How to Build Habits That Will Drive Your Success
Why is it so hard to stick to new habits?
It’s a predictable cycle.
You start strong. You’re fully committed to changing your life. You’re going to eat better, exercise daily, or write more.
Then life gets in the way, and your motivation starts to wane.
Before long, you end up right back where you were before: frustrated, defeated, and embarrassed.
You’re filled with a sense of failure and a desperate yearning for more.
You’re deeply worried you’ll never achieve anything meaningful at all.
It’s like building better habits — building a better life — is a never-ending battle.
Most of us get stuck like this, but the good news is we’re not trapped.
There’s another way.
And it’s available to you today, even if you’re just like me, and you can’t remember how many times you’ve tried — and failed — to develop new habits.
For a long time, I struggled to develop better habits, the kind I needed to lead the kind of life I dreamed about. It’s still not easy, but I’ve found proven strategies, backed by science and research.
These are the steps I’m taking; they’re surprisingly simple, and you can start using them right away.
Future you needs a new identity
Back in 2017, I started freelance writing. The first few months were a disaster.
With no strategy, I was sinking into a rut as my sense of self-worth — and my bank balance — dwindled. Meanwhile, I started to see myself as a struggling freelance writer. I stopped pitching new clients, blogging regularly, and learning new skills.
What I believed about myself was influencing my daily actions, my behaviours.
Turns out I was setting myself up to fail.
“…self-defeating behaviours can rob us of happiness”, writes Morgan P.Slusher and Craig A.Anderson in Belief Perseverance and Self-Defeating Behavior.
On here, Thomas Oppong discusses how belief perseverance warps our perceptions:
“Once you develop a core belief and believe something to be the only truth about yourself — you’ll filter out evidence to the contrary and pay close attention to any evidence that reinforces your belief.”
That’s when we feel stuck, discouraged, and dissatisfied.
Still, there’s that nagging feeling.
Deep down you know you’re capable of more. You know you don’t really need to settle for poorly paid work or a job you don’t love.
You can change it all with identity-based habits.
To build lasting habits, we first need to create a new identity, writes James Clear in Atomic Habits.
“Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously). To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself. You need to build identity-based habits.”
Put another way, start by deciding on who you need to be.
I decided I was an in-demand online writer, and I proved that to myself every day, by pitching new clients and practicing my writing. A year later, I had multiple clients and was earning enough to pay my bills.
If you want to change you life, you must dedicate time to finding out who you want to be.
What type of person do you want become?
Let go of the past. Don’t place any limits on what you want to do. Align your habits with that vision of yourself.
Setting successful habits is as easy as ABC
Stanford professor B.J Foggs was sitting in his dentist’s chair filled with shame.
He was in trouble, again, for failing to floss. And because Foggs is a behaviour scientist, he turned to his own expertise to wire in a daily flossing habit.
Foggs shares his techniques in Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything.
The bottom line is this: the secret to living large is to start small.
Here is the anatomy of Tiny Habits:
A is for Anchor Moment
An anchor moment is an action you perform every day. Your anchor moment reminds you to do your tiny behaviour: your new habit. To find your anchor moments, list all your daily habits, e.g.,
- Morning: brush teeth
- Afternoon: eat lunch
- Evening: shower
B is for New Tiny Behaviour
Scan your list of anchor moments. Now, determine which new behaviour fits in naturally directly after your anchor moments.
What’s the most simple version of that new habit? For Fogg, it was flossing one tooth per day directly after he brushed his teeth.
Use this formula: After I, _____, I will _____
Research shows that implementation intentions like these increase the odds of attaining goals. A clear plan for how you will accomplish a task bridges the gap between intention and action, suggests Peter M. Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran in Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Effects and Processes.
C is for instant Celebration
Whatever behaviour change you are trying to effect, celebration is key to making it stick.
Why?
When you celebrate, you use “the brain machinery” you already have to build lasting habits. writes Fogg:
“What happens in your brain when you experience positive reinforcement isn’t magic — it’s neurochemical. Good feelings spur the production of a neurotransmitter (a chemical messenger in the brain) called Dopamine that controls the brain’s “reward system” and helps us remember what behaviour led to feeling good so we will do it again.”
More importantly, adds Fogg:
“…celebration teaches us to be nice to ourselves — a skill that pays out the biggest dividends of all.”
To find your celebration, think about what you instinctively do when something awesome happens in your life. A fist pump or a thumbs up? Tap into this natural celebration to release the feel-good chemicals that come with making your life a bit better every day.
Forget about motivation
If it seems like motivation is unreliable and fleeting, it’s because it is.
The power of motivation is a popular theme in self-development. To enhance your life, you must enhance your motivation, say the productivity experts.
But it turns out motivation alone won’t yield the life-changing results we’re after.
A better recipe for sustained progress?
Small, repeatable successes.
Jeff Haden observes how high achievers reach their goals in The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win :
“They feel good about themselves because they’ve accomplished what they set out to do today, and that sense of accomplishment gives them all the motivation they need to do what they do when tomorrow comes — because success, even tiny incremental success is the best motivational tool of all.”
Motivation is a result, not a trigger. Don’t wait for motivation, create your own.
Another compelling driver is to constantly connect with your “why”.
Studies describe two types of motivation: autonomous and controlled. Autonomous motivation refers to behaviour rooted in your own goals and desires. On the other hand, controlled motivation involves the promise of external rewards or the prevention of an undesirable outcome.
One research project found university students who were intrinsically motivated felt more refreshed after a workout.
So, intrinsic motivation comes with its own rewards. You will feel a sense of inner satisfaction as you engage in your efforts. You will find fulfilment in the process of becoming the best version of yourself.
Then there’s the idea that inspiration usually shows up once you’ve started doing the work.
Even one of the greatest writers of our time was rarely motivated at the beginning of his writing sessions:
“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.” — Ernest Hemingway, Paris Review
Most of us are struggling to feel inspired right now. I battled to write for weeks. Truth is I was hardly ever motivated when I sat down, but I wrote anyway. That feeling of success brought me back to write another day. And another.
You want to feel inspired to transform your life. You want to wake up ready to fulfill your potential. This is what we all want. The magic is this: you’re capable of inspiring the change you want to see in your life.
What are you capable of once you start building momentum?
Experiment on yourself
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson
How do you apply Emerson’s words to building lasting habits?
Behaviour change requires testing, testing yourself and your environment.
In this article on habit formation, Tiago Forte encourages you to start with observing your environment. Simply asking, “How do I change?” won’t yield the answers you’re seeking.
This question makes far too many assumptions, doesn’t it?
Forte’s case is this: a narrow focus on the “how” of behavior change supposes we already know which changes to make. On top of that, we’re sure those changes will lead to the outcomes we want.
Instead of depending on assumptions, run small tests on your new habits:
“Experimental habit formation is a gateway to behavior change.”
Small is key here. Far too many times, we take up new behaviours that disrupt our lives.
Habits can only truly take root when they integrate into your unique circumstances. At the start of your journey, you’re taking tiny habits for a test run to reveal which behaviours best fit the dimensions of your life.
Our habits define us. So, to become the best versions of ourselves, we need the right habits: small, daily actions that push us forward.
All you need to do is start small, and start today.
Once you do, your life will begin to change. At first, that change is subtle and slow, and then, all of a sudden, that change will be obvious and remarkable.
Feelings of shame will be replaced with pride. Pride will improve your confidence. Confidence, along with your increased competence, will lead to new opportunities.
You’ll start transforming into the person you want to be, and you’ll see that you are capable of almost anything.
