5 Steps to Successfully Build Better Habits and Make Them Stick
It’s through these five steps that I’ve managed to build new daily habits.
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. If your current trajectory doesn’t inspire you, then you need to transform your habits.
That’s how I felt on November 2nd, 2019, at the turn of my 30th birthday.
I looked at where I was in my life and where it was headed. I reflected on all the things I’ve always said I was going to do, but never truly put a sustainable effort into. That was the day I decided I was going to transform my habits to change my life.
In this article, I’m sharing the five-step system that I’ve used to successfully build these ten daily habits that are drastically improving my life.
Choose one new habit you want to build and follow these five steps below. If they worked for me, I’m confident they will work for you. Just remember, habit building is about patience, persistence, and consistency.
1. Create an Identity-shift
In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear introduced a profound concept that sits at the root of why many of us struggle at building better habits. He wrote:
“True behaviour 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 that? 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.
For example, to create the habit of writing, I began to see myself as a writer. I believed that I’m not building a new writing habit; I’m becoming a writer.
By creating an identity-shift, I changed the story I tell myself. My perception changed, and so did reality. And I knew that to validate this new identity of a writer, I needed to do what a writer does: write every day.
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.
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.
Here are two strategies I’ve used to create more clarity on how and when I’m going to implement my new habits. (I discovered these in James Clear’s book Atomic Habits — one of the five books that helped me recreate myself):
- I will [behaviour] at [time] in [location].
- After [current habit], I will [new habit].
When first starting with my writing habit, I set aside three two-hour time slots per week to write and blocked these off on my calendar. “I will write on Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9.00 am to 11.00 am in my bedroom.” Over six months, the habit of writing has become more fluid, and now “I write five days a week from 9.00 am to 11.00 am in my bedroom.”
I also used these strategies for building my morning routine: “I will wake up at 7.30 am, meditate at 7.45 am in my bedroom. After I meditate, I will stretch for 10-minutes.”
That’s how specific you want to be.
Our environments also play a crucial role in reshaping our habits.
As James Clear writes: “Visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behavior. For this reason, a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do.”
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’re going to start exercising in the morning, put your workout clothes on your chair.
This is how I built a habit of practising gratitude. I placed a journal next to my bed so that every night as soon as I’m in bed, I open it and write one line per day to answer the question of “what am I grateful for today?”
Make your new habit obvious. 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 wake up earlier, so we set our alarms one-hour early. These changes are too bold, and they exert too much energy.
I learned this with time and realized that it was one of the main reasons why I couldn’t build better habits. The reality is this: You cannot go from zero to a hundred overnight — you’ll stretch yourself too far. 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 needs, 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, three days a week. 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.
Five months ago, I began with three weekly writing slots, publishing two articles per week. Today, I write five times a week and publish four articles.
Small, consistent actions — that’s the secret.
Conserve your energy so that it sustains you. Work with your brain, not against it, and build yourself a system to facilitate those habits.
4. Be Consistent and “Don’t Break The Chain”
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 (you can find an empty template here for you to download):
The table above is a copy of my March results for the habits I was tracking. Anytime I took action toward a habit, I marked an X in the box.
As you can see, I didn’t follow through on my morning routine of meditation and stretching every single day, and I did have some significant gaps with writing, especially in the second week of March when the global pandemic was announced. But that’s okay — life happens.
What matters is that I’m consciously tracking my progress. Anytime I sat down to write or edit, I would put an X on the calendar. In the first few months, I had lots of gaps. With time, I accumulated more consistent X’s because the habits started to flow more easily into my day.
The goal of this habit tracker 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.
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 I am experiencing through my writing. It’s the library of content I am slowly building up. It’s the number of followers that are growing. It’s the improvement in my focus and flow. It’s the accelerating fluidity of finding the right words to stroke across the white screen.
On an excel sheet, I track the number of articles published and how my followers are growing. It’s a visual representation of how my hard work is translating into growth. This is what I call progress.
By focusing on progress, I stay conscious of this growth which keeps me excited and motivated to keep going.
Here are two reasons to focus on progress:
- Progress keeps you motivated. When you look back 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 despite 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 outcome. 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.
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