Summary

The article emphasizes the importance of understanding one's identity and implementing consistent, small habits to achieve long-term success and lifestyle changes, rather than relying on fleeting motivation.

Abstract

The author, who specializes in addiction and mental health, asserts that everyone has addictive tendencies and often waits for external motivation to change their habits. The article argues that true success comes from defining one's identity and making incremental, permanent changes to align with that identity. It suggests practical methods such as the "2–5 Minute Rule" for habit formation, planning specific times for new habits, and altering environmental cues to break old patterns. The author stresses that success is not about instant gratification but about consistent, small habits that rewire the brain over time, and that people who are successful have typically worked on self-restraint and consistency through daily habits.

Opinions

The author believes that waiting for motivation, such as a significant life event, is an ineffective strategy for changing habits and achieving success.
Everyone is seen as an addict, attached to some form of behavior that may not be conducive to their goals or well-being.
The article suggests that people often revert to their vices once a temporary goal is achieved, highlighting a preference for instant gratification over long-term lifestyle changes.
The author posits that one's habits define their character and that understanding and embracing one's desired identity is crucial for successful habit change.
Successful individuals, including Olympians and celebrities, are noted to have a clear sense of identity and maintain the habits associated with it, even after achieving notoriety.
The "2–5 Minute Rule" is proposed as a method to avoid burnout and ensure the gradual adoption of new habits by starting with very short, manageable periods of activity.
Time management and planning are considered key to incorporating new habits into one's life, with the recommendation to schedule these activities each week.
The author emphasizes the importance of recognizing and altering environmental cues to disrupt habit loops and promote healthier behaviors.
The article concludes by reinforcing the idea that success is built through daily habits and self-restraint, rather than being an innate trait or solely the result of genetics.

This is Why You Will Never Be Successful. Sincerely, Your Mental Health Counselor.

Waiting for motivation to quit the bottle, initiate healthy habits, and successfully run a triathlon is like waiting for your father to come back with the milk…

Photo Credit: PaulWhitePlaytowin on Unsplash.com

Everyone has excuses as to why they’re not succeeding in reaching their goals and maintaining healthy, effective habits towards success.

Working in addiction and mental health, I’ve realized that everyone is an addict, addicted to something. Everyone makes excuses to continue addictive behaviors while waiting for external forces of motivation like organ failure or an overdrawn bank account to start eating healthy and budgeting.

Most of us are waiting for some mythical motivation fairy to come and sprinkle them with sugary, amphetamine-like motivation that will change our habits and lead us to success.

We are not succeeding because everyone is too focused on instant gratification through temporary goals.

Once we lose weight and hit 90 days of sobriety, we go back to guzzling down the salt on fried potato skins and snorting crystal meth off of a bowie knife.

Most methods for maintaining healthy, effective habits are not working, because most people don’t want to maintain long term, lifestyle changes. Everyone secretly wants to go back to their vices when their goal has been reached.

Don’t ask yourself: How much weight can I lose by September? How long can I give up energy drinks?

Ask yourself: What do I want my lifestyle to look like next year? What will it look like in the next 5 years?

Alter your habits permanently through these methods and you will alter your lifestyle.

Don’t look out that window little Drea, dad isn’t coming back and neither is the meth motivation fairy…

Identity

Based on your current habits today, who are you right now? In the next year, who do you want to be?

Your habits define you and your character.

Are you a porn-addicted, sugar snorting, alcoholic? Or, are you a healthy-eating, conscientious gym rat?

Success cannot be reached until you figure out what your identity is. Write down your identity and the habits that would need to be maintained to represent that identity. Are you a runner? A reader? A baker? A Spanish-speaking romancer? Why do you want to have this identity?

The more you tell yourself you are not that identity, the more you validate bad habits. I’m not a cook, I’m always late, I’m not a writer.

Reverse it, tell yourself who you are, and work on the habits and characteristics within your identity.

Successful Olympian champions, celebrities, and musicians have one specific trait in common. They knew their identity.

Even once they gained notoriety, success, and confirmation of their identity by habits, they continued to practice. They are still swimmers, actors, and singers so long as they maintain the characteristics of that identity.

Method 1: Write your new identity and the healthy habits that belong to that identity. Your identity will be your motivation for new habits.

The 2–5 Minute Rule

One thing most of us do when we are suddenly motivated to change our entire lifestyle is we hit the ground running at full speed.

Going from 0–100 abruptly, full-speed, every single day will lead to nothing but burnout, boredom, and counterproductive habits.

Instead, you need to change the amount of time you dedicate to new habits.

For 2 minutes minimum, you will do push-ups, you will do crunches, you will meditate, and you will fill out your gratitude journal, you will learn German.

Method 2: You will ONLY set aside 2 minutes for a specific habit you are trying to maintain that’ll help you reach your lifestyle change. Do not go beyond 2–5 minutes for this new habit. Even if you are starting to get into it, STOP. Over time, this habit will become unconscious and automatic if you engage every day.

Don’t try to lie and say you don’t have two minutes, Ms. “I’m addicted to secretly checking my husband’s emails when he’s sleeping.” That’s about 10 minutes checking emails and another 10 minutes writing up that Reddit forum.

Timing and Location

Time management is the key to success.

Stop waiting to see how your day goes and start planning your day with specific times and locations to engage in new habits.

According to this article, researchers found that those who wrote down and planned out specific days, times, and locations for specific habits were likelier to create an effective lifestyle change.

Method 3: Every Sunday night, write down your usual schedule of things, things that cannot change. From there, squeeze in your new habits where there is free time. Visualize and write down what you want your weekdays and weekends to look like in the next year. What do you see yourself maintaining?

Don’t wait for motivation. Motivation is a made-up word at this point. Have you ever seen a heroin addict suddenly motivated to quit drugs and start Sunday school teaching? No? Alright then.

Environmental Cues and Habit Loop

Habits thrive under predictable circumstances. They are initiated by particular environmental cues that engage cravings and old habits.

The habit loop works like this:

Cue: Your phone lights up and Instagram notifications are glowing on the screen.

Craving: It initiates the craving to check your phone, even if you know it will distract you from your duties for the next hour.

Response: You respond by checking the notifications.

Reward: Your dopamine center is rewarded for the attention it is receiving.

There are specific sensory cues for every single habit you have which initiate the habit loop. Your environment, your peers, technology. Sight, touch, sound, smell, taste, and even emotional feelings.

By not recognizing your cues, you give in to the cravings and engage in your familiar, bad habits every time.

The best method to avoid unhealthy patterns is to remove the cue altogether or change your environment. New habits can thrive in unpredictable environments.

Method 4: Figure out the cues to your unhealthy patterns. What’s the environment? The cue? The reward? What will you replace it with? Your altered environment will be your motivation to initiate new cues and habits.

If you are trying to quit drinking, stop meeting your friends at bars. Unless they are forcing the beer bong down your throat and duct taping your cell phone to your hand so you are forced to binge-watch Tiktok videos for 16 hours, you don’t have excuses to change your cues and environment.

Conclusion

Remember that your body and mind are working twice as hard to rewire new paths in your brain for new habits. It’s new and unfamiliar and because of this, your mind will constantly try to pull you back into old, comfortable habits until you unconsciously relapse.

The more you say yes to bad habits now, the harder it becomes to say no every time you are faced with cues and temptations.

This is why the four methods above to initiating effective habits will help you build a successful, thriving future.

Keep a calendar, a planner, and a journal to keep track of your habits.

People are not always born into success. People do not have good genetics when they are intelligent, successful, and ambitious.

These people work on consistency, timing, and self-restraint by knowing who they are and who they want to be through small, everyday habits.

Do you actually want to become a new person and succeed? Or are you happy where you’re at?

This article was inspired by:

An angry Puerto Rican woman who is tired of someone making excuses
Atomic Habits by James Clear