5 Steps to Successfully Building a New Habit
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John Dryden, the 17th-century English poet, once said:
“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”
You are your habits.
It’s as simple as that.
So if you want to know where you’ll be in a year, all you have to do is look at what you’re doing today.
Are your habits weighing you down? Or are they putting you on the path toward success?
If your current trajectory doesn’t inspire you, then you need to transform your habits.
Because habits are a double-edged sword; bad habits can pull you down, good habits can lift you up.
I recently published an article on the 10 daily habits that are drastically improving my life.
In this article, I’m sharing the 5-step system that I’ve used to successfully build these daily habits.
1. Create an Identity-shift
In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear introduced a profound concept that sits at the root as to why many of us struggle at building better habits.
He wrote: “True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity.”
The idea is simple:
“Behind every system of actions is a system of beliefs.”
The first step in building a new habit begins with changing your system of beliefs.
How do you do it?
You see yourself as who you want to become and then bridge that image as part of your identity. You create an identity shift to forge a new association:
You’re not building a new reading habit, you’re becoming a reader.
You’re not building a new meditation habit, you’re becoming a meditator.
You’re not building a new writing habit, you’re becoming a writer.
You’re not building a new habit of fitness training, you’re becoming a fit person.
Start to see yourself as someone who embodies the new habit you want to build.
Change your identity and the story you tell yourself because your perceptions create your reality. So when you begin by perceiving yourself as who you want to be, you make it easier for yourself to take action toward that new habit.
Change your system of beliefs—that’s the first step in building a new habit.
2. Make it Obvious
Many people think they lack motivation for building a new habit, but what they really lack is clarity.
We tell ourselves “I’m going to start meditating”, “I’m going to write more” and “I’m going to start exercising” but we never take the time to clarify when, where or how frequently we plan on doing so. We don’t give ourselves instructions on how and when to act.
We have no plan. And when there’s no plan, there’s no clarity.
In Atomic Habits, James Clear provides two strategies as a solution for transforming habits into action-plans.
First, he suggests creating a statement on how you intend to implement a particular habit. This is called the implementation intention strategy:
I will [behaviour] at [time] in [location].
I will write for two hours at 9.00 am in my bedroom.
I will meditate for 15 minutes at 7.30 am in my living room.
Second, he advises us to stack our habits so that “each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behaviour”. This is called the habit stacking strategy:
After [current habit], I will [new habit].
After I meditate in the morning, I will journal for 10 minutes.
After I get into bed, I will write down one thing I was grateful for today.
With that said, our environments play a crucial role in reshaping our habits.
James Clear writes: “environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behaviour” and “visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behaviour. For this reason, a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do. Habits are easier to build when they fit into the flow of your life.”
If you want to build a habit of playing the guitar, take it out of the closet and place it in your living room. If you want to start exercising in the morning, place your workout clothes on your chair. If you want to journal more before you go to sleep, place your notebook on your night table.
Make your new habit obvious and redesign your environment to make it easy for yourself to build good habits and break bad ones.
3. Start Small and Make it Easy
"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."— Vincent Van Gogh
Small, consistent, continuous actions are the foundation of habits that stick.
Too often we launch into big, bold efforts to make a change. But this is counterproductive.
We say we want to start exercising, so we jump into daily one-hour workouts. We say we want to start meditating, so we block 20-minute sessions every morning. We say we want to wake up earlier, so we set our alarms one-hour early.
These changes are too bold and they exert too much energy.
You cannot go from zero to a hundred overnight—you’ll stretch yourself.
You’ll feel exhausted, get discouraged, lose momentum and quit. And then you falsely blame it on your “lack of motivation.” How relatable does that sound?
The Law of Least Effort states that “when deciding between two similar options, people will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of energy, effort, or resistance.”
That’s because our brains are wired to conserve energy, and every action requires a certain amount of energy.
Knowing this, it’s fair to say that the less energy a habit requires, the easier it is to implement. And the opposite is also true; the more energy it requires, the harder it is to sustain.
So if you want to exercise more, begin by showing up to the gym for a 20-minute workout, 3 days a week. If you want to meditate, begin with 5-minute meditations after your morning shower. If you wake up at 7.00 am, but you want to start waking up at 6.00 am, begin by setting your alarm clock at 6.50 am and work your way back over the next month.
Small, consistent actions—that’s the secret.
Converse your energy so that it sustains you.
Work with your brain, not against it, and build yourself a system to facilitate those habits.
You want your habits to inspire you into action, not overwhelm you into inaction.
4. Be Consistent and “Don’t Break The Chain”
“Consistency is the key to achieving and maintaining momentum.”—Darren Hardy
Consistency is the only constant in long-lasting transformative change. If you can learn to be consistent, you can change any area of your life.
And what’s the best way to stay consistent? Use a habit tracker.
Habit-tracking is the act of tracking your habits so you can measure your progress as you work toward creating sustainable change.
Here’s an example of what it looks like:
The table above is a copy of my March results. As you can see, I had some major gaps, especially in the second week of March when the global pandemic was announced. But that’s okay—life happens.
You will find an empty template here for you to download.
Simple filly out the list of habits you want to track for the given month and anytime you do take an action toward it, mark an X in the box. Your goal is to not break the chain of X’s.
If you do break it—and you will—that’s okay. Just make it a rule for yourself to never miss more than twice in a row and try your best to stick to it.
5. Focus on Progress
Good things take time.
The last thing you want to do is to quit and give up because you aren’t seeing any positive change. But just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. As per James Clear’s words, what we rarely realize is that “breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash major change.”
The reason consistency is the key to long-lasting change is that when you’re consistent long enough, it’s the accumulation of all the work that you’ve already put in that will push you to break through a plateau. This will only happen if you stay consistent long enough to create momentum—but that takes time.
Mastery requires patience and persistence.
That’s why I prefer to focus on progress and not the outcome.
What defines progress?
Progress is the number of X’s on your tracker. It’s the number of reps you put in. It’s anytime you show up to do the work for it. It’s the 1% incremental win every single day.
Progress is the growth you’re experiencing.
If you’re writing, it’s the library of content you’re slowly building up. If you’re doing yoga, it’s the increased flexibility and strengthened core you’ve experienced thus far. If you’re meditating, it’s the amount of hours you’ve invested in reshaping your brain and the mental calmness you’ve learned to cultivate.
That’s what I call progress.
By focusing on progress, you stay conscious of this growth which keeps you excited and motivated to keep going.
Here are two reasons to focus on progress:
Progress keeps you motivated. When you look at the work you’ve put in so far, you wouldn’t want to give up. You’ll feel empowered to see the progress you’ve made in spite of all the challenges. This will motivate you to keep going.
Progress gives you a reason to celebrate. When you focus on progress (and the work you’ve put in), you’ll begin to realize that success is not in the result, success is in the growth and expansion you experience as you work toward the result. This reshapes your perspective. You begin to see that there’s no “end goal” to get to—there’s only the continuous journey of evolution. Enjoy it. Celebrate it.
All That Matters
It’s through these five steps that I’ve managed to build better habits.
But don’t be too hard on yourself.
Building new habits is a process that takes a lot of time and energy. It’s a perpetual work-in-progress.
So stay patient and work at your own pace. Most importantly, do your best to stay consistent.
All that matters is that you’re putting in the work—that extra 1%—to move your life in the right direction.
Choose one new habit you want to build, and get started today.