by this?

The current model encourages you to see yourself as the centre of the world.

Everything surrounding you becomes a cue or a tool to leverage for your own growth.

But the world is fundamentally not a place of cues surrounding you, which you can just

optimize and rearrange to your liking.

Rather it's a place of relationship.

If you view life through the lens of the current model, I think you'll have an inaccurate

perception of reality

which will stifle your capacity to bloom, which was, remember, why habits even mattered

in the first place.

The blooming of a tree is not something that it can make happen on its own.

It can't just optimize itself into a good life.

The tree depends on the forest as much as the forest depends on the tree.

When you were a baby, you were born, as far as we know, into a family, in a home, in a

city, in a country, in a world that you did not choose, and this has probably been one

of the greatest factors in determining the quality of your life.

And when you were a baby, you hardly knew a thing.

You couldn't change your clothes, feed yourself, or really self-regulate yourself that well

at all.

The most effective actions you could probably do were laugh and cry.

You depended on your parents to survive and thrive, and a lot of your early lessons about

life and the world came from them.

Now think about the technologies that have most impacted your life such as the car, the

computer, the internet, and the phone.

Or what about theories like Plato's theory of forms or Einstein's theory of relativity?

What about works of art like Lord of the Rings or Dante's Divine Comedy?

All of these works were likely invented by someone other than yourself.

All of these examples show how much the quality of your life depends on others, but also,

how much the quality of someone else's life can depend on you.

The world is fundamentally an interdependent place of relationships, not cues.

The tree depends on the forest and the forest on the tree.

I believe this interdependence isn't accurately captured in the current model,

which is why I'm putting forward a new model in which the forest-tree relationship is central.

Because again, to fully bloom, you need a harmony between both.

So without further ado, let's get into it.

Here's a quick overview of the new model of habits.

There are two key components: the forest, which represents the environment, and the

tree, which represents the individual.

Let's start by analyzing the forest.

Every tree is born into a forest, and the forest sets limits on the potential of the

tree.

How much sunlight does the forest get, what are the soil conditions, how competitive or

friendly is the ecosystem, how much precipitation is there, what are the atmospheric conditions

like, so on and so forth.

All of these factors limit how much the individual tree can thrive.

When you're a baby, your forest is your home.

But as you grow older, your forest expands, and you begin to see yourself as the citizen

of a city, then a country, and then the world.

The forest represents your evolving environment, and the environment limits how much you can

thrive.

If, for example, you're stuck in a city with no opportunities and lots of corruption,

your growth will be limited.

But if you're open to moving to another city or if you live in one with a supportive

environment and lots of opportunities, you can maximize your chances of reaching your

full potential.

So the forest represents the entire environment which limits what you, the tree, can become.

And there are two important parts of the forest we need to consider: the soil and the relationships.

Let's start by analyzing the soil.

The soil represents all of the opportunities available to the tree in the forest.

If the soil is rich with opportunity, the tree has a lot of potential for growth.

But if the soil is lacking in opportunity, the tree will be limited in how much it can

grow.

The soil can be compared to the opportunities for growth available in a city.

How safe are the neighbourhoods?

How good are the schools?

The grocery stores?

What kind of jobs are available and how many?

How good is the collected knowledge?

How advanced is the technology?

And how accessible are all of these opportunities?

For example, a city with less job opportunities provides less or limited potential for growth

when compared to a city with more job opportunities.

So the soil represents the opportunity available for growth.

Now let's move on to the next important part of a forest: the relationships between

organisms.

Are the relationships in the forest symbiotic or parasitic?

Do the organisms help one another thrive or not?

How competitive is it?

These answers make up the politics of the forest.

Imagine two big trees surrounding a little tree.

If the two big trees take all the water and sunlight and refuse to share any with the

little tree, which trees can do through their root systems, the little tree will then have

to struggle much harder to survive, thrive, and achieve a fraction of the growth of the

bigger trees.

The relationships in our own lives function the same way: some people build us up and

make it easier to thrive, while others suppress us and make it harder.

And naturally, someone who goes through life—from a home, to a school, to a business, to a marriage—making

lots of symbiotic relationships is going to have an easier time blooming than someone

who doesn't.

So now that we've looked at the two important components of a forest, the soil and the relationships,

let's move on to analyzing the tree.

The tree represents the individual, and when it comes to the tree, we need to analyze two

critical component: the roots and the fruits.

The roots represent the actions we take to discover and capitalize on the opportunities

in our environment.

And at any point in time, the tree is making one of two choices: create a new root and

discover a new path, or optimize its current ones.

So how does the tree decide what to do?

For now, let's make the assumption that the tree spreads its roots in such a way that

it can maximize its growth.

Remember that the soil contains opportunities for growth, and so the tree is trying to discover

and capitalize on those opportunities with the least amount of work possible.

In other words, you can say that the tree spreads its roots in a way that maximizes

its rewards from the environment and minimizes the work required.

Let's put it into a formula which we can use later on.

And at any point in time, you're making the same decision as our tree: should you

discover a new action or optimize and utilize your current ones.

And like the tree, you're trying to maximize the rewards you get from the environment while

minimizing the work required.

Imagine two people who want to start eating healthier snacks.

Let's call them John and Jane.

Now both John and Jane have an action list which shows all of the actions they know they

can do.

On the left is the action, and on the right is the perceived value of that action.

Let's populate these lists and calculate the perceived value score.

Remember that formula I presented earlier?

Value = reward/work.

We're going to use this formula now to calculate the perceived value of an action.

So right now, John and Jane are both currently aware of two types of snacks: ice cream and

broccoli.

They both keep ice cream and broccoli easily accessible in their freezer or fridge.

All they have to do to eat either one is pull it out.

So let's assign a flat work score of 1 to both actions.

Now let's say John doesn't really like broccoli: he hates the taste and doesn't

really perceive the health benefits.

So he assigned a reward score of 1, and to him, this gives broccoli an overall value

score of 1.

On the other hand, John really loves the taste of ice cream and doesn't perceive any negative

health consequences.

So he assigns it a reward score of 9, and this gives ice cream, for him, a value score

of 9.

Now Jane on the other hand doesn't mind the taste of broccoli and gives it a reward

score of 4, but she really loves the taste of ice cream and gives it a score of 9.

And like John, health consequences don't factor into her decision.

This gives Jane a value score of 9 for ice cream and 4 for broccoli.