Habits that change your life are not sexy, but they are transformative: the basics

How many times have you tried to be more productive, lose weight, or learn a new skill only to fall short of integrating it into your life in a way that generates the dynamic change you are seeking?

What if I told you that it’s not you?

You are not too lazy, busy, or incapable. You just need a new approach.

Let’s look at five things you can do today to drive change in your life.

In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear describes how tiny changes compound over time to produce remarkable transformation.

Small habits add up. But they need to be done right.

People who have created remarkable change in their lives do 5 things:

Choose habits that are oriented to get you closer to the type of person you want to be, rather than habits that are goal oriented.
Create manageable goals that set you up for success, rather than goals that set you up to achieve the impossible.
Value consistency over intensity.
Create systems that make it easy to sustainably adopt and integrate bite-sized changes.
Commit for a lifetime, not 30 or 60 days.

Habits based on your WHO

Clear differentiates between habits that are goal oriented and those that are identity oriented.

Goal oriented habits focus on a specific target and are often set in relation to external comparison or expectations.

Identity oriented habits focus on a lifestyle and align more broadly with the type of person you want to be.

What that means is that you aren’t setting a weight loss goal for a target weight that reflects your desire to fit in. Focused on a single and specific objective that was set to ensure you fit into unrealistic social norms, this goal isn’t going to make you feel satisfied and fulfilled, even if you achieve it. It’s not sustainable.

Instead, choose a habit that reflects your desire to be active in life. Set a broader goal that measures weight as one variable in your holistic health equation. Focusing on playing with your children and grandchildren or upping your tennis game will make you feel satisfied and fulfilled. It’s also sustainable.

Personal identity goals touch your intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, motivation, which makes it easier to keep going when you don’t feel like it.

Action: Take some time and write down the type of person you want to be at the end of your life. Then back up twenty years and look at what habits need to be adopted now to make that happen.

Manageable goals

Once you have an idea of the type of person you want to be – a vision of what you are working toward – and the list of habits you need to adopt to get there, it’s time to make a plan.

Map the habit out in bite-sized chunks. If your vision includes being wise – knowing a lot either broadly or in a specific topic – but you haven’t managed to find time to read or research, you’ll want to incorporate this habit.

Adding 20 books a year may be unrealistic if you’re 1/4^th of the way in and haven’t read anything.

One of the ways people trip up is by setting goals that are not realistic. You’ve failed before you’ve left the gate.

In fact, if the goal is too big, you won’t leave the gate – you’ll be paralyzed by a goal that isn’t achievable in the context you are operating in.

So, take a moment to look at the circumstances – if you aren’t reading at all, it’s better to start with one page a night.

One page is manageable. You’ll achieve it, even if you fall asleep by the second page. Over time you show yourself that it’s possible.

And it makes you feel good to engage in a behavior that gets you closer to the type of person you want to be.

In 365 days, you will have read 365 more pages than you are currently reading. Which may not sound like a lot – a ~book a year?

But in fifty years, you will have absorbed more information and gotten closer to your goal than if you set an unrealistic goal and end up reading nothing because it wasn’t manageable.

Action: take any habit you are trying to adopt, compare it to your current trajectory, and break it down into feasible chunks.

Value consistency over intensity

Ever gone back to the gym and lifted more weight or run further than was recommended only to find yourself so sore the next day that you couldn’t move?

You’ll know what James Clear is referring to when he says intensity is not helpful.

Whether you are trying to add something in or subtract something from your life, do it consistently in a sustainable manner, rather than in one fell swoop.

Anything that demands significant sacrifice or pain is likely to get abandoned after a short stint.

Action: evaluate the intensity you are bringing to the new habit you are trying to adopt. Play this out over several years – can you maintain it? If not, at what intensity could you maintain consistency over that period?

Create systems that make it easy to change

Clear says you don’t “rise to the level of your goal. You fall to the level of your systems.”

Learning a new language or saving money are going to be a lot easier if you’ve created an enabling environment.

Signing up for a course or buying a grammar book make it more likely you will engage in transformative behavior.

Similarly, if you’ve set up an automatic transfer from your checking to your savings account on the day you get paid, your success is a lot more likely.

Make your habit easy to undertake – remove the obstacles to make it more likely that you’ll do what you commit to.

Action: what mechanisms and frameworks do you need to put in place to enable yourself to make the action that creates change?

Commit for the long-not-short-term

People who create dynamic transformation don’t ask the question – how long do I have to do this?

Adopt habits that are manageable and get you closer to who you want to be. Then plan to do them for a lifetime.

Create a reward feedback loop, so that you are incentivized in the short-term until the habit becomes automatized. This can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days, though the average is 66.

Over time, the habit itself can become the reward. After a while, you begin to feel better after running, so you don’t have to coerce yourself into doing it anymore.

Lifetime habits mean you also build in grace. No one is going to be perfect over the course of their entire life, so where you make the choice that doesn’t get you closer to who you want to be, you recommit at the next decision point.

Two steps forward and one step back over a lifetime is still significant progress. And it adds up to a very different life than one in which you went intensely into something and dropped it after two tries.

You can create the change you want. Your life will look very different as long as you are consistent.

If you want help figuring out how to create a system that helps you transform, schedule a free call with me.

With gratitude to concept artist zishan Liu for his work “Running Man Network Connection Turned into, Vector Illustration.” Find this and more here: https://www.dreamstime.com/liuzishan_info.