Little Habits Mastery: 7 Secrets to Create Successful Habits, Overcome Procrastination and Make Lasting Changes

Table of contents :
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
7 Essential Daily Habits Checklist
Facebook Community
Introduction
I. The Old You—Addressing What's Wrong and How to Fix It
1. Understanding the Power of Creating Good and Lasting Habits
2. Why Self-Discipline is More Important Than Willpower or Motivation
3. Forging a New Identity
4. Breaking Your Bad Habits
II. The New You—Your Secret Success Formula for Creating Lasting Habits
5. The Seven Secrets to Creating Lasting Habits
5.1: Achieving Big Things With Tiny Habits
5.2: Improve by 1% Each Day
5.3: Breaking Habits Into Chunks With Micro-Productivity
5.4: Habit Piling
5.5: Practice Patience
5.6: Creating a Growth Environment
5.7: Have an Accountability Partner
6. 20 Essential Tiny Habits Checklist
Conclusion
References

Citation preview

LITTLE HABIT MASTERY

7 SECRETS TO CREATE SUCCESSFUL HABITS, OVERCOME PROCRASTINATION, AND MAKE LASTING CHANGES

EMILY COLLINS

WWW.EMILY-COLLINS.COM

CONTENTS

Introduction I.

The Old You—Addressing What's Wrong and How to Fix It 1. Understanding the Power of Creating Good and Lasting Habits The Psychology of Habit Building The Habit Loop Old Routines Die Hard 2. Why Self-Discipline is More Important Than Willpower or Motivation The Highs and Lows of Willpower Training Self-Discipline Through Delayed Gratification Seven Tips for Improving Your Self-Discipline 3. Forging a New Identity Identifying Yourself Through Your Habits The Three Layers of Behavioral Change Getting Stuck in a Cycle Worksheet: Creating Habits That Are in Line With Your Identity 4. Breaking Your Bad Habits Three Ways to Break a Bad Habit How to Replace a Bad Habit Worksheet: Breaking Bad Habits

II.

The New You—Your Secret Success Formula for Creating Lasting Habits 5. The Seven Secrets to Creating Lasting Habits 5.1: Achieving Big Things With Tiny Habits What’s a Micro Habit? The Power of Baby Steps Worksheet: Creating Micro Habits 5.2: Improve by 1% Each Day Compounding Returns Worksheet: Identify Methods for Improvement 5.3: Breaking Habits Into Chunks With Micro-Productivity Why Micro-Productivity Works Worksheet: Taking Advantage of Micro-Productivity 5.4: Habit Piling

How Habit Piling Originated How to Pile Your Habits Worksheet: How to Pile Habits 5.5: Practice Patience The Dangers of Impatience How Quickly do New Habits Form? 5.6: Creating a Growth Environment The Importance of Context How to Change Your Environment to Suit Your Habits Worksheet: Facilitating a Growth Environment 5.7: Have an Accountability Partner How Society Influences Our Behaviors The Benefits of an Accountability Partner Worksheet: Selecting and Working With an Accountability Partner 6. 20 Essential Tiny Habits Checklist Conclusion References

© Copyright 2020 - All rights reserved. The content contained within this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author or the publisher. Under no circumstances will any blame or legal responsibility be held against the publisher, or author, for any damages, reparation, or monetary loss due to the information contained within this book, either directly or indirectly. Legal Notice: This book is copyright protected. It is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote or paraphrase any part, or the content within this book, without the consent of the author or publisher. Disclaimer Notice: Please note the information contained within this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. All effort has been executed to present accurate, up to date, reliable, complete information. No warranties of any kind are declared or implied. Readers acknowledge that the author is not engaged in the rendering of legal, financial, medical or professional advice. The content within this book has been derived from various sources. Please consult a licensed professional before attempting any techniques outlined in this book. By reading this document, the reader agrees that under no circumstances is the author responsible for any losses, direct or indirect, that are incurred as a result of the use of the information contained within this document, including, but not limited to, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies.

7 ESSENTIAL DAILY HABITS CHECKLIST

The checklist includes: The 7 habits you need to implement into your daily routine to have a productive day and a happier life How these 7 habits will improve your productivity and happiness by 148% 7 highly valuable articles and resources with hands-on exercises and examples to implement these habits directly into your new productive lifestyle The last thing we want is for you to read this book without knowing the most important daily habits one can have and fall back into old bad habits immediately. To receive your habits checklist, visit the link:

https://emily-collins.activehosted.com/f/5 or scan the QR code with your phone:

Before we dive deep into the discovery of habits, I just want to make you aware that we have a Facebook community for people like you, wanting to learn about habits, productivity and mindset. It is a very supportive and encouraging group, where valuable content like helpful free resources and interesting discussions about this book are being shared. Those will be key to becoming productive, establishing your dream routine, and ultimately contributing to your happiness. You can use this as a simple way of using social media for you instead of against you. (As you will learn very soon, replace your bad habits with good ones! ) To join, simply visit this link and click "join group":

https://www.facebook.com/groups/emilycollins/ or scan the QR code with your phone:

INTRODUCTION

According to a study by Duke University, 45% of our everyday behaviors are the product of habits (Neal, Wood, & Quinn, 2006, p. 198). This means that almost half of the actions we take from the moment we wake up to when we fall asleep aren't guided by conscious decisions; they're actions we take each day without thinking. If these actions help us focus on important tasks, get more organized, and improve our mental and physical health, we can live a prosperous, happy life. If they get in the way of our ability to work, the lifestyle we want to lead, and the people we want to be, they can be serious roadblocks to finding peace in life. The unfortunate truth is that many peoples' habits aren't nearly as beneficial to their quality of life as they could be. It's easy to get stuck in a bad loop where we do something "just one time," only to turn it into a repeated behavior. After a while, we might not even recognize the harm in what we're doing because we've been doing it so long, even if it's making our lives much harder. For example, if we choose to procrastinate an assignment at work or an unpleasant chore around the house just one time, it's not so bad. But if we keep procrastinating these undesirable but necessary tasks in our lives, we can end up struggling to keep up with all the new work we get, always scrambling to finish things at the last minute or missing our original deadlines entirely. Bad habits can come in all shapes and sizes. Maybe you want to start eating healthier, but you find that a sudden switch to an all-salad diet leaves your cravings for something sugary as strong as ever. Perhaps you keep trying to go to bed early, but you end up lying awake watching the numbers tick up on your clock for hours. This inability to change these rhythms we get ourselves into is the direct result of bad habits, which impede our ability to achieve our most important goals in life.

Of course, habits don’t have to be bad, and these bad habits don't have to plague us forever. While habits can be incredibly powerful when we don't notice we've adopted them, this can work to our advantage or disadvantage depending on the type of habit we practice. Smoking is just as much of a habitual action as brushing your teeth, even though both have vastly different outcomes on your health. One can improve your lifespan and your overall well-being, while the other does just the opposite. The impact of these good or bad habits build up over a month, a year, and your entire life. The good news is this means that making a significant change in your life doesn't require you to make radical behavioral shifts. You only need to look at your habits, identify the harmful ones, and replace them with helpful habits. I understand just how easy that sounds, but how difficult it can actually be to practice good habits and pull yourself out of a motivational funk. I married relatively young at the age of 24. To be with them, I moved from Australia to the United States, nearly a decade ago. At 29, the marriage fell apart and we got divorced. On top of this, my mother got very sick with cancer and died soon after. The hardships I experienced made it incredibly difficult to make it through the day, let alone to be productive during this time. I felt completely alone in a country entirely different than where I'd spent the majority of my life. About a year and a half later, I realized how these habits were hurting me and how I could take back control of my life by leaving them behind. Through therapy and self-help techniques, I got my life back on track. I developed an avid interest in self-improvement and human behaviors, which led me to get my degree in Psychology with a specialization in cognitive behavioral therapy. My experiences inspired me to help others grow, achieve their goals, and fulfill their potential. I knew others could unlock the same secrets I did and turn their lives around just as I had, and to pursue my true passion, I quit my corporate job of eight years. By teaching others about productivity, a positive mindset, and habits,

kickstarting their journey to freedom and happiness, I knew I could make a positive impact on the world. Some people find adopting new habits to be difficult, but it doesn't have to be. Improving your habits is usually difficult for one of two reasons. The first is that you don't understand how a habit becomes integrated into your life and how to leverage it to benefit you. Understanding the impact habits have is the most important step in getting them to work for you. The second is that you're trying to change too many habits at once or make too drastic changes, and you run out of steam before you see results. Great habits are easy and you adopt them slowly over time, which means there's no opportunity for your motivation to burn out. In Little Habit Mastery, we'll look at how you can overcome these two common stumbling blocks and practice habits that stick. We'll take a more in-depth look at what makes a good habit and how you can seamlessly implement it into your daily life, as well as what you can do to recognize and replace any lingering bad habits. When you're adjusting your habits, it's important to start small. Trying to make huge changes all at once is like starting a new, extreme workout routine without warming yourself up first. You might be able to get through day one without too many issues and day two with only a little ache, but as time goes on and the exhaustion piles up, the mere thought of going to the gym is going to make you groan. At this point, you've burnt through all of your energy and willpower long before you've seen any results. Now consider how long you could stick to a short, easy routine that progressively gets a little bit harder. If you set your bar low with your initial habits, it's no sweat to keep practicing them until they actually become habits. Just a small amount of effort can make a huge difference if you keep it up for long enough. With the right plan and the right mentality, turning your life around is as easy as making just one good decision each day and practicing that same decision until it sticks.

With Little Habit Mastery, I want to help you find the same success I did. I know first-hand how powerful it is to be in charge of the habits that make up your life, and I want to share this information with you. While the changes you make are small, the results are huge. When you know how to use habits to your advantage, you can change your life.

I

THE OLD YOU—ADDRESSING WHAT'S WRONG AND HOW TO FIX IT

1. UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF CREATING GOOD AND LASTING HABITS

"Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.” — HORACE MANN

H

abits are the natural result of repeating an action many times. By definition, a habit is "an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary" (Merriam-Webster, n.d., para. 2). The more you do something, the deeper it becomes ingrained in your brain. If you don't pay attention to which behaviors you allow yourself to engage in, you're going to unknowingly form bad habits that aren't easy to break from. On the other hand, if you recognize how habits are formed and you keep track of which behaviors are becoming habitual, you can shape your habits to your advantage. When it comes to habits, you want to get things right the first time. It's very hard to unlearn a bad habit because you tend to do the action or task without thinking about it. You reinforce the behavior without stopping and thinking about what you're actually doing. If you are better informed about the science behind habits and how you can encourage the formation of good habits, you won't need to unlearn or replace bad ones, and you can better address any bad habits that have formed over the years.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HABIT BUILDING

All habits begin with the brain. The more you repeat an action, the easier it is to do. This is true whether you're learning a new skill at your job or you're trying to study for a test. Practicing something repeatedly strengthens the connections in our brains and makes the information recall process more automated. To understand this, we need to take a look at the neurons in your brain and the concept of neuroplasticity. To make this complex idea more easily understandable, neuroplasticity is the ability of your brain's neural networks to reshape themselves in response to different stimuli. When you repeat a behavior for a week or longer, the neurons in your brain connect and strengthen themselves for that particular action. They become surrounded by a substance known as myelin, which is very conductive. Your actions are controlled by electric signals in your brain. The more conductive a certain neuron pathway is, the less energy it takes to perform a behavior. The longer you practice the same behavior, the stronger the myelin coating becomes, until the action takes so little energy that it becomes second nature (Badwal, 2018). When a neuron pathway becomes strong enough, an action turns into a habit. Consider the process of learning how to ride a bike. The first time you get on the bike, it's hard to keep your balance and pedal simultaneously. It takes more effort to stay upright. However, as you keep practicing, the neuron pathways are reinforced, making both actions easier. Before long, you hardly have to think about what you're doing, and you can focus on where you're going instead. Pedaling and adjusting your balance have become habitual. While this process works the same way for both good and bad habits, it can often feel like it's much easier to fall into bad habits. There's some truth to

this idea, as many bad habits make us feel happy, even if they're not good for us in the long run. For example, we get more enjoyment out of eating food with a lot of sugar than we do when we eat a balanced meal. This, too, is a product of our brain chemistry. The problem stems from a chemical known as dopamine. Rewarding Ourselves for Bad Behavior Dopamine is a chemical known as a neurotransmitter, which means it is involved in carrying messages throughout your brain. It's created by endorphins, which are released when you do certain rewarding activities like eating or exercising. Dopamine is sometimes called the "happy hormone" because of the positive effect it has on our mental state. When our brains release dopamine, our mood improves and we feel more excited and energized to do whatever activity triggered the dopamine release. This is great if we're using it to motivate ourselves to get some work done or to make healthy choices. However, it can become an issue if we become too reliant on dopamine boosts from bad habits with a negative impact on our health and productivity. Dopamine is a natural reward system. If you reward yourself for bad behaviors, you end up turning them into bad habits, which undermines your success in the long run. For example, let's say that you have a deadline coming up and instead of getting your work done right away, you decide to watch TV for a few hours instead. Watching TV is more fun than working, after all, and you get a nice dopamine boost from it. Next time you have to choose between working and watching TV, your mind will remember that watching TV got you dopamine, and you'll naturally feel more inclined to choose it again. If you keep letting yourself be swayed and you keep reinforcing the dopamine, you'll end up procrastinating your work for days or weeks, and you'll probably procrastinate the next assignment too. You can do the same thing if you give yourself a reward for otherwise non-

rewarding tasks. For example, if you get yourself a sugary latte every time you run errands, you're training yourself to look forward to running errands, but you're also consuming a lot more sugar than you would otherwise. In short, you develop bad habits through the following pathway: 1. Rewarding a bad behavior creates a craving for the reward again. 2. Your brain releases endorphins in anticipation of the reward, effectively rewarding you before you've done anything. This becomes addicting. 3. The neuron pathways in your brain start firing, reinforcing the bad habit and making it easier to repeat it in the future. This strengthening of neuron pathways makes it incredibly hard to break bad habits. Rather than trying to ignore the siren song of bad habits, it's often easier to replace them with good habits. If you try to quit a bad habit cold turkey, you'll have lower dopamine levels, and whatever need the bad habit was fulfilling will remain unfilled. If you replace the habit, you can retrain your brain to release dopamine when you do constructive rather than destructive actions.

THE HABIT LOOP

Let's say you want to go on a quick run each morning to wake yourself up and start your day off on the right foot. If you want to turn this into a habit and avoid the very real possibility of starting off strong and slowly losing your enthusiasm over time, try to make running as easy and rewarding as possible. If you have to dig through your closet for your running shoes every morning, you're putting up a barrier to your success. If you push yourself hard, get back from your run sweaty and exhausted, and then immediately go to work or do something else that doesn't engage you, there's no reward for your good behavior. However, if you leave your shoes by your bed, go on a quick and easy run until you build up your stamina, and give yourself a little reward afterward, you're setting yourself up for a habit loop that encourages healthy choices. Each habit loop has three parts. These are the cue, the routine, and the reward. Let's take a more in-depth look at each part.

Cue The cue reminds you, consciously or subconsciously, to engage in the habit. For example, stress might be your cue to engage in habits that reduce your stress. These can be positive, like finding a quiet place to read a chapter or two of your favorite book, or negative, like smoking or drinking. Other kinds of cues include a specific time of day, a feeling, a certain action, a specific place, a smell that triggers a memory, or a particular person. In the above example, the cue for running was putting the shoes by the bed. When you see your shoes, you remember that you're supposed to go exercise. It also becomes easier to engage in the habit, since you have all the tools you need right in front of you. Routine The routine is the action part of the habit. It is what you do in response to the cue, whether you notice it or not. Again, this can be good, like starting to cook dinner at 5:30 PM every day so you have time to make a healthy meal, or bad, such as checking your phone every time you see the screen light up when you have more important things to do. In the previous example, the routine would be running, which results from seeing the cue of the sneakers. Reward The reward is the outcome of the routine. If you get a positive feeling out of performing a certain action, maybe because you spent time with friends or you checked something off your to-do list, your brain will strengthen the connections between the neuron pathways, and you'll repeat the action again in the future. Without a significant reward, you'll find it hard to stick to any attempts at changing your life for the better. When you feel rewarded

for bad behaviors and not good ones, you'll keep up your bad habits, no matter their long-term effects. Now that you understand the habit loop, you can learn how to manipulate it to your advantage. Identify Your Cues and Their Results If you want to break your bad habits, look for the cues that cause you to engage in them. Think of just one bad habit. As an example, let's say you wanted to quit drinking so much. What sort of cue might cause you to drink? If you have your alcohol out in plain sight, you might feel the urge to drink every time you walk by, so try storing it in a cabinet instead. If you go out with friends and they drink, you might be more tempted to drink yourself too. To cut back, avoid going out too frequently, or suggest outings where alcohol isn't involved. Maybe your cue is a particularly stressful day. You might not be able to guarantee you have a stress-free day, but you can practice another stress-relief method like exercise or doing something fun if you learn to anticipate when the stress will make your cravings skyrocket. The more in-tune you are with your personal cues, the easier it becomes to avoid them and redirect yourself. Knowing your cues and your habits is just one part of the solution. You also want to understand what reward motivates you to repeat the habit so you can avoid rewarding yourself in the future. Maybe engaging in a bad habit like drinking makes you feel better emotionally or physically, or perhaps your friends or family pressure you into drinking, encouraging the behavior. You're going to have a difficult time quitting your bad habits until you can remove these rewards from the equation. Some habit loops have negative rewards, which can seem somewhat paradoxical at first. Let's say you have a bad habit of getting anxious over a packed schedule at work and at home. While some worry and frustration is

natural, if it gets in the way of your ability to live your life, it becomes a bad habit. In this case, the cue in the habit loop might be getting a new work assignment. Depending on how you handle stress, you might try to distract yourself with something fun, procrastinating the task and making it harder to finish on time. Alternatively, your anxiety might lead to more worrying, leaving you stuck in a cycle of negativity. Instead of looking for a positive reward, you start subconsciously looking for more reasons to worry, and before long you've gotten swept up, all thoughts of actually working on the assignment forgotten. Either way, no progress is made, and you'll keep feeding this habit loop until you make an effort to break free.

OLD ROUTINES DIE HARD

The longer you allow a habit to persist, the harder it becomes to break. In fact, recent studies suggest that no habit, once developed, is ever truly forgotten. Instead, it is regulated by a part of your prefrontal cortex known as the infralimbic cortex (IL), which is responsible for deciding which habits to turn on and off at a given time. The importance of the IL was uncovered in an MIT study, where rats were trained to run a short maze and signaled to turn right or left. Once the habit of responding to the signals for different rewards was formed, the mice would follow it, even if one of the rewards was no longer appealing to them. However, when scientists temporarily interfered with the IL, the habit would effectively "switch off" and the rats would run toward the more desirable reward instead. When the process was repeated, the rats picked back up their old habits, even though they had previously turned them off. This indicates that "when habits are broken, they are not forgotten, but replaced with new ones" (Trafton, 2012, para. 15). Additionally, the IL seems to show preference toward the most recently formed habits. This means the most effective way to stop bad habits is not to try to drop them altogether, but to replace them with something more beneficial. Tips for Breaking Bad Habits While ending your bad habits may initially seem like a daunting task, it's entirely possible. You can make small changes to your habits that add up to make a huge impact on your agency in your own life, and if you follow the steps outlined in this book, it won't be half as painful as it seems. As previously mentioned, it's easier to replace a habit than it is to end it altogether. We already discussed the scientific theory behind this, but it's easier to visualize with a more practical example. Many ex-smokers find it's

easier to quit if they replace the act of smoking with something else when they feel the urge. This might mean chewing gum or drinking water— anything that keeps them occupied when the craving hits will take their minds off the cigarette. If you're trying to adopt a good habit, try to do it at the same time each day. This teaches your brain to turn that time of day into a cue, which means you'll feel more inclined to stick to the new habit. If you need to get work done, work at the same time each day. After a while, you'll train your brain into focusing during that time, and getting the work done will be much easier. Above all else, remember that even though habits are difficult to break by nature, they're not impossible. If you have a positive attitude and are willing to stick it out until you succeed, anyone and everyone can eliminate bad habits and replace them with good ones. As you keep reading, you will unlock the secrets to creating lasting habits and completely transforming yourself, one small step at a time.

2. WHY SELF-DISCIPLINE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WILLPOWER OR MOTIVATION

"Look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before." — JACOB AUGUST RIIS

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uzzwords like 'willpower' and 'motivation' are all too common advice for people looking to quit bad habits or pick up good ones. But what do these terms really mean, and are they as helpful as people seem to think? We tend to treat our ability to complete tasks as a product of these two values. We tell ourselves, "I can finish this last five minutes of my run, I just need to put my willpower to work," or, "I can't finish my work today, I don't have any motivation." The problem with viewing your efforts this way is that willpower and motivation are finite. At some point, they will run out, and you'll lose your momentum. Rather than relying on motivation and willpower, it's healthier and more powerful to think about achieving your goals through the use of self-discipline. To understand what makes self-discipline so special, we need to first define each of these terms. Willpower is a measure of your ability to restrain yourself from doing something. It's how well you can resist the temptation to take a break, or to resist the cravings of your bad habits. While willpower can help you, it is primarily used to deal with the symptoms of a problem rather than its root cause. Willpower may allow you to say no to a craving a few times, but if you never take the time to replace the bad habit, your willpower will eventually give out. Motivation, meanwhile, is how willing you are to do a task. Your motivation levels are heavily dependent on other

factors, including how much sleep you get, what kind of reward you get from the task, and how much other work you have to get done. You'll often feel very motivated at the beginning of a new project, but this motivation quickly fades when you realize how difficult a task will be, leaving you completely disinterested in continuing. Again, this isn't going to help you drop your bad habits and achieve limitless success. This brings us to self-discipline. Self-discipline is "the ability to push yourself forward, stay motivated, and take action, regardless of how you're feeling, physically or emotionally" (Mind Tools, n.d., para. 4), typically for the sake of self-improvement. If you have self-discipline, you won't lose steam on your way to your goal. You know that a little hard work is necessary for the best results, and you are focused and driven enough to achieve your goals, no matter what hiccups you might experience along the way. Your commitment to managing a difficult task comes from the knowledge that the outcome will be worth the time and energy you spend on it, so even when you're experiencing a difficult moment in your life and your cravings to engage in bad habits return, you can look at your goals and let these distractions fall by the wayside. Self-discipline will help you form habits more effectively than willpower or motivation, and you won't have to be reliant on either trait to accomplish your goals. Willpower and motivation can dry up, but if you have the selfdiscipline to stick to a task until you can turn it into a habit, you won't need willpower or motivation to get the task done. You'll need a good amount of self-discipline at the beginning of a task, but once it becomes a habit, you won't need to use any discipline or willpower at all to stick to it. The action will become automatic, and you'll reap the rewards of your earlier efforts. This is known as delayed gratification, and we'll discuss it in more detail later in this chapter.

THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF WILLPOWER

While you don't want to be entirely reliant on willpower, it does have its uses. Willpower will help you find the drive to get started on difficult tasks. According to psychologist Roy Baumeister, there are three components necessary for achieving any goal. These are the motivation for change, keeping track of how your behaviors help or hinder your ability to reach your goal, and having the willpower to resist the short-term temptations that stand in the way of your larger goals (American Psychological Association, 2012, para. 6). When you first introduce a new good habit into your life, you may have a hard time resisting the bad habit you're trying to correct. For example, if you want to spend more time on your important projects at work and less time reaching for your phone and scrolling through social media, it's going to be most difficult to resist picking up your phone when you initially try to make this change. You're so used to the old behavior that it can be hard to resist. Your initial rush of willpower and the motivation it provides can help you push past this craving. The more self-control you have, the easier it will be for you to adopt good habits. It takes a lot of willpower to resist the temptation of immediate gratification. However, if you struggle with willpower, this doesn't mean there is no hope for you. By gradually easing into good habits and strengthening the mental connections between good behaviors and healthy rewards, you don't have to rely so heavily on willpower, which can be a saving grace if you've found yourself unable to stick to a drastic change in your daily schedule. In fact, willpower has some significant shortcomings that showcase how it must be combined with the cultivation of selfdiscipline for the best long-term results. Willpower's Shortcomings

The biggest drawback of willpower, and by extension motivation, is that both are finite resources. After a while, you will lose your momentum, and it will be very hard to stay on the right track if you haven't yet convinced yourself that the work you're putting toward your goals is worth it. This is especially difficult if you try to achieve very difficult goals without starting small with habits. You will burn through your willpower faster, and the tasks you've laid out for yourself will feel impossible. Some evidence suggests that being low on willpower is similar to a car being low on fuel. The cells in your brain consume energy in the form of glucose, a type of blood sugar. Studies in dogs showed that obedient dogs had lower average blood glucose levels than those who did not attempt to exert self-control, which suggests that "brain cells working hard to maintain self-control consume glucose faster than it can be replenished" (American Psychological Association, 2012, para. 21). Similar experiments on humans have yielded comparable results. This points to a connection between willpower and healthy eating habits. It's easy to become dependent on sugar for a quick boost of motivation. It's also incredibly difficult to maintain your resolve to resist sugary foods when you are constantly bombarded with advertisements for them. In this regard, willpower alone may not be the best attack method for managing many bad habits. This is where self-discipline and good planning come in. How Self-Discipline Can Help Avoiding temptation becomes a lot easier when you can foresee a problem and plan for it. Let's return to the example of trying to get work done but constantly getting sidetracked by your phone. If you leave your phone on your desk and just tell yourself you're not going to check it, you'll need to exert a lot of willpower every time you get a new notification. You've already trained yourself to respond to the chime of your phone's alerts, so you'll find yourself reaching for the phone before you know what you're

doing. However, you can reduce the need for willpower with a more effective strategy that puts the temptation out of your mind. Instead of leaving your phone in close proximity so it's easily accessible, turn off the volume and put your phone in a desk drawer, or leave it in the other room. Once it is out of sight, you're less likely to think about it or to notice when you get a distracting text. By putting it in another room, you create a barrier between yourself and bad behavior. Sure, you could get up and check your phone, but how many times will you be willing to do that in an hour compared to how often you would check your phone if it was right next to you? It becomes much easier to practice good habits when you set yourself up for success ahead of time. This ties into the idea of self-discipline. You need to have the self-discipline to tell yourself, "I know I want to check my phone, but if I do, I won't get any work done. I'll put it in the other room instead." Unlike willpower, you don't run out of self-discipline. It is a tool you can leverage to accomplish your goals with much less struggle on your part. The more you practice self-discipline, the stronger your resolve for positive change will be. It will become easier to stick to new goals once you set them because you aren't relying on temporary, easily-exhausted willpower and motivation. With self-discipline, you'll be able to power through and stick to your good habits even on the most difficult of days. You'll see the positive results of your efforts and teach yourself that you really can replace your bad habits with good ones, as long as you have the discipline to maintain good habits over a long period of time.

TRAINING SELF-DISCIPLINE THROUGH DELAYED GRATIFICATION

It's clear now just how helpful self-discipline can be, but how do you start cultivating it? Understanding and seeking out delayed gratification is the best way to become more disciplined. This is the polar opposite of instant gratification. With instant gratification, you are rewarded for a behavior right after doing it, even if the long-term result is often undesirable. You get a boost of dopamine from drinking a sugary coffee, watching a funny video, or playing a game. Instant gratification keeps you trapped in the bad habit cycle because oftentimes, the things that bring you instant gratification are the same things that are bad habits. They become incredible temptations because of the mood boost you get from them. Typically, the gratification you get from these actions far outweighs what you would get from doing a more difficult task like doing household chores or working on a project. Because you gravitate toward the easier, more fun tasks, you procrastinate the difficult ones. Instant gratification will completely stunt your progress toward your goals. Every time you give in and choose immediate pleasure over working for a better reward, you sacrifice an opportunity for growth and reinforce bad habits. If you are serious about turning your life around, you need to stop pursuing instant gratification and instead take up delayed gratification. Delayed gratification follows the premise that the best things in life require some effort to achieve them. You won't find lasting happiness and true fulfillment on the shelf at a store. The only way to experience them is to put in the work to achieve them yourself. It's hard to resist instant gratification at first, but it becomes easier if you think of the reason why you need to do it. Compare the long-term happiness you would receive from buying a new

pair of shoes each month versus putting that money away in a savings account and eventually having enough saved up to buy something more meaningful, like a car or the down payment on a home. You might feel excited when you first get that pair of shoes, but how much do you care about them a few weeks later? If you're buying new shoes all the time, it starts to feel less special, and each pair holds less value as you replace them almost as quickly as you get them. But moving into a new house or even a new apartment is a huge accomplishment, and the expense is well worth the months or years you spent saving money. This is true for any difficult task that you might initially be resistant to turning into a habit. When you wake up a few minutes early so you can get some exercise in, think of the changes in your health and your physical appearance you're building toward every day. When you choose between eating healthy and stopping for fast food, remember the long-term effects either choice will have on your body and mind. The longer you make good decisions, the easier it will be to repeat them and turn them into habits. You'll feel great about your agency over your life and the results of your actions; rather than being controlled by cravings and temptations, you will be in full control of yourself. And if your resolve ever wavers, just think of what awaits you should you be successful. By following these steps, you will surely have an easy time delaying your gratification for a better outcome, ultimately building up your self-discipline. Balancing Work and Rest While you don't want to cave to instant gratification all the time, it's not always a bad idea to take a break when you feel you're overworking yourself. Try to create and follow a schedule, but budget in a day or two where you can relax, provided you've earned it. For example, you can schedule your work for weekdays and take Saturday and Sunday for yourself, resting up and preparing yourself to give next week your all. The

only way you can afford to do nothing on the weekends is to do everything on the weekdays. When you work hard throughout the week, the break you get on the weekends will feel all the better because it is so different from your usual schedule. This is delayed gratification on a small scale, over the course of a single week. Still, the same mentality applies even when you are delaying your gratification for months at a time. Using Failure as Feedback One mental barricade to self-discipline and delayed gratification is the fear of failure. We don't want to do things that are too difficult and have a high risk of failure. Instead, we take the easy way out, whether this results in always buying unhealthy food because we're afraid of failing at cooking or procrastinating an assignment. After all, we're afraid we won't complete it to perfection. If we let our fear of failure control us, we'll always shy away from making the habit changes we need for lasting change in our lives. The trick to letting go of the fear of failure lies in seeing it as a learning experience rather than something to be avoided. Every time you fail, you get some feedback as to whether the choices you made were right or wrong. If you have a test coming up and you procrastinate studying until the night before, therefore you get a bad grade on the test, you know that cramming leads to failure. You can take this info and use it to commit yourself to studying earlier next time. As another example, consider a child who doesn't listen to their parents and reaches for a hot plate. They're going to get hurt, but the momentary pain teaches them not to do the same thing again next time. They learn through experience, as do adults. If you consider failure to just be a form of feedback, it won't be nearly as frightening of a possibility. This will give you the confidence you need to try more difficult tasks and push the boundaries of your comfort zone. If you don't, you'll miss out on the opportunity to learn and develop.

SEVEN TIPS FOR IMPROVING YOUR SELF-DISCIPLINE

Becoming more disciplined doesn't have to be a difficult process. You'll need to accept that testing your limits is part of the process, but just like improving yourself as a whole, you can practice good habits every day that result in a huge positive change. There's no need to go camp out in the woods and live the rugged lifestyle to cultivate discipline. Follow these seven steps and you'll see a huge difference without changing too much about your regular schedule. Deal With Discomfort As the old saying goes, "no pain, no gain." If you don't test yourself and constantly push yourself to be better, you won't improve. It's a lot easier to stick to the bad habits you've fallen into over the years, and trying to break them can lead you into uncomfortable and stressful situations sometimes. Waking up earlier is hard. Committing to cooking healthy meals is hard. Quitting an addiction like smoking or drinking and withstanding the withdrawal symptoms is hard. These are all going to cause you discomfort, but it's worth it for what you will achieve when you emerge on the other side. The more short-term discomfort you can manage, the more long-term success you will enjoy. Develop Your Morning Mindset Here's another classic idiom to keep in mind: the perils of "waking up on the wrong side of the bed." If you start your day in a bad mood, worried and frustrated by everything you need to get done, you're going to create a selffulfilling prophecy. You'll start subconsciously looking for reasons to be annoyed, and you'll be quicker to anger. The added stress makes it hard to maintain discipline and reject temptations.

Instead of focusing on negativity, start your day with a question. Ask yourself, "What am I trying to achieve today?" or "What makes today valuable?" This doesn't have to be something like financial value, and it doesn't even have to be directly related to your goals. You might spend the day strengthening your social connections or refilling your depleted energy, and that's okay too. Find time to be grateful for what you have and enthusiastic about what you are working to achieve. Look for Sources of External Empowerment It's easy to put a little too much emphasis on the 'self' part of self-discipline. While you need to be able to motivate yourself, it's also good to seek out and accept the support of your loved ones. Friends and family members' encouragement can be a huge factor in your ability to remain determined. Additionally, you might find yourself more driven if you view your goals not in terms of how they can help you but instead in terms of how they can help others. Maybe you want to save a lot of money. This helps you, of course, but it also means you can keep your family financially secure, and you can afford a few nice purchases every now and then without stressing out about money. You could even funnel some of your savings into your community, either by donating to charitable causes you care about or by volunteering yourself. When you feel good about the positive impact your actions are having on the people around you, you'll be less likely to give up on your goals, as you know they're much bigger than yourself. Refresh Without Relinquishing Your Progress As mentioned earlier, it's okay to take a day off sometimes. It's not healthy to push yourself to the brink of exhaustion every single day. There should be crunch days and rest days. However, when you let yourself have a rest day, you don't want to lose all the progress you've made establishing good habits. You should try to keep these habits alive in some way, even if you

still take it easy. Let's say that from Monday through Saturday, you wake up at 7:00 AM and do a workout routine. If Sunday is your rest day, you don't have to push yourself as hard, but you shouldn't drop exercise entirely or you risk losing the habit streak. Instead, you might allow yourself to get up at 8:00 AM and do some stretches or light yoga instead of a more difficult routine. You get a break, all while still getting up fairly early and keeping your promise to exercise. Keep Calm During Catastrophes Some days seem like a complete disaster. Maybe you wake up late, you get stuck in traffic on the way to work, your coworkers or customers are harsh on you, and when you go to the store after work, it's crowded and you end up waiting in a long line. What's the best thing to do in this situation? You could get angry and start yelling at store employees and other customers, changing nothing about your situation except for your own disposition. Or you could take a breath, recognize that what seems like a catastrophe is really just a minor, fleeting inconvenience, and stay calm under pressure. You can't control how lucky you are on a given day, but you can control how you react to the hand that life deals you. Believe in yourself and start thinking of yourself as someone who has a lot of self-control and who doesn't let the small stuff in life bother them. If you really internalize this idea and you look at the bigger picture rather than the short-term annoyance you're experiencing, you'll find that these disastrous days aren't so bad in the grand scheme of things, and they don't have to push you back toward bad habits as a coping mechanism. Forgive Your Flaws There's a very good chance that if you're interested in the idea of changing your life through habits, you've been suffering from your bad habits for a long time. Maybe you've done things you regret because of these habits,

and those past actions can fill you with shame and guilt. You can allow yourself to linger on these feelings, or you can accept yourself for who you are, looking toward the future rather than the past. This doesn't mean you have to see yourself as flawless; in fact, accepting your mistakes requires you to acknowledge that you've made mistakes in the first place and that there are changes you would like to make in your life. But beating yourself up about your past mistakes and habits for months or years after you've made the decision to quit them isn't going to help you improve. You'll always be dragged back down by those painful memories unless you learn to come to terms with them. There's nothing you can do about the past. The only thing you can control is your future. Accept that you are trying to improve, and follow through on it.

Remember Your Routine Finally, remember that true self-discipline doesn't have to come in the form of a huge overhaul of your life. The greatest changes start small. Even the Great Wall of China started with a single stone. If you practice good habits, starting small and working your way up to greater change in time, you will accomplish much more than if you try to accomplish everything at once. As you create new, healthier routines for yourself, you'll improve the way you tackle the process of change. Start your journey of self-discipline and selfimprovement with a single step, and before you've even realized how much work you've put in, you will forge a new identity.

3. FORGING A NEW IDENTITY

“It's hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying belief that led you to your past behavior. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven't changed who you are." — JAMES CLEAR

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hen we're young, we absorb information faster because there is so much to learn. We learn many basic skills like reading, math, and languages. Social skills are also developed early on in life. We have to adjust to the demands of our society, learn how to be an active part of that society, and define ourselves as individuals at the same time. Because we are so attuned to learning, we are heavily influenced by what others say about us and how they describe us. We don't know who we are, so we look to others to define us. Sometimes this comes in the form of different social groups. Think of the stereotypical cliques in schools. There are kids who love to learn and kids who aren't as great at math or science but excel in different areas like sports. There are quiet kids and class clowns who thrive off of attention. Of course, these labels are largely arbitrary at such a young age, often applied by parents and teachers more so than by ourselves. Still, the way our family, friends, and educators perceive us when we're young can have a large part in defining who we become when we grow up. Since we learn most if not all of our lessons from our parents and teachers when we're kids, we trust what they say. If a teacher says we're disruptive in class, or if they say we're bad at math, we tend to accept these things to be true. Maybe we could get better at math if we really applied ourselves, but because we've been told math just isn't our strong suit, we have less

motivation to try in the class. In short, what people say about us influences what we're interested in, and ultimately what kind of identity we apply to ourselves. This is only reinforced by the many people, both in our lives and in the media we consume, who urge us not to change. We are always told to accept who we are and to be true to ourselves. While a little self-confidence isn't a bad thing, we shouldn't be so confident that we can find no fault in our actions, as this can leave us stuck in these bad habits and false identities that others have created for us. If you feel like you're struggling to accomplish your goals in life, and maybe even like you're not capable of improving, the last thing you need to hear is this constant bombardment of "don’t change.” When we hear this rhetoric, we start to believe that even if we could improve ourselves, maybe we shouldn’t. We put ourselves into a box and decide we’ll just be like that forever. If you grow up being told you aren’t a good artist, you stop painting, so you never know how good you could get if you keep trying to improve. This is true with every good habit that falls by the wayside and every bad habit we allow to persist because we don’t think we need to change ourselves. Eventually, you develop a sort of “static self,” where you decide, “This is who I am, and I’m never going to change.” You begin to believe that change really is impossible, which effectively stunts you from ever trying to grow. You lose the drive to correct your bad habits. Worse, you start to see bad habits as an unchangeable part of your identity, suggesting that these habits are unchangeable too. As you know by now, it is entirely possible to change your habits, but you may not have realized just how much this can help you redefine who you are.

IDENTIFYING YOURSELF THROUGH YOUR HABITS

What is a self-identity, and how is it formed? There isn’t one correct answer to this question, and plenty of people have debated its answer. Some psychologists and theorists believe that your personality is predominantly a product of your genes, while others believe your personality comes exclusively from the experiences you have in life. Still, others believe that the real answer is a mix of these two theories. Whatever you believe, you can certainly see how your life and the people you know shape who you are to at least some extent. Whether it’s a teacher deciding you are the “quiet kid” or a particularly harsh breakup that makes you warier of future relationships, you react to events that occur in your life. In the same way, you are also influenced and defined by the actions you take. If you were asked to describe yourself to someone you’d never met before, what would you say? You’d probably include some information about your home life, your job, and your interests. You might call yourself an avid reader, a gamer, an artist, or a film buff. You probably wouldn’t start talking about whether you’re compassionate, honest, or adventurous, even though these are all personality traits. We tend to define ourselves by what we do, to the extent that it often becomes who we are. We ally ourselves with certain groups based on what we like to spend our time doing. If part of our identity is what we do, and habits are the actions we take frequently and repeatedly, then habits must play into our identity. We look at our behaviors, our habits, and we decide this is who we are, or at least a large part of the whole picture. Since habits play such a large role in how we see ourselves and how others see us, then in order to change ourselves, we must change our habits. Only by changing the actions we take on a daily basis can we create a significant,

lasting transformation and redefine ourselves as the best versions of ourselves we can possibly be. The Importance of Belief When learning a new skill or trying to adopt a new habit, how important is your own belief in your identity? A 1997 study on middle school children’s ability to learn instruments didn’t set out to answer this question, but the experiment provides valuable insight into its answer nevertheless. Instead, the study asked why some kids are more gifted at learning an instrument than others. It began with a survey of the students where researchers asked kids how long they thought they’d play their new instrument. Some kids decided they might only try it out for the year, some said they’d keep playing through middle or high school, and others said they’d play their instrument their whole lives. The scientists then divided these responses into short-term, medium-term, and long-term commitment levels. From there, researchers kept track of how much time the kids spent practicing and how much their musical aptitude progressed over time. They compared this data to the commitment levels the students assigned themselves at the beginning of the study. What they found was that there was a marked difference between the skill levels of kids with long-term commitments to their instrument and kids with short-term commitments. In fact, “The long-term commitment group, with a mere twenty minutes of weekly practice, progressed faster than the short-term commitment group who practiced for an hour and a half” (Davies, 2020, para. 9). Kids who had long-term commitments and practiced for longer periods of time improved the most out of the whole group. While practice does have some impact on how good these kids were at their instruments, it seems clear from the results that it was not the most important factor. Instead, the biggest catalyst for change was how long the

kids thought they’d play their instruments. In other words, kids with longterm commitments didn’t just see themselves as kids who play instruments. They saw themselves as musicians. This study shows just how important your perception of yourself is in determining how well you perform in a given area. It isn’t enough to write out a list of good habits and robotically go through the motions of checking them off each day. You must also identify with the goal you’re trying to achieve. If you want to build your stamina so you can run a mile, you must think of yourself as a runner. If you want to lose excess weight by improving your eating habits, you must think of yourself as a healthy eater. Once you start to identify yourself by these in-groups, it becomes easier to commit yourself to the same habits that other people in the groups would follow. When you believe you’re a runner, you’ll find the strength to do a lap around the neighborhood before work, because that’s what a runner would do. If you’re a healthy eater, you’ll follow a diet plan and cook nutritious meals for yourself because that’s what a healthy eater would do. Conceptualizing your identity will help you improve your habits far more effectively and reliably than just about any other strategy.

THE THREE LAYERS OF BEHAVIORAL CHANGE

According to author and habit expert James Clear, behavioral change is made up of three different components. These are “a change in your outcomes, a change in your processes, or a change in your identity” (Clear, 2018, p. 62). You can picture behavioral change like a circle with three layers, each one getting closer to the center of the circle. The outermost layer is the outcome layer, the middle layer is the process layer, and the innermost layer is the identity layer. Let’s break these three layers down more to better understand what each of them means.

The most surface-level layer, the outcome layer, is where goal-setting takes place. As the name implies, this layer focuses on the outcomes of your actions rather than your motivations or the actions themselves. It includes the results you want to see from your efforts, though it doesn’t provide you with much of a clear roadmap of how to get there. The outcome layer is made up of targets that range from very general ideas for improvement, like

“read more,” to very specific ones, like “complete a marathon that’s happening a month from now.” Moving inwards, you encounter the process layer. This represents the changes in your behavior you make to achieve your goals. In other words, this layer houses the habits that bring you closer to whatever you are trying to accomplish. Habits like “go to bed at the same time every day” and “save some money with every paycheck” are great, but only if you know why you’re doing them. Otherwise, you will have trouble sticking to them. This is why they are the middle layer in the behavioral change circle. You will need to either establish your goals or define your identity before you will know what habits you should adopt. The identity layer is in the center of the circle. This layer deals with changes you make to your beliefs and your view of yourself. It involves thinking of yourself in a different light, whether that means being honest about your shortcomings so you know how you can improve, or seeing the agency you have over the outcome of your life. If you can change your worldview and start to truly believe you can become the person you want to be, you will cut through the biases and judgment that hold you back from practicing effective habits. Typically, people start at the outside of the circle and work their way in, but this isn’t the most effective method. When you direct your focus only to the outcome of your actions, these being the goals you set for yourself, you’re pointing yourself in a direction with no tools or motivation for actually getting to your destination. Rather than starting with the outermost layer, start with the innermost one and progress outwards. Begin by focusing on your identity, and then move toward defining and implementing the habits that align with the person you believe you are. If you start in the center and move out toward the surface, you will start to see the outcomes you desire taking shape.

Traditional Outcome-Focused Habits Versus Identity-Focused Habits Many people are advised to set goals as their first step toward turning their life around. While it’s good to know what you want in life, trying to set goals when you don’t have much of an idea of why you care about them isn’t necessarily the most effective method. You might end up picking the wrong goals for you, or you might have the right goals but no underlying reason to pursue them other than societal expectations. Additionally, you may spend too much time worrying about the right goal and reviewing your goals, and not nearly enough time actually making progress toward them. Conventional self-improvement advice generally starts by suggesting you lay out your goals as your groundwork. This is a pretty easy first step, so it’s not much of a stumbling block for most people. The issue is that many never fully move past this step if they start here. You can write out a list and decide on some habits you’d like to implement, but eventually, your willpower fades and you give up on these goals. Maybe you try again in a few months, only to achieve similar or worse results. What’s the problem? How come no matter how many times you try to set your goals, you can’t follow through on them? When you start with your goals and develop your process from there, you are beginning with the outcome you want to see. This means that, inherently, you don’t see yourself as someone who already embodies the qualities you want to have, if to a lesser extent. If you say you want to learn to play the piano to start practicing, you are saying you’re not the type of person who would normally practice piano. The practice is just a way to achieve your goal, and you have no reason to practice past the goal you’ve set. Now consider the perspective you might have if you instead said, “I am a pianist. A pianist practices, so that means I practice.” You’re doing a better job of setting yourself up for success because you’re already identifying with your desired outcome. Your goal should not be simply to

get better at the piano. It should be to become a pianist. When you start thinking of your actions as an extension of yourself, “Your motivation will no longer stem from the need to act for the sake of acting, it will stem from the need to act for the sake of becoming” (Itani, 2019, para. 31). You practice good habits because that’s just who you are, and it’s a lot harder to give up on something you see as an intrinsic part of yourself.

GETTING STUCK IN A CYCLE

Self-improvement can often feel like an endless cycle of hopeful beginnings, self-sabotage, and the seemingly-inevitable crashing and burning that follows. You may start to believe your efforts are about as futile as a hamster running in a wheel in its cage, never making any progress and ending up exactly where you started. This can be frustrating because you know you can be better. You know you’re capable of making progress on your goals, but you just don’t seem to be able to maintain that progress for long enough to make a difference. Let’s say you want to be more financially responsible. When you first make this commitment, it’s not too hard to put a portion of your paycheck in your savings account every month. Once you have a few hundred dollars saved up, or even a few thousand dollars, you feel great. You’re on top of the world, knocking your goals out of the park without issue. But rather than encouraging you to maintain the habit, you start feeling like you can take a break since you’ve done so well. At a certain point, you seem to reach an upper limit that you can’t surpass. Maybe you splurge on something nice for yourself, or you pay less attention to how your next paycheck is distributed. Almost without noticing, you’ve lost all motivation to save, and you’re back to your old spending habits. You might even be spending more than you were initially. You know you’re capable of saving, so it’s not your own abilities that are keeping you from saving more. Instead, the problem lies with the static self. Escaping the Static Self As mentioned earlier in the chapter, seeing your identity as a “static self” keeps you from experiencing lasting change. If you think to yourself, “I’ve

never been able to save much money before. I’m just not the kind of person who can resist impulse purchases,” then your actions will follow your beliefs. When you don’t believe that you can change, you won’t change. Abandon the idea of the static self in favor of the “becoming self.” The becoming self isn’t so caught up in defining itself in terms of the past; instead, it looks toward the future and focuses on the potential for change. It is always raising the bar, and it recognizes that just because you slip up once or twice, this doesn’t mean you can’t recover and improve. When you start to view yourself through this lens, you’ll see that many of the limitations that once held you back simply fall away. You can break free of the hamster wheel and push past your upper limits because you finally believe that you have no upper limits. This worldview motivates you to become the best version of yourself. Adopting Identity-Based Habits Adopt new habits using a simple two-step system. First, define who you are and who you would like to become. Once you have a solid sense of the ideal version of yourself and identify with that person, then you can select habits that someone with that identity would practice. In essence, you are asking yourself two questions: 1. Who do I want to be? 2. If I believe I am the person I want to be, what do I have to do to affirm that belief? Do you dream of being an accomplished author? Then do what an author does. Write a little every day, because an author is always writing. Put genuine care and passion into your work so you can captivate your audience, even if your current audience is only yourself.

Do you strongly identify with being an athlete? Then do what an athlete does. Find time to exercise every day so you stay in shape. Eat right so you have the fuel you need to perform. Keep trying even when the road ahead seems difficult because an athlete doesn’t throw in the towel until the game is over. If you think of yourself in terms of who you want to be, not just what you want to do, the way to achieve this dream will follow naturally. This is how you affirm your idea of yourself, and in time, become the person you already view yourself as.

WORKSHEET: CREATING HABITS THAT ARE IN LINE WITH YOUR IDENTITY

In order to encourage the greatest change in ourselves, we must change how we see and identify ourselves. By adopting a new identity, one that lets us see ourselves as the type of person we most want to be, we understand what kind of habits we need to adopt to fully embody this identity. Imagining Your Identity Consider the kind of person you admire most and who embodies the qualities you’d like to have for yourself. Maybe you’re thinking of professional athletes who work hard every day or well-off entrepreneurs who are their own bosses. You likely admire these kinds of people because they have something you want for yourself. After you’ve identified the kinds of people living the life you’d like to have for yourself, imagine living in their shoes. Start thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur, or an athlete, or whatever identity you pictured. Ask yourself what a successful entrepreneur would do in your situation. If they had excess money, would they spend it, or would they save and invest it? If they worked a tedious job, but they wanted to start their own company, would they give up on their dream and just go back to work? Or think about what you, as an athlete, should do when you don’t really feel like working out or when you’re tempted to binge on unhealthy foods. When you really start identifying with these identities, the right choice will be clear. Questions for Thought When you’re establishing your new identity, ask yourself these questions: 1. What kind of person excels in the areas I struggle in?

2. Who is someone I admire who’s achieving what I want for myself? 3. What sort of habits would that kind of person follow? 4. What sort of bad habits would they definitely get rid of in order to be successful in their field? Example: An Athletic Identity As an example, let’s say you decide you are going to identify as an athlete. What is your first step after you make that decision? Some people might run out and immediately buy a new wardrobe of exercise clothes. This might be something an athlete would own, but is it really integral to being one? Someone could call themselves an athlete regardless of what they wear— the most important aspect is what they do, not their wardrobe. It’s easy to spend a lot of money ‘preparing’ for your new identity and never actually take up the habits that define that identity. If you exhaust your willpower without making any notable change in your life, the only thing that has changed is that you’re now stuck with a pile of yoga pants and tank tops you won’t wear, and you’re out the money you spent on them. Instead of buying new clothes first, start with the most defining aspects of being an athlete. Look at your schedule and see where you can make time to exercise. Decide on your workout routines, and then start practicing them regularly, working to turn them into habits as soon as possible. Even if you can’t get to the gym every day, you can still do some pushups at home or jog around the block. Only then should you consider less important aspects of being an athlete like clothes.

4. BREAKING YOUR BAD HABITS

“All bad habits start slowly and gradually and before you know you have the habit, the habit has you.” — ZIG ZIGLAR

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o matter what bad habit you’ve fallen into, you likely know just how difficult it can be to break it. It’s easy to see why something like smoking or drinking takes a lot of effort to quit, as you’ve trained your body to respond to the addictive chemicals in them. But why is it almost just as hard to stop procrastinating or sleeping in? These actions aren’t addictive, right? Well, in a sense, they are. Remember the habit loop we discussed in Chapter 1. The loop consists of the cue, the routine, and the reward. Let’s say your bad habit is eating junk food after a frustrating day at work. The cue is the difficult day, the routine is eating snacks, and your reward is the little boost to your mood when the sugar from the snacks makes your brain produce dopamine. Dopamine is like a natural addictive substance, and it trains your brain to repeatedly crave a mood boost. Therefore, you get stuck in the habit of eating junk food. Breaking the habit without replacing it with anything else would mean restricting your brain’s access to dopamine, and you naturally resist this, even though it only makes you more reliant on these external sources to regulate your mood. Bad habits are so difficult to break because the more you indulge in them, the more you start to think of them as sources of happiness. You may be more prone to bad habits if you feel more unfulfilled in your life or if you have an especially difficult job or home situation. You’ll be more receptive to dopamine wherever you can get it, and you’ll feel the loss of the

dopamine much more heavily than if you had other, healthier and more long-term sources of fulfillment in your life. You become reliant on your bad habits to help you through difficult moments, which only increases your dependency. After reading this, you may worry that there’s nothing you can do to manage your habits. Even if it seems like they have grown out of control, don’t give up hope. You can still wrangle your cravings, adopt better habits, and balance your mood without the ‘help’ of these unhealthy habits.

THREE WAYS TO BREAK A BAD HABIT

You are never trapped in a bad habit forever. There is always a way to leave bad behaviors behind and feel more in control of your life. You can also find other ways to fill any gaps in happiness and comfort in your life that these habits might have been replacing. For example, if you’re biting your nails or lips to relieve stress, try reducing your stress levels through regular yoga or exercise instead. This is a healthier alternative with a net positive impact on your body and your mentality, and it interferes with the cues you’ve inadvertently trained yourself to look for. The first step in managing any habit is understanding where it comes from and why you engage in it. This allows you to deal with the root of the problem, not just the symptom, which in turn means your solution will have a more permanent effect. When you’re breaking a bad habit, there are three methods and general rules you should keep in mind. These are cue awareness, the “I don’t” replacement, and the “if-then” method. Know Your Cues How conscious are you of the little things that influence your thoughts each day? Different experiences, moods, objects, and situations can lead you to engage in bad habits. Some cues are very obvious, while others are nearly imperceptible if you’re not paying enough attention. For example, if you’re often tempted by sweet foods, then of course, spotting a box of cookies left out on the counter is going to tempt you to eat one. But your cue for eating sweets might be something harder to notice, like speaking to a certain frustrating person in your life or having a certain upsetting topic come up. If money troubles stress you out, then any talk of your financial situation

might send you reaching for the snacks, even if the two things seem completely unrelated at first glance. If you derive comfort from your bad habit, you’re going to instinctively seek it out when you feel uncertain or unsafe. It’s always easier to deal with bad habits if you understand what your cues are. That way, you can learn to avoid them, or at least to be prepared for the craving that follows. In order to learn your cues, look for patterns in your behaviors. Think about what’s usually happening right before you feel compelled to indulge in a bad habit. Mentally retrace your steps and look for events that pop up more than once. Next time you are in these situations, you’ll remember the impact they have on you. This can be all you need to snap yourself out of a bad habit loop before you can indulge in a reward. A little bit of mindfulness training can work wonders on your ability to take notice of your cues. A study in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence Journal found that people who practiced mindful exercises like meditation had “a 36% smoking quit rate compared to 15% through regular therapy” (The Smarter Brain, 2017, para. 32). As you become more aware of your actions, the actions of others and the impact both of these things have on your emotions, it will become easy to identify the sources of discouragement and desperation in your life that make the cravings for bad habits more persistent. You will also have an easier time getting these impulses back under control. Stop Saying “I Can’t” We tend to rely on the phrase “I can’t” much more than we should. “I can’t” implies something is stopping us from completing a task. If we say we can’t do something, we are giving up our agency and giving it to someone or something else. This doesn’t help us break a bad habit, because of course, we are completely physically capable of engaging in it. Just because we

tried to relinquish responsibility doesn’t mean it’s true. If we decide we can’t do something when we very clearly can, the only wall we’ve put between ourselves and a bad habit disappears, leaving us defenseless. Now, consider the phrase “I don’t” instead. Unlike “I can’t,” “I don’t” puts the burden of sticking to your decision squarely on yourself. Perhaps more importantly, it makes refraining from a certain habit part of your identity. You’re an athlete, so you don’t lay around on the couch when you should be working out. You’re a hard worker, so you don’t procrastinate assignments. You regain your agency, which puts you in a position of power over your bad habits. When you’re confronted with a temptation, try saying “I don’t” instead of “I can’t,” and you will solidify your commitment to your new identity. Set Goals With “If-Then” Statements An “if-then” statement is commonly used by coders. It tells the code to check for a certain condition, and if that condition is met, some part of the code is run and a certain action is performed. You don’t need to know anything about coding to use “if-then” statements yourself, though it can help to picture your habits as a sort of computer program. The cue that triggers a bad habit, the ‘if’ part of the statement, is the input. The routine you engage in, the ‘then’ part of the statement, is the output you get from a certain input. “If-then” statements help because they are very specific. They show you how one decision logically follows another, for better or worse. If you are trying to manage a bad habit of overspending, your current “if-then” statement might look something like, “If I see an advertisement for a shirt I like, then I will make an impulsive purchase.” You want to change the output to a new, better response. You might instead say to yourself, “If I see an advertisement for a shirt I like, then I will bookmark it and come back to

it in five days to see if I still want it.” You set up an automatic response that takes the place of your initial reaction. The more you think about and use your new “if-then” statement, the less effective the old one is. You are effectively rewriting your internal code and removing the ‘glitch’ that is the bad habit.

HOW TO REPLACE A BAD HABIT

As previously mentioned, it’s easier to replace a habit than it is to stop one without any replacement. When you replace a habit, you direct your attention elsewhere when you encounter a certain cue. The trigger and the reward may be the same or similar, but the response changes, which breaks up the association between a bad habit and a reward your body craves. There are three key steps for replacing a bad habit. These are mapping out your habit loop, taking notice of the reward your bad habit gives you and replacing that reward with the promise of something better. Identify the Steps in Your Habit Loop For each bad habit, identify and write out the different stages of the habit loop. Figure out what your cues, routines, and rewards are. Pay careful attention to the circumstances that trigger the habit. You might be attempting to avoid something important that requires your attention, or you could be trying to even out an emotional imbalance. When you understand what cues lead to stress, anxiety, and frustration, then look at how you respond to these cues. Break your routine down into its most specific steps. For example, if you tend to procrastinate, examine what specific behaviors are part of your habit. Maybe you watch TV or YouTube videos when you know you should be working, or maybe you start working on unimportant busy-work tasks instead of the ones with looming deadlines. The more specific you are, the easier it will be to figure out what kind of reward you get from engaging in these habits. Completing less immediate tasks gives you a false sense of accomplishment that makes it easier to procrastinate, as you still feel like you’re getting something done even while the major assignment you’re putting off remains untouched. Watching

a funny show makes you forget your problems and temporarily eases your stress, though this stress can come back as soon as you turn the show off. This can encourage you to keep consuming content, avoiding the moment where reality sets back in. Knowledge is incredibly powerful when you’re trying to end a bad habit. Habits have the most power over your actions when you don’t even notice they’re there. By identifying them and bringing them to light, you become more conscious of your actions, and you’ll have an easier time hitting the brakes when you next encounter a habit cue. Pay Attention to How You Feel When You Engage in a Bad Habit Bad habits are especially difficult to break because they give you a muchneeded boost in some areas of our life that you are struggling in. If you’re not happy with your career or relationship, this distress can manifest itself in bad habits. You might spend more time procrastinating because you don’t enjoy your job, and you have little passion for it. You don’t feel like you’re getting fulfillment from work, so you turn to surfing through cute or funny internet videos instead. You might drink habitually because it helps you avoid negative feelings you’d rather suppress than confront. An impulse purchase might be a way for you to forget about an argument you had with your spouse. Each bad habit can typically be tied back to a certain bad feeling related to its cue and a certain positive feeling related to its reward. However, you should also note how permanent these feelings are. Sure, buying an expensive jacket or purse might give you something to be excited about when you’re struggling to be enthusiastic about much in your life. But how long does this feeling last? You probably won’t get more than a few minutes of excitement out of it, especially when you realize the more long-term damage it’s done to your bank account. Ultimately, you cannot fully fill any void inside yourself with material goods. They can make you

feel better for a few moments, but they never yield lasting change. More often than not, they actually make you feel worse in the long run, as they interfere with your ability to achieve your goals. The same is true with a habit like procrastination. Once you finish watching a video, how do you feel knowing you now have to do the same amount of work in even less time than you started with? You’ll probably be more stressed than before, and any positive effects will be absorbed into the growing ball of tension in the pit of your stomach. These are the perils of the instant gratification of bad habits. You achieve short-term pleasure, but your long-term happiness suffers. This isn’t much of a reward in the long run. When you see your ‘rewards’ for what they are —that is, just a Band-Aid slapped on a bullet wound, a temporary solution to a complicated and serious problem—they will become much less appealing. This will allow you to let go of them in favor of more long-term rewards. Leverage Curiosity to Override the Reward Curiosity is one of the most powerful urges we have. It may be true that “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” but our brains tend to think lessthan-logically about the rewards we receive. If there’s a possibility we might get a better reward, even if we’re not quite sure what that reward is, we’re often willing to give up whatever we currently have in search of something better. Think of it this way: let’s say you’re on the game show The Price is Right, and there are two doors with prizes behind them. You’ve just opened the first door and you see it’s a new TV. It’s a nice reward, but if you stop here, you’ll never know what other prize you might be passing up. This curiosity is why so many people decide to find out “what’s behind door number two,” even if they already have a perfectly fine prize. They could get

something better or something worse, but they won’t know unless they take that leap of faith.

Your brain is always on the hunt for the best reward it can get. The reward you get from your current habit is like the prize behind the first door. You know what it is, and maybe it seems like a good enough reward, regardless of its long-term impact. But there’s always a chance you could get a better reward if you replaced this habit with a better one. This is the allure of door number two. You know how eating junk food makes you feel. You get the temporary satisfaction of eating something sweet that ultimately gets washed away in disappointment and potentially even self-loathing. You don’t know what kind of reward you might get if you started eating healthier. You’re probably curious about how good it would feel, physically and mentally, to fuel up with healthy foods and love your body. Let this curiosity drive you to change your behaviors and open the second door. There’s also a natural sense of curiosity that comes from thinking about your habits and why you feel the way you do. When a craving hits, instead of immediately rectifying the problem by giving in to it, lean into your curiosity about why the craving occurs. Think about the thoughts and physical sensations you’re feeling, and really consider them for a while before you make any move to act on them. This gives you some time for the craving to start fading away. Again, mindfulness helps here. Being more mindful of your emotions and where they come from encourages you to

delve deep into the rationale behind your behaviors, which will eventually help you rectify the problem's source.

WORKSHEET: BREAKING BAD HABITS

Breaking bad habits can be a difficult and sometimes frustrating process. You don’t want to get sucked back into your vices, but at the same time, you’ve likely been practicing them for so long that the cue-routine-reward cycle is second nature. If the task seems overwhelming and impossible, start small and work your way up to big changes, just like you would when building a habit. Taking the First Step You can’t fix a habit if you aren’t aware of it in the first place. Understanding what makes you tick is the first step in correcting any unfortunate behavior. This means setting aside the guilt and resentment you feel when you give in to these habits and taking a more logical, accepting approach. If you jump right to blaming yourself, you’ll start thinking of the problem as a lost cause. If you keep an open mind and actively try to become more aware of your actions without unnecessary judgment, you’ll find more success. A simple practice that improves your awareness is making a note of your habit each time you do it. Carry around a journal, or use a note-taking app on your phone. Each time you find yourself doing a bad habit, write it down, along with the time and the context of what happened right before it. At the end of the day—or, if your habit is less frequent, at the end of the week—look back at your notes and pay attention to how often you gave in to a habit craving and what caused you to cave. As you start to bring the issue into perspective, understanding how often these habits occur, you’ll have that little push you need to commit to doing something about the habit. Questions for Thought

Try to answer these questions next time you feel the need to practice a bad habit: 1. What were you doing when you were hit with the craving? 2. How do you feel before and after the habit? 3. Who are you with? Are they helping you resist the craving, are they enabling bad behavior, or are they the cause of the craving? 4. What time of day did the craving occur? 5. Have you experienced a similar cue before? How did you react then? Each question helps you achieve greater awareness about your actions and their consequences on your happiness. Example: Checking Social Media If you tend to check social media so frequently that it distracts you from the world around you, it can be a harmful habit. Social media is addictive by its nature, so it’s not always easy to recognize that you have a problem with it. To gain greater awareness of the problem, mark down every time you pick up your phone and open Twitter or Facebook. Maybe you thought you only check these sights a few times a day, but you might review your notes and find you’re checking them dozens of times when you should be doing something more productive. This can be a big wake-up call. Now consider what was happening when you chose to check your social media. Were you at an uncomfortable gathering, feeling awkward, and reaching for your phone only to give yourself something to do? Were you bored by another person and looking for an escape from the conversation? Were you at work with a big project coming up, and you wanted to think about anything other than getting started on it? These can all contribute to

reinforcing your social media habit. As you make these connections, it becomes easier to divert the habit and replace it with a different routine. You might have difficulty breaking free of these cycles right away. You might try to replace your habits and stumble a few times along the way. But if you persevere and you don’t give up hope, you will find success. Make small changes each day, and eventually, they will build into a habit revolution.

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THE NEW YOU—YOUR SECRET SUCCESS FORMULA FOR CREATING LASTING HABITS

5. THE SEVEN SECRETS TO CREATING LASTING HABITS

“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.” — STEPHEN COVEY

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hile bad habits are often easy to create and difficult to end, good habits are often hard to create and tough to maintain, at least at first. They may not have the same level of instantaneous reward as bad habits do, which means you’re less likely to get that addictive feeling from them. This means you need to put more work into developing them. Most good habits don’t become ingrained in your daily schedule by coincidence. They take time and effort to develop, but once you put in the effort at the beginning and practice them until they stick, they become as easy to keep as any bad habit ever was. In fact, you may even have an easier time sticking to them after a few months because the benefits are just so much better. In the end, it is important to see the big picture: Good habits are the key to lasting success and happiness. They help you improve your productivity, take more control of your life, and replace any bad habits that are holding you back. The more effective habits you practice, the easier it will become for you to achieve your goals, as they will become a natural part of your day, just like showering and getting dressed. The barriers that hold you back from being the greatest possible version of yourself will be all but eliminated. The effort you put into harnessing good habits will pay off in dividends for years to come. Luckily, the amazing benefits that come with good habits are within your grasp. The best habits won’t develop without any work on your part, but habit building doesn’t have to be a grueling slog that drains your energy and

motivation either. If you want to create and stick to good habits as easily as possible, you can use various methods to make the process more accessible. These aren’t exactly magic quick-fixes or “life hacks,” but they do help you take a habit from a thought to an action ingrained in your daily routine. By following these seven secrets, you can create lasting habits that have the power to drastically improve your quality of life.

5.1: ACHIEVING BIG THINGS WITH TINY HABITS

“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” — WARREN BUFFET

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hen you think of your greatest goals in life, how do you think you’ll achieve them? Let’s say you want to save enough money to retire comfortably when the time comes. Maybe you think the only way you’ll do this is by putting thousands of dollars into your 401(k) all at once. However, this becomes a problem when you think of your situation more realistically. You probably can’t afford to take three or four months’ worth of paychecks out of your bank account right away. Even if you could divert 80 or 90% of each paycheck to your retirement account by moving back home with your parents or selling your car, where would that leave you? Your quality of life would suffer, and you’d get burned out on the whole idea before you were able to save much at all. Now, consider what would happen if you put just 10 or 20% of each paycheck into your retirement account instead. You most likely won’t miss the money much. It might involve a sacrifice as small as going out to eat one less time each month, which you can surely do without too much struggle. It requires less self-restraint, which means you can keep the practice up for longer. Even though you are putting less money into the account with every deposit than you did in the first example, by maintaining the habit over many months and years, you end up with more money saved overall, without ever significantly interfering with your ability to treat yourself from time to time. This is the amazing power of small habits. You don’t need to make a grand gesture to see a huge change in your life. You

only need to practice one small, positive behavior over and over again, and let the effects pile up over time. These tiny habits that don’t take a lot of effort are known as micro habits. Each micro habit doesn’t have a huge impact individually, but it can lead to a startling level of change as you compound their results just by sticking to them every day.

WHAT’S A MICRO HABIT?

Micro habits have the lowest barrier to entry of any kind of habit. They are perfect if you have tried to build habits before, but you’ve never managed to keep them up for long enough to make a difference. Micro habits are so easy that just about anyone can do them. They help you divide a task into its most basic components and eventually work your way up to greater change. Maybe you want to start working out, but the idea of lifting 50-pound weights and running multiple miles on the treadmill sounds far too difficult. This might be a goal you’d like to achieve eventually, but starting out with an overly exhausting exercise routine is the fastest possible way to give up on exercising altogether. Instead, break the larger habit of going to the gym up into micro habits. Start with something incredibly simple, like doing a single push-up. Try to do it around the same time each day, and ideally, during the time you would go to the gym if you could commit to it. If you know you would only have time to go to the gym after work, then do one push-up as soon as you clock out or right when you arrive home. A single push-up is easy. You know you can do at least one push-up a day. As you repeat this for at least a week, the mental walls preventing you from exercising will lower themselves, as you no longer associate it with exhaustion. Once you’ve mastered the single push-up and it becomes nearly automatic each day, move on to two, and work your way up. Eventually, you can add more to your exercise routine, and you may even start hitting the gym. Before long, you won’t be dragging yourself to the gym—you’ll actually be looking forward to it because you took your time, and you know you’re more than capable of completing your workout. A goal that was once almost unthinkable becomes something you’ll do regularly.

Micro habits reduce the risk of burnout. They let you rely on self-discipline rather than motivation or willpower, which are more likely to peter out quickly. They also start training your brain to anticipate the natural reward that comes from following through on your goals and checking something off your to-do list, no matter how easy the task may be. Your success starts to snowball, improving your confidence and capability every day as you see the incredible progress you’re making on a daily basis. A single push-up is just one type of micro habit. Others include reading one page of a book each day, writing one paragraph of an essay, putting five dollars from every paycheck in a savings account, journaling about one good experience you had each day, and many more. Whatever your ultimate goal is, break it up into its tiniest steps and work your way up at a comfortable pace. The Science Behind Micro Habits Why do New Year’s resolutions and different motivational methods fail to deliver results, but micro habits succeed? The answer to this lies in the science of your subconscious brain. Though New Years is the typical time to start trying to turn your life around for the better, studies find that as many as “80 percent of New Year’s resolutions don’t live to see the light of day by the second week of February” (Anagnos, 2019, para. 1). This isn’t a simple fluke of low motivation, or if so, many people are affected by it. There must be something about this style of self-improvement that just doesn’t connect with your brain. For one, the typical resolution is largely for show. You spend so long thinking about your goals that you never really act on them. In fact, you might psych yourself out because of how daunting your goals seem. You mull things over, but you don’t act. There’s also the trouble of waiting for a certain time of year to pursue change. When you think this way, you start to

believe that change is impossible at any other time. If you miss your window at the beginning of January, it’s incredibly easy to shrug and say, “Well, I’ll try again next year,” effectively wasting months of your life for no good reason. Finally, making a big resolution usually comes in the form of trying to make too many changes at once. If your New Year’s resolution is to get healthy and shed some extra weight, you probably make plans to hit the gym, start cooking healthy meals and quit junk food entirely all at once. This is too much for your brain to keep up with, and every time you decide to take a day off from exercise because you’re sore, or you order take-out because you forgot to go to the grocery store, you register these inevitable slip-ups as failure. You set the bar too high for yourself too quickly, which works directly against the feedback loop that keeps you engaged with a new habit. There’s no gradual buildup or solid framework, so your resolution collapses in on itself. Micro habits work because they exploit the same subconscious drives that lead to bad habits, but this time you get to benefit. It’s easy to get stuck in a bad habit because the action you perform is so small that it hardly seems worth disputing. Just one cookie couldn’t hurt, could it? But when you start having one cookie every other day, and when that one cookie turns to two, or three, or five, the damage you’re doing far exceeds your mental estimation. You don’t notice the impact your actions are having because the habit itself is so small. With micro habits, you follow the same pattern, but this time you use it for a positive benefit. You can do a single push-up the same way you can eat a single cookie, without much effort at all. You complete the habit loop and you feel rewarded for your efforts. This feeling keeps you coming back to the push-up every day, and you incrementally increase the effort you put in because of the positive feedback loop you’ve created. Now, it becomes easy

to expand on your good habits just as you would have expanded on your bad ones. Micro habits let you act alongside your subconscious, not against it, and they yield much better rewards as a result.

THE POWER OF BABY STEPS

We are constantly being told to aim big in our lives. If we want to start our own companies, we look to notable billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Gates. If we want to learn a new skill like painting, we study well-regarded artists like Picasso and Monet. But how true are their experiences to our own? We probably cannot run a new start-up company the same way Musk runs Tesla, and when we first put a brush to the canvas, we’re not exactly going to be painting Monets. These results might come eventually, but they’re hardly right around the corner. If we work ourselves up thinking that we’ll find that miraculous success right away, we’ll only be disappointed when our initial efforts fail to impress. This isn’t to say that we can never find this level of success, but if we’re expecting it in the first few weeks of starting a new habit, we’re going to have little desire to maintain it when we don’t see the results we pictured. Instead of aiming as high as possible, it can help to set your sights on something more realistic and easily attainable. See what other beginners did when they were first starting out, and keep your expectations grounded in reality. The micro habit method works because every action you take builds on the previous one, like a staircase. The first step of a habit staircase isn’t difficult. Anyone can do it. Trying to leap to the top of the staircase from the base is nearly impossible, but you will eventually get there if you take each step one at a time.

WORKSHEET: CREATING MICRO HABITS

Try creating some micro habits of your own that you can put into practice right now. Since these habits are so easy, there’s nothing stopping you from practicing them right away. The sooner you get started, the more improvement you will see over time. Separating the Micro Habits from the Macro Habits A micro habit is just a bite-sized version of a more daunting habit. Ideally, it should be as small as possible to really encourage you to get started. You can come up with a good micro habit by first identifying a macro habit you’d like to adopt, and then breaking it up into tiny steps. Consider the series of events you’d need to do for a complete habit, and start with the first and easiest action. Don’t worry about everything else; that will come later, once you’ve laid a good foundation for yourself and boosted your confidence. Four Steps to Success There are four key steps to follow when you’re implementing your first micro habit into your routine. 1. Select the micro habit you want to use. Make sure it’s something easy you can repeat every day, and choose something that aligns with your overarching aspirations. 2. Keep practicing the micro habit. Practice for at least a week before you attempt to make the task any more difficult. You are just trying to create a routine here, so don’t worry about whether the habit has any impact just yet.

3. Watch your progress. Once you’ve stuck to your mini habit for a week, think about how you feel. Were you able to stick to it? If so, it may be time to start upping the ante. If not, consider what roadblocks got in your way and how you can adjust for them. You may also need to divide your habit into something even smaller, as the goal is to choose something you have no excuse not to do. 4. Stick to the habit and gradually expand the task. After another week, add the next logical step. After a month, add another, but try not to increase by more than about 10% intensity at a time. Keep repositioning your goalposts, and make sure to continue tracking your progress and managing any issues that come up. If necessary, go back to a previous micro habit should the current one be too difficult to maintain just yet. Example: Reading a Book Most books are far too long to tackle in one sitting. You might try to break it up chapter by chapter, but even this can be a lot of work if you have an especially busy schedule. If you want to become a more frequent reader, start by committing to reading just one or two pages a day. Repeat this micro habit at the same time each day, for example, in the early morning when you’re eating breakfast or right before you go to bed. If the book grips you, it’s okay to read for a bit longer, but stick to a minimum of just a few pages for the first week or so. No matter how complex or even boring a book may be, you should have no trouble finding the time to read two pages in a day. It won’t be long before you’ve turned reading into a habit. From there, you can steadily increase how much you read, as long as you take things slow. Let your habit build until you’re reading a comfortable amount each day and you rarely, if ever, skip a day.

5.2: IMPROVE BY 1% EACH DAY

“True nobility is being superior to your former self” — ERNEST HEMINGWAY

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s mentioned in Chapter 5.1, a small change practiced consistently over time can have a huge positive impact. If you want to get in shape, drinking just one extra glass of water a day can help you curb cravings for sugary drinks and feel fuller in between meals. It’s not a large change, but this tiny act holds a lot of power. It’s tempting to try to radically overhaul your whole life. It’s the kind of abrupt change that TV and movie characters go through all the time. One day they are stuck in bad habits and unhealthy relationships, and the next day they’ve broken up with their significant other, put a toxic friend or boss in their place, given up smoking and drinking, and somehow found the time to redecorate their house too. This kind of change might sound nice, but it’s completely unrealistic. We don’t just snap our fingers and become a different person. Just as bad behaviors are the culmination of bad habits over many years, good behaviors are the culmination of many little changes over an extended period of time. Trying to improve by 100% all at once is going to leave you exhausted, frustrated, and potentially worse off than when you started. Even a 50 or 30% change is a lot to expect from yourself in a single day or week. Instead, try to replace just one bad choice with one good choice every day. Make a minor change to your habits, one that is easily maintained, and let yourself improve one step at a time. In other words, improve by 1% each day.

A 1% difference might seem insignificant at first. After all, if you got back a test grade and you got a 40%, a 41% wouldn’t make much of a difference. However, it doesn’t take long for all of these 1% improvements to keep adding up. In a week, you’d have a 47%. In just a month, you’d be at 70%, which is a substantial increase. Many little changes combine to make a big change, and this is even more true when you consider how the impact of these changes compounds over time.

COMPOUNDING RETURNS

‘Compounding’ is a term used in finance to refer to the interest that money makes over time. If you put money into a savings account, it doesn’t increase at the same rate forever. Let’s say you start with $1000, and you make 1% interest each month. At the end of the first month, the 1% interest would add $10, giving you a total of $1010. The month after, you’re making 1% interest again, but this time the interest is calculated on the $1010, not the original $1000. After month two, you’d have $1020.10. This still isn’t much, but you only need to look further down the line to see how quickly your money can grow. In a year, you’d have about $1127. In five years, you’d have $1816. This is nearly double your money, all with just 1% interest. Before long, you’re making an exponential return on your initial investment, and you’re still only increasing your savings by 1% each month. This concept is also referred to as “Kaizen”, meaning to “change for the good” in Japanese. The Japanese have been using this concept for decades as a continual improvement method and success strategy to improve work productivity and processes in business. You might be wondering, “How does this apply to self-improvement?” Think of yourself like the bank account in the previous example. Each time you make a 1% improvement, the ‘interest’ on your actions compound. If you’re compounding every day, this can add up fast. Each day that you make a small improvement, one that hardly interferes with your current schedule at all, you compound more and more. In just one year of 1% improvement each day, you will become 37 times better. This results in huge positive improvements over time, all without the need for drastic adjustments to your lifestyle.

Avoiding Compounding on Bad Habits Compounding is neither inherently good nor bad. You can have compound interest on the money in your savings account, but you can also have compound interest on your credit card debt. Similarly, you can compound bad habits the same way you compound good habits if you’re not careful. If you’re trying to save money but you’re tempted by a small unnecessary purchase, you might rationalize it by saying, “It’s only $5, what’s the harm?” The next week, you might say the same thing about a $10, a $20 one, or even a $50 one. You end up getting worse over time, and your original savings goal won’t be met if you don’t take steps to correct the problem. If you take a bad habit that compounds negatively and reduce the habit’s presence in your life by 1% every day, you undo the damage of years in a relatively short time. You balance out the harmful effects of bad habits by replacing them with better ones. Eventually, your good habits will outweigh your bad ones. All it takes is some time and dedication.

WORKSHEET: IDENTIFY METHODS FOR IMPROVEMENT

Starting small is the key to making big changes. The best way to do this is to identify ways you can improve that don’t take too much time or energy, so you can implement these methods right away. Start by considering which tasks or methods for improving a bad habit are so small that you have no reason not to do them. Once you have your list, you can make one improvement each day. Your Self-Improvement Savings Account Every 1% change you make may not seem like a lot, but these changes will add up over time, just like compounding interest. Think of these actions as ‘deposits’ in the savings account that is yourself. The more small deposits you make, the more there is to compound, and the more interest you will accrue. As long as you put even a small deposit into your personal bank account each day, your balance will grow exponentially. Questions for Thought When you’re trying to determine if an activity will help you improve by 1% every day, ask yourself the following questions: 1. Is this something I can commit to doing even on my busiest days? 2. Is this action either contributing to a good habit or helping me break free of a bad one? 3. What time will I do this every day? 4. What cue will lead me to practice this good change? Example: Improving Your Morning Routine

What would a 1% change look like in your morning routine? Let’s say you frequently run late to work, mostly because of wasted time lying in bed, scrolling through your phone or hitting the snooze button. A 1% improvement might be setting that second alarm just one or two minutes earlier, so you don’t have time to fall back asleep. Alternatively, you could move your phone a foot further away from your bed at night, so it’s not the first thing you grab when you wake up. These changes are minuscule, but they can help you make up for a lot of lost time without requiring you to commit to waking up half an hour earlier.

5.3: BREAKING HABITS INTO CHUNKS WITH MICROPRODUCTIVITY

“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.” — ALBERT EINSTEIN

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n especially large task, even a large task you intend to turn into a habit, can be daunting. The more difficult the behavior, the harder it will be to maintain for any long period of time. If you’re attempting to get more writing done and you try to set a goal of writing 10,000 words every single day, you’re going to burn out in a handful of days. On the other hand, if you try just writing 1,000 words each day, you can complete the same goal in 10 days and keep up the habit when you’re done. The consistency of the habit is more important than how quickly you can reach a certain milestone. Larger tasks also cause us to procrastinate more frequently. We might resist going to the gym every day if we know the exercise will make us exhausted and sore. We’re not going to look forward to it like we might if we did light exercise and eased ourselves into it. As productivity coach Melissa Gratias explains, “Breaking tasks down helps us to see large tasks as more approachable and doable, and reduces our propensity to procrastinate or defer tasks, because we simply don’t know where to begin” (Boogaard, 2019, para. 5). We can only handle so much at a time. A task that seems completely impossible at first becomes entirely doable when we work our way up to it, moving one step at a time. This idea is the basis of micro-productivity. With micro-productivity, you account for the mental and physical blocks that might prevent you from

completing a task if you tried to grapple with it all at once. You split a task into pieces, work on each piece one at a time, and slowly but surely see it through to the end. Micro-productivity is especially useful when it’s combined with the 1% improvement method. You can keep improving each day, but eventually you will reach a limit to your abilities. This is the perfect time to split a habit into chunks so you can get it done with less stress. This might mean completing pieces of a task throughout the day rather than all at once or switching up the format. Maybe instead of a numerical goal, you give yourself a length of time for which you’ll work on one task or vice versa. The more you divide the task, the easier it becomes to conquer.

WHY MICRO-PRODUCTIVITY WORKS

Incremental changes are much easier to implement than drastic ones. If you’ve learned anything from this book so far, it should be that habits are so powerful because their impact adds up. If you’re trying to be more productive, splitting a task up or gradually introducing a change can be the key to getting it to stick. If you normally wake up at 10:00 and you’re trying to get up at 8:00, you’re not going to be able to drag yourself out of bed if you don’t give yourself some adjustment time. Instead, set your alarm just five or ten minutes earlier every few days, and work in small increments until you’ve successfully made the change. On top of this, micro-productivity meshes well with your brain’s natural patterns. It accounts for the rhythms that influence your ability to either stick with a task or drop it entirely. When you utilize micro-productivity, you give yourself a specific goal, reduce the amount you have to worry about at a given time, and see results quicker than you would with larger habits. These factors all make it easier to stick to the habits you’re implementing. Goals are More Specific Vague tasks are incredibly daunting at first glance. If you don’t know where to begin, even simple tasks look overly complex. You don’t know where to start, so you procrastinate on getting started at all. Instead of jumping right in, you hem and haw for days, thinking about the best way to approach the task instead of just getting started. Micro-productivity lets you turn each of your desired habits into a sequence of specific goals. By breaking down a task, you know exactly where to start, how to proceed, and how long it will take before you’ve completed it.

With a clear to-do list, you reduce the barriers keeping you from getting started on implementing a new habit. Smaller Steps are Easier to Remember We can only remember so many things at once. If you’ve ever tried to cram for a test at school, or you’ve ever tried to remember everyone’s names at a work mixer, you know just how faulty your memory can be if you overload it. It’s better for us to gradually learn things over time rather than manage a lot of information at once. If we try to complete a multi-step habit right off the bat without splitting it up, we’re probably going to forget half the tasks, and it will take a lot longer to commit the habit to memory. Let’s return to the example of trying to wake up earlier. In the time between when your alarm goes off and when you have to leave for work, you’d probably like to get more done. Your morning routine with this extra time might include showering, getting dressed, reading, working out, making a healthy breakfast, packing lunch, and more. You have a lot of things to remember, and there’s a good chance that if you try to implement them all at once, all while you’re getting 10 minutes less sleep than you’re used to, there’s a good chance you’re going to forget something. Instead, split these tasks into chunks, and add each chunk in succession. When you first start waking up earlier, focus only on the bare necessities. This means showering, getting dressed, and eating breakfast. When you’ve successfully turned these tasks into habits, then work on adding in the next chunk, which might include swapping a ready-made breakfast for a homemade one and packing lunch. Finally, you can add things like reading and working out only when you have the basics down. This way, you don’t have to remember each new task all at once. You’ll have time to get used to the most basic ones and make them automatic before you add any more to your schedule.

It’s also a good idea to write the different steps of your news habits down and cross them off as you complete each one. This way, you know you won’t forget anything, even if you’re barely awake enough in the morning to stumble to the coffee pot. Progress is Easier to Recognize One of the hardest parts of sticking to a new habit is that the results of your efforts aren’t always evident right away. Habits create gradual change, and it can sometimes be frustrating to see that even though you have been practicing a habit for a few weeks, you haven’t yet seen the amazing results you dreamed of. Unfortunately, this is the nature of habits. However, you can keep yourself more motivated if you use micro-productivity, as it allows you to watch yourself progress in real time. As you complete each chunk of a habit, you get one step closer to fully implementing a larger habit, which is progress you can be proud of. Micro-productivity also makes it easier to figure out if your efforts are having any impact or if you’re on the wrong track. You don’t want to go through all the effort of establishing a habit just to find out that it doesn’t work for you, or worse, it actually makes things more difficult. By breaking a habit down into smaller parts, you can course-correct where you need to and change anything that isn’t setting you up to succeed. The faster you see your efforts yielding results, the more you believe in the power of the habit, and the more driven you are to keep it up.

WORKSHEET: TAKING ADVANTAGE OF MICRO-PRODUCTIVITY

You can use micro-productivity to get a big task or habit done with a series of small steps. Rather than getting caught up in how much work a task will take and procrastinating it, you can get started right away, and you’ll make progress toward your goals each day. Even though you set out less for yourself to do each day, taking advantage of micro-productivity lets you get more done in a shorter period of time. Breaking Up a Big Habit Drastic change doesn’t have to be the only way to get more done in your life. If you want to start practicing a good habit but you’re not sure where to start, breaking it up gives you a clear place to start and direction on what your next steps should be. Tackle one part of the habit at a time, and don’t add in another one until you’re certain it won’t become overwhelming. Micro-Productivity Steps Here are a few steps you can take right now to fast-track your microproductivity: 1. Identify your ultimate goal. Think of a significant habit change you’d like to add to your life. At this point, it may feel very intimidating, and you might not know where to begin. 2. Divide the habit into smaller, more manageable goals. Start with about 10% of your original goal. This might mean cooking a single homemade meal each week, completing one or two paragraphs of an essay every day, or waking up 10 minutes earlier. 3. Stick with the smaller goal until you’re comfortable, then increase it gradually. Every few weeks, you’ll get closer to fully

implementing that bigger habit, even if you once thought it would have been impossible. Example: Starting an Exercise Routine If you try to go from no exercise to an all-out 30 minute cardio routine, you probably won’t be able to stick with this new habit for very long, if you can even complete the first session. Instead, use micro-productivity to tackle it one step at a time. Start with five minutes of jumping jacks for about a week. Then add on another five minutes of jogging or a different cardio exercise. Work your way up to your 30 minute goal slowly, so you never feel so completely wiped by your workout that you don’t want to do it again the next day.

5.4: HABIT PILING

“The best way to make a lasting change is to develop one quality habit at a time.” — S. J. SCOTT

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e have talked a lot thus far about how to create new habits from scratch, but it’s also important to recognize that we already practice many habits each day. It’s entirely plausible to say all of our behaviors come from our habits in one way or another. Going to bed and waking up at the same time each day, brushing our teeth, getting dressed, going to work or school, and making meals are all habits that most people already have in their lives. With habit piling, you take your currently existing habits and pile new, related habits on top of them. The old habit becomes the cue for your new habit. Every time you practice an existing habit, which is already built into your schedule, you’re reminded to practice the new habit too. This is a natural and easy way to expand your currently existing habits into something more beneficial to your health or happiness.

HOW HABIT PILING ORIGINATED

Like the practice itself, the concept of habit piling is just an addition to an already tried and true method. It originates from a very familiar source: checklists. There is so much knowledge in the world today that effectively operates “under the hood.” For example, you might know how to use your computer, but very few people understand how every single part of a computer works, and fewer still could assemble one without any instructions. Additionally, it’s not a stretch to suggest that because so much knowledge goes into such a delicate process, it would be incredibly difficult for one person to know all the world’s collective knowledge about computer assembly—there is just too much information. However, more and more people are buying computers with some assembly required every day. How is this possible without extensive knowledge of graphics cards and CPUs, especially considering there is a high risk of damaging an expensive piece of equipment if something is installed incorrectly? Thankfully, people don’t need to be experts to assemble their computers because the knowledge they need is already outlined for them. The instruction manual that ships is effectively a checklist that shows people the steps they should take, in order to successfully put their computers together and get them running. A checklist guides you through a difficult process by building one step on top of another until you’re finished with the task. They’re used everywhere, from Ikea furniture instructions to in hospitals to adequately care for ICU patients without forgetting a potentially life-saving procedure. With checklists, everything is laid out in an order that makes sense, and no step is left behind. Each one is associated with the step that

precedes it, and the whole process comes together like a well-oiled machine. Much the same way as you use a checklist, you can use your already existing habits as steps to integrate new habits. One habit follows after another, and you always repeat the habits in the same order like you’re checking them off your to-do list. You’re only done once you’ve completed the full sequence of habits.

HOW TO PILE YOUR HABITS

Start off by figuring out what habits are already second nature to you. These are the strongest habits to turn into your foundation, as you’ll never forget to do them each day. Next, you consider what habits you’d like to introduce into your daily schedule. Finally, pair each new habit up with an old habit and insert it into your daily habit sequence. Each time you reach an old habit in your checklist, you’ll be reminded to do the new habit it’s paired with. You brush your teeth routinely, so it’s a great choice as one of your currently existing habits that you can pile on. Choose a related habit you don’t currently practice but that you’d like to, such as flossing. Flossing becomes part of your habit pile. Every time you brush your teeth, you’ll be reminded to floss, which starts to make flossing as automatic as brushing. Once you have this down, you can add onto the pile with related habits like washing your face or using mouthwash.

Habit Piling and Neural Networks Remember the neural networks we discussed back in Chapter 1? These come back into play for habit piling. Your brain already has strong neural connections for your current habits. It takes a lot of time and effort to create a new neural pathway and make that bond as strong as these already existing ones. With habit piling, you can smooth this process by using the already existing pathway as a launching pad. You build off what already exists, like constructing a new road off an existing one instead of constructing two separate parallel roads. You’re left with a speedy way to make new habits stick.

WORKSHEET: HOW TO PILE HABITS

Developing a habit piling routine is a great way to fast-track positive change in your life. You can pile two habits onto each other to start with and then gradually expand the habits you choose to clump together. Eventually, these will feel less like individual habits and more like different parts of one complete action, like a bedtime routine or a workout regimen. Practical Implementation Habit piling occurs in a series of steps, and it develops gradually, even though it usually takes less time for your brain to catch on than if you were trying to develop a habit in a vacuum. When you’re trying to pair and pile new habits into your schedule, be sure to consider how much time you have available and what you’ll realistically have energy for. Like any other strenuous habit, you risk burning yourself out or giving up if you push too hard too fast. Start small and work your way up to larger habit piles so you don’t overwhelm yourself. Habit Piling Steps 1. Identify a specific habit you want to practice. Ensure you know the time the activity should occur, how long it should take you, and when you can say you’re finished with it. “Do 20 jumping jacks” is a clearer target than “do more cardio.” 2. Make a list of the habits you already do. Pay careful attention to almost unshakable habits. These can be routines you fall into naturally, like drinking your morning cup of tea, or they can be set by external forces, like the time of your lunch break at work. Arrange your habits like a checklist.

3. Find a suitable place for each new habit in between existing habits. Look for where they make the most sense. It’s not too hard to remember to respond to emails when you’re at your computer at work, but it makes less sense to try to check your emails first thing in the morning, and you’ll probably forget to do it. 4. Now that you have your habit checklist, maintain the schedule without interruptions. If you do miss a day, though, it’s not the end of the world. Simply pick the habit back up tomorrow, or revisit your strategy so you can avoid skipping days in the future. 5. Increase the number of habits in your pile. Ideally, each habit pile should eventually have about five or six habits you chain together, though you’ll want to add each habit in slowly over time. Example: Saving Money Let’s go through the steps for piling the habit of saving more money. You’ll want to choose something specific and repeatable on a regular basis. For this example, we’ll use depositing $20 into your savings account. Next, think about related habits that you could pile this one on top of. If you deposit your paycheck in the bank every payment period, this is the perfect time to practice your new habit. Every time you go to the bank, divert $20 from your paycheck to your savings. Finally, you can pile additional habits on, such as routinely checking how much money you have in your bank accounts or making a payment on your loans.

5.5: PRACTICE PATIENCE

“Our patience will achieve more than our force.” — EDMUND BURKE

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orming habits takes time. You can’t expect to see immediate results no matter what method you use. Without the patience to see your habits through to their cumulative results, you’ll struggle to make the small changes necessary for lasting transformation. That being said, the art of patience is a tricky one for many people to grasp, especially if you’ve already spent a long time getting drawn in by the allure of instant gratification. The long-term results of your actions are perhaps the most important part of developing habits. This is the payoff you get for all your efforts, but just as the name implies, it’s not instantaneous. If you are still expecting immediate gratification every time you put a few dollars in your bank account or wake up a few minutes earlier, you’re going to be disappointed. The best habits don’t yield immediate rewards. Instead, they set you up for enormous future success, but this setup takes time. Patience is your ability to wait for all the pieces of your plan to align themselves and for your efforts to pay off.

THE DANGERS OF IMPATIENCE

Impatience can seriously jeopardize your attempts at self-improvement. Let’s say you want to lose 10 pounds and you start a new diet. You try the diet out for a week, and at the end of the week, you’ve lost hardly any weight at all. You have two options at this point. You have the impatient option, which is to get frustrated, decide all of your effort in the last week was pointless, and give up on the diet altogether. If you choose this method, you reject the possibility of future success, instead accepting that nothing about your current situation will change. You also have the patient option, which is to remind yourself that big changes take time and to keep up with the diet for at least another week before you evaluate its effectiveness. With this option, you accept both the possibility that you just need to give things more time, as well as the possibility that something isn’t working and you need to adjust it. You can make changes to your healthy habits if you stick to them, but you can’t make changes if you shelve them entirely. Being too impatient can also lead you to look for shortcuts, which could jeopardize how successful you are in the long run. Taking a shortcut is like admitting you don’t care about how well something turns out. If you’re baking a cake and decide to take the ‘shortcut’ of leaving out the eggs, you’ll technically have a cake at the end of the day, but it might not be very edible. Shortcuts are attempts to reap rewards without putting in any effort, and they rarely pay off. More often than not, you end up wasting more time looking for them than you would save with them, and your work quality suffers. Therefore, the only true way to benefit from good habits is to play things by the book and wait to reap what you’ve sown. While impatience tends to be the antithesis to self-help, it is shockingly prevalent in a lot of the advice given to people who want to turn their lives

around. People are constantly sold ‘secrets’ and ‘hacks’ for changing their lives that are meant to speed up the process, but which frequently backfire in spectacular ways. The truth is that many of the people peddling these shortcuts don’t actually practice what they preach. They know the value of hard work, but that doesn’t come with a product they can sell you, and it doesn’t attract as many clicks as a headline that promises you the impossible. They want you to believe there is a quick and easy solution to your problems because waiting isn’t the solution most people are looking for, even if it’s the only real way to benefit from good habits. Being impatient can have an easily-discernible negative impact on your life. Just look at impulse purchases. Think about the last time you went to see a movie without reading up on the reviews only to find out it wasn’t worth the money, or bought something expensive without first considering how much you actually needed it. When you’re impulsive, you make mistakes, and you don’t carefully weigh your options. This can spell disaster. The only way to avoid these pitfalls is to give everything the time it needs to come to fruition. Stop rushing headfirst into your next big project. Start with small habits and let them build over time. Do research about any product before you cut into your savings to buy it. Practice self-discipline and delayed gratification, and your reward will be all the sweeter for the time you spent waiting for it.

HOW QUICKLY DO NEW HABITS FORM?

Shortly after my divorce and my mother’s passing rocked my world, I found it very difficult to adjust to a life that was much more isolated than what I’d experienced before. I was far away from my home country of Australia, and I no longer had two important people in my life to rely on. I would forget to do household chores I was used to my husband doing, just because they weren’t part of my routine. I would pick up the phone to call my mother after a particularly stressful day of work, only to nearly let it slip through my fingers when I realized there wouldn’t be anyone on the other end of the line. In short, I was lost and confused, set adrift from my regular schedule, and trying to adapt to new habits. Of course, this didn’t go on forever. It took time to adjust my mental checklist to include all the responsibilities I once shared with my husband, and for weeks I would find myself accidentally tearing off the bandage keeping my hurt over the loss of my mother inside when I remember she was no longer here with me. But after a few months, as my emotions started to settle and I began to get my life back on track, I had settled into a new routine. The habits I’d slowly adopted were starting to take root, and I was beginning to enjoy their benefits. I was improving gradually, slowly, but consistently. Sometimes, habits took longer to form, especially if they were far removed from what I usually did. Other times, habits were almost exceedingly easy to adopt, and it took me only a little over a week to acclimate myself to them. Still, I didn’t see the results of these habits for many months. But when they finally came, I found that I was more comfortable with my place in the world and happier than I’d been in a long time. All I had to do was wait for my habits to pay off.

Habit Timeframes According to Science The most commonly cited figure for how long it takes to form a habit is about 21 days, but this is usually considered an underestimate. In fact, 21 days is a mistakenly interpreted number that actually refers to the minimum number of days to form a habit, based on research conducted by a 1950s plastic surgeon named Maxwell Maltz. The exact amount of time can vary on a fairly wide margin. According to a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, the real average is closer to about 60 days, with a range that includes anything from 18 to 254 days (Clear, n.d., para. 1-14). This indicates that there is no single universal experience when it comes to forming and profiting off habits. Your mileage may vary, and while “up to 253 days” can be a little more discouraging to hear than a nice 21-day time frame, it’s also good to know that if your habit takes longer than average to form, it’s perfectly normal. You establish your habits at your own pace, and there’s no need to rush anything. That being said, there are ways to increase the likelihood of getting a habit to stick. The most obvious is to practice it every day without fail. You can also streamline the process by taking as many temptations and distractions out of the picture as you can. If you can’t control your spending habits when you see something you want, stop window shopping and quit watching QVC. If you’re tempted to get fast food every time you drive by your local McDonalds, take another route home from work. The more you can remove these temptations from your line of sight, the easier it becomes to forget about them entirely. Planning is another important part of the habit development process. When you leave your daily schedule up in the air, you’re more susceptible to procrastination and distraction. You’re also more likely to forget about the good behaviors you’re trying to turn into habits. Before you go to bed, sit down and write out a to-do list for yourself. You can group everything in

time blocks so you know when you have to get everything done. This will help you stick to your schedule the next day, ensuring everything you do keeps you on the right track. You’ll still need some patience, but you just might find that you’ll start seeing results even sooner if you take a little time to plan every day.

5.6: CREATING A GROWTH ENVIRONMENT

“There’s just one way to radically change your behavior: radically change your environment.” — DR. B.J. FOGG, DIRECTOR OF STANFORD PERSUASIVE LAB

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o what extent does your environment affect your actions? If many studies and a great deal of anecdotal evidence are to be believed, your environment can make or break how successful you are at managing your bad habits and sticking to your good ones. This can happen at all levels, including the potential distractions nearby when you’re trying to work, the context that surrounds your actions, and the kinds of people you choose to surround yourself with. If the recent rise of minimalism has proven anything, it is that there is some sense in placing a lot of weight on your surroundings and paying attention to how those surroundings impact both your mood and your productivity. As you clear clutter away, it becomes easier to focus on the activities that matter. If you leave your cell phone or the TV remote next to you while you’re working, your eyes are going to keep drifting back to them like clockwork. It’s only a matter of time before the distraction proves too great and you give in. Lots of visual clutter in a room can yield a similar result, as you start to feel cramped and uncomfortable. You can also have clutter in the form of unhealthy, potentially toxic relationships, where people you trust belittle your attempts to improve yourself. In all forms, ridding yourself of clutter and filling your life with sources of inspiration will allow you to trade out your typical surroundings for a growth environment, which will, in turn, propel you toward success.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT

In psychology, there is a concept known as executive function. This is a group of mental processes that occur when you’re consciously making decisions rather than acting out of habit. They include self-control, listening to directions, and critical thinking skills. Before you can turn anything into a habit, you have to use executive function to complete the task. Even if you hardly have to think about the individual steps of driving a car now, there was once a time where you paid careful attention to every ounce of pressure you applied to the gas pedal. Over time, the need for executive function fades as a behavior turns into a habit, and you have to pay less attention to what you’re doing. This is great for maintaining good habits, but while you’re creating them, you want to use executive function to its fullest extent. Some studies suggest that your ability to think critically is heavily impacted by your surroundings. You can even act differently depending on how you think others perceive you. This is the reason why someone with an abundance of charisma and people skills might clam up on stage—they perceive their surroundings as hostile, and this interferes with their executive function skills. The way people treat you and the context in which you perform a task can have a huge influence on how you tackle it. Context’s Influence on Executive Function The researcher Sabine Doebel conducted a small experiment on young kids to see just how heavily context played into their decision-making processes. The experiment was based on the marshmallow test, which is a classic scientific experiment where kids are presented with a marshmallow. If they can wait for the test administrator to leave the room and return without eating the marshmallow in the meantime, they receive two marshmallows.

Kids are rewarded for their patience and self-control, as well as their executive function skills, which they employ to find creative ways to avoid eating the marshmallow. Doebel’s experiment came with a twist. She told each kid they were on a certain team and then told them what the rest of their team members did. The kids who were told they were part of the team who waited for the second marshmallow had a higher chance of exercising self-control and waiting themselves, while kids who thought the rest of their team gave in typically followed in their team’s footsteps as well (Doebel, 2019). While context isn’t everything, and there were still some kids who acted differently from their groups, the majority of kids felt swayed one way or the other depending on the behavior of their peers and what they thought was expected of them. In other words, when the people around them exercised their executive function to solve a problem, they did too. You can leverage your environment in much the same way. If you feel like your surroundings and the people you interact with are allowing, enabling, or encouraging bad behavior, ask yourself a simple question: is my environment helping me be the best I can be? Your environment should support whatever habits you are trying to develop. If not, it’s time to make some drastic changes.

HOW TO CHANGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT TO SUIT YOUR HABITS

If you’ve surveyed your environment and found it lacking, don’t worry; there are plenty of ways you can make the necessary adjustments to help you be more productive and work toward your desired results. From complete cleanouts to simple tweaks, these methods will help you regain some control over your surroundings and in turn feel more in control of your habits. Fill Your Social Circle With Supportive People The opinions and actions of your friends and family members influence what habits you prioritize. If you go to a birthday party and everyone is eating cake, there’s a good chance that you’ll cave and accept if someone offers you a slice. On the other hand, if everyone brings healthy foods to the party, you’ll want to bring healthy foods too. The same is true in many other areas, including how encouraging your social circle is of your attempts to improve yourself. Even if your friends aren’t practicing healthy eating themselves, they should respect your decision and not encourage you to give in to bad habits. If they are unsupportive of you, they could be creating a bad influence on your life that holds you back from your true potential. It’s never easy to distance yourself from people you’ve known for a long time, but sometimes it’s necessary. You need to prioritize yourself and your needs. If you continue to surround yourself with people who always encourage you to behave poorly, you’ll just keep falling into the same patterns you always have. The same is true for overly negative people and other sources of excessive negativity like the news and social media.

You should also join social circles full of like-minded people who are working toward similar goals. You might join a hiking group if you want to exercise more or seek out an online community centered around a certain goal. There are support groups for managing serious addictions, as well as counseling options. Cater Your Environment to Your Commitments If you’re trying to check your phone less frequently, the worst thing you can do is leave your phone lying next to you all the time. If you’re making an attempt to quit drinking, keeping alcohol in the house isn’t doing you any favors, nor is going out to bars. Whatever commitment you make to yourself in your quest for self-improvement, you need to honor it by reshaping your environment, clearing away anything that would tempt you toward bad behavior. You might need to toss some junk food lingering at the back of your pantry, store video games in a cabinet, so they don’t tempt you quite as easily, or even rearrange your furniture. But once you make these changes, you will find it much easier to stick to good habits and avoid bad ones. Carefully Arrange the Cues in Your Environment Certain parts of your environment can act as cues for some habits. Ideally, you want the cues for good habits to be right next to whatever you need to perform the habit. If you’re trying to exercise more and you’re using the sight of your sneakers as a cue, it makes sense to leave them next to your exercise equipment, as it’s only a matter of a few steps to act on the cue. On the other hand, if you left these shoes halfway across the house, exercising would require more willpower on your part. You want to minimize the amount of willpower you need to engage in good habits, so make things as easy as possible for yourself.

You also want to put as much distance as possible between cues for bad habits and their associated items. This discourages you from acting on a cue right away, which gives you more time to rethink your actions. If the first thing you want to do when you come home from a stressful workday is to waste time in front of the TV, you can reduce this urge by moving the remote away from the front door. You’ll have to walk into the next room or open a drawer to get it, and by then, you might come up with some way to manage your stress levels that’s a little more productive. Separate Your Work From Your Downtime If you’ve been feeling an especially strong demand for your time from your boss recently, leaving you with little time to relax and contributing to stress, your work-life balance may need some readjustment. Too much stress can encourage you to revert back to bad habits. While talking to your boss should always be your first step in this situation, you can also make adjustments to your environment to reduce the chance of bringing your work home with you. Start by having designated space for work that isn’t used for anything else. For many people this will simply be your office or cubicle, but if you work at home, make sure to set aside a space especially for working. Keep everything related to work contained to that area, and don’t agree to look over projects outside of work hours. Do your best to maintain a strict routine; you shouldn’t have to make yourself available at all hours of every day. Doing so can put a serious burden on your health and drain your willpower. Rid Your Environment of Clutter A cluttered environment lends itself to procrastination and distraction. The more junk you have surrounding you that you don’t need, the easier it is to have your attention pulled away from more important tasks. Most of this

clutter probably comes from impulse purchases you made months or years ago that you haven’t touched since. It wastes your available space and makes it more likely you will continue to add to the clutter in the future. The only way to combat it is to clean the clutter out. You don’t have to go completely minimalist if this isn’t your style, but you should limit the presence of items you don’t use or particularly want anymore. Look at the things you own that take up space in your home and decide if they are worth the space they consume. Do they serve a purpose? Do they have sentimental value? Do you use them regularly? If you can’t answer yes to any of these questions, then toss, sell, or donate it. It’s only getting in the way of your productivity. Cleaning is easier if you make it a regular practice. Instead of spending multiple days cleaning out your closet, give it a quick once-over every few months. This saves you time and makes the idea of cleaning less daunting. Additionally, the best way to combat clutter is to not buy so much in the first place. As you curb your impulse shopping by considering the value of items before you buy them, you’ll make fewer unnecessary purchases, which leaves you with less to declutter. Make Deliberate Choices You might find yourself in a routine simply because it is more convenient for you. If something is broken or damaged in your home, it might be easier to just live with the problem than to fix it. Maybe there’s a lightbulb that blew out and you never got around to replacing it, or you might have a leaky sink faucet. These kinds of things would take little effort to fix, but after a while you get used to them, and they don’t seem like such pressing issues anymore. However, when you let yourself fall into these routines of convenience, you stop making deliberate choices. You decide to do nothing, so nothing about your environment changes.

Break free from living your life on autopilot. If something’s broken, get it fixed right away. If you need to replace something, make sure to do so as soon as possible. You want your environment to reflect your habits. If you let problems persist in your home, you’ll let them persist in yourself as well. Address issues and make deliberate decisions, whether you’re deciding where a certain piece of furniture should go in your house or whether or not you should stick to your good habits today. Utilize Task Association to Your Advantage Every item you own has its own purpose, but you can confuse and distract yourself if you mix these purposes up. Let’s say you use your phone to check social media, but you also use it to read and respond to work emails. Your phone is simultaneously a tool for work and a tool for goofing off, which means it’s really a tool for neither. You won’t be able to associate your phone with any particular task, which means there is nothing stopping you from opening your Twitter account when you should be getting back to your boss. Try to associate certain items with their own tasks and avoid using something for both work and play. You might decide that you’ll keep your cell phone for personal use and only answer work messages at your computer. This way, when you sit down at your computer, you know it’s time for work. When you grab your phone, this is only for relaxing. This also helps you cut back on excessive time spent on social media, as you can safely leave your phone elsewhere when you’re working without worrying about missing an important email. Pay careful attention to what you choose to do in or on your bed. Many people take work back to their beds or use their laptops while they’re under the covers. While this sounds cozy, it can actually interfere with your sleeping habits. You want to associate your bed only with sleeping. When

you lay down in your bed, your thoughts will immediately turn to resting. If you do too many other tasks in bed, you’ll start thinking about those tasks when you lay down, and you won’t be able to get to sleep.

WORKSHEET: FACILITATING A GROWTH ENVIRONMENT

A growth environment should inspire you to succeed and do your best all the time. There should be as few distractions as possible, and it should be free from harmful cues that will send you back into bad habits. If you can remove the clutter from your environment and fill your life with support, you will find it much easier to stick to good habits. Clear Out Anything That Goes Against Your Habits You don’t have to make bad habits any more readily available than they need to be. It’s hard to control what temptations you come into contact with for most of the day, but your home should be your safe haven. It should be free of anything that would encourage you to engage in a bad habit. This way, you can move freely around your home without risk of running into a cue that works against you. If you’re trying to eat healthily, there’s no reason to keep sugary and fatty snacks around the house. Instead, fill your fridge and pantry with nutritious snacks, and make sure to have enough food storage containers to pack yourself a healthy lunch every day. Just this simple change can virtually remove the temptation to snack and replace it with a commitment to healthy habits. Steps for Improving Your Environment To declutter your environment and turn it into one that supports your growth, follow these steps: 1. Decide on your habits, then adjust your environment to make them as easy to follow as possible. Understand which habits you’re

trying to encourage and which you’re trying to avoid so you can redecorate accordingly. 2. Arrange your environment so it’s as easy as possible to follow through on your good habits. When you encounter a cue, you should be able to act on it right away. There shouldn’t be any significant barriers standing in your way, whether these barriers are physical space or sources of distraction. 3. Be picky with the people you let yourself spend time around. Look for similarly ambitious people, and reduce your exposure to pessimistic, hurtful people.

Example: Stop Procrastinating Your environment is a huge factor in your procrastination habits. If your desk is lined with tons of clutter and sources of distraction, you’ll never get any work done. You’ll always be pulled away by something that looks like more fun. Revamp the layout of your office and toss anything that doesn’t help you work. You can move it elsewhere or get rid of it entirely. Also, avoid spending time with people who encourage you to procrastinate, even if this means you have to reschedule a few get-togethers with your friends.

5.7: HAVE AN ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER

“An accountability partner is able to perceive what you can't see when blind spots and weaknesses block your vision.” — CHARLES STANLEY

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n the previous chapter, we talked about how joining a group dedicated to the kind of results you want to see can encourage you to keep working for those results. If you want to improve your cooking skills, take a culinary class. If you’re trying to quit smoking, join a support group. When you seek out people who have the same goals as you and who want you to succeed as much as you support their success, everyone benefits. The next step up from this is an accountability partner. This is a person who, as the name suggests, holds you accountable for your actions. They encourage you to put the maximum effort toward your goals, and they guide you toward the right choices when you struggle, cheering you on all the way. They might be a sponsor, a coach, a therapist, someone working toward the same goals as you, or even just a good friend. Whoever they are, they should be someone you can rely on and someone whose opinion you respect. One important thing to remember is that while an accountability partner can be invaluable, they can’t replace personal accountability. There are going to be times where your partner isn’t around to observe your actions. You need to remain steadfast in these moments, sticking to good habits and avoiding bad ones. It may help to think of their reaction if they were present, but your drive to keep your habit-related promises should primarily come from yourself.

HOW SOCIETY INFLUENCES OUR BEHAVIORS

The society we live in determines what behaviors we find acceptable. Some societies ban beards, while for others shaving a beard is heavily discouraged. You might have a friend group that likes to drink and party on the weekends, or your friends might use their free time to rest up and prepare themselves for the week ahead. The actions you choose and the rules you follow are heavily dependent on what your society and close social group find acceptable. We are social by our very nature, which means we’re often looking for ways to fit in. We might follow a fashion trend we’re not particularly fond of just because our friends are following the same trend. We might look at what celebrities surround themselves with and decide that’s what we need in our lives too. Sometimes this encourages us to copy productive behaviors, but if we’re not careful about who we allow to influence us, we can copy bad habits instead. This is an especially relevant concern with the rise of social media, making it easier than ever before to feel left out if you’re not living a glamorous lifestyle, or at least pretending to. Our friends and families, our peers, and the most influential members of our society all dictate what we should and should not do with our lives. Using This to Our Advantage Taking our cues from others isn’t always a bad thing. You just need to be selective about who you take these cues from. Look for groups and types of people who encourage you to better yourself. In these groups, selfimprovement is the norm. Stagnating or reverting back to bad habits is frowned upon, so you’re less likely to do it than you would be if you chose to spend your time with lazy, unmotivated people.

There are many ways to find a group that fits your needs and shares your experiences. Networking websites like LinkedIn and Facebook Groups can help you connect with others trying to achieve the same goal you’re working toward. By the way, we have a Facebook community where you are more than welcome to present yourself and make a post to find an accountability partner too. If you want to hit the gym but you’re hesitant to work out next to bodybuilders, join a gym that caters to the average joe. If you want to find productive people, chat with them in co-working spaces in between work sessions. The more people you know who share your ideals, the easier it becomes to stick to them, and the higher your chances of connecting with an accountability partner who is ready to help you face your greatest challenges.

THE BENEFITS OF AN ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER

Your accountability partner can help you progress faster on your goals and achieve more than you previously thought possible. They can offer their help when you’re struggling and provide ample encouragement when you hit your stride. Above all else, they won’t let you backslide into bad habits, no matter how much you’ve exhausted your willpower. When you find the right partner for you, you’ll become a true force to be reckoned with. Tracks Your Progress It’s a good idea to keep a rough estimate of how much progress you’ve made toward your goals so far, but it’s not always easy to find the time to write this down. You might also find it hard to accurately estimate your progression because you’re looking at it from a first-person perspective. You might assume you’re doing amazing when you’ve really hardly improved, or you might underestimate just how much work you’ve gotten done, blinded by your results. You need someone with an outside perspective who can be honest about how well you’re doing. Your accountability partner can keep track of this progress for you. They can let you know when your habits are helping you smash through your goals and when they seem to be leading you down the wrong path. This is a much-needed shift in perspective. While it is always disheartening to hear you’re not making the progress you thought you were, failing to realize this only results in wasted effort. It’s better to know sooner rather than later, and you should trust your accountability partner to be honest with you. Calls Out Excuses It’s so easy to make excuses for yourself when you simply don’t want to do something. If you want to call out of work, you can come up with a million

reasons why you should take the day off, even if none of them are really worth it. These excuses range from mild discomforts like being too tired after you were up late the night before, to flat-out lies, like feigning illness. Excuses might crop up to interfere with other habits too. You might tell yourself, “It’s only one piece of candy, it won’t break my diet,” or, “I’ve worked hard and I deserve to spend some of my hard-earned money how I want.” If you’re not careful, you’ll end up making excuses for every good habit you try to practice, stunting your progress. Having someone else to keep you in line and call out these excuses could be exactly what you need to take your habits seriously. You probably already know that the excuses you’re making are flimsy at best but having someone there to point them out keeps you in line more effectively than trying to do the same thing for yourself. Reveals Your Weak Points Just as you can be somewhat blinded to your own tendency to make excuses, you can also fail to recognize the areas where you struggle. Again, it’s easier for someone else to pick up on these weak points. You don’t want them to become the fatal flaw in your self-improvement plan, so it’s critical that you have an accountability partner who isn’t afraid to bring these issues to your attention. You also need to be a good listener when they present you with their concerns. If you refuse to take these comments to heart and course correct, you might as well not have an accountability partner at all. Listening to constructive criticism is a critical skill, and it will get you far in all areas of life. Lends a Sympathetic Ear

While your accountability partner should keep pushing you forward in the tough spots, they should also be sympathetic enough to listen to the difficulties you’re having. Sometimes all you need is someone to vent to, and the best person is often the one who knows the most about what you’re going through. They can help you get your frustration out, cool off, and then come up with a new mode of attack that addresses the problems you’ve been facing. Gets You Through Rough Spots You’re going to face plenty of challenges and, more likely than not, quite a few setbacks while you’re replacing bad habits with good ones. It’s not an easy task, and there will be times when you feel exhausted and aggravated. You may even be tempted to quit altogether, going back to the bad habits because they’re easier, even if it means giving up on becoming your ideal version of yourself. During these difficult moments, your accountability partner can help you find your feet again. They can’t make the commitment to try again for you, but they can help you reach that conclusion and inspire you to keep pushing forward. This vote of confidence can help you recover your faith in your abilities even after the most devastating of complications.

Works Toward Goals Alongside You The best type of accountability partner is one who is working on the same habits you are. If you’re trying to hit the gym more, you probably won’t tolerate encouragement from someone who isn’t working out themselves for very long. You’ll start to feel resentful and question why they feel like they’re qualified to tell you to do anything. However, if they’re right there on the treadmill next to you, keeping up with your pace, you know they’re

just as committed to seeing results as you are. You might even push yourself harder as part of a friendly competition. When you share your goals with your accountability partner, you hype each other up simultaneously and support each other when it’s needed the most.

WORKSHEET: SELECTING AND WORKING WITH AN ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER

Selecting the right accountability partner for you can give you the motivation you’ve been seeking. Follow these steps to figure out who your partner should be and what you should expect out of the partnership. If you're struggling to think of someone in your close circle, again, I encourage you to present yourself and make a post in our Facebook group to find an accountability partner. After all, everyone in our community is working on developing lasting habits! Steps for Working With a Partner 1. Choose someone you know or is working on establishing similar habits, but who isn’t so close to you they will hold back so they don’t hurt your feelings. You want someone who will be honest and who you can disagree with without ruining your relationship. 2. Set firm boundaries right at the beginning of the partnership. Decide what you feel comfortable sharing with each other and what might be a step too far. Designate hours when it’s okay to contact each other and keep them separate from your work and relaxation time. Also, consult with each other on the kind of language that’s appropriate to use. Your accountability partner should be tough on you from time to time, but they should never belittle you and crush your confidence. 3. Give the partnership a test run first. Try a few days or weeks and see if your chosen partner is anything like what you were expecting. If you’re on two different wavelengths, you may need to discuss your approach or look for a new partner.

4. Stay in touch regularly. You might meet up or send a message to each other once every few days, once a week, or even once a month, but make sure you agree upon a certain period of time in between meetings. After all, your partner can’t hold you accountable if they never check in with you. This also ensures neither of you goes completely silent on the other person out of the blue. 5. Reexamine your goals together. What you wanted when you first started introducing good habits into your schedule might not be what you want two or three months later. Every few months, talk with your accountability partner about how you feel regarding your goals and whether or not they still suit you. If not, make the necessary changes. Questions for Thought Once you have a partner in mind and you’ve tested the partnership out for a few weeks, ask yourself the following questions: 1. Do I feel more motivated to succeed than before, or less? 2. In what ways does my accountability partner encourage me? How do they hold me to my promises? 3. Does my partner seem like they’re holding back from talking with me honestly? 4. Am I making more progress on my goals? If your answers are lacking, you may need to address these concerns with your accountability partner. Failing that, you may need to seek out a replacement. Example: Accountability for a New Diet

If you’re looking for tips and support when starting a new diet, you might look online. There are plenty of communities dedicated to this kind of support, and you may find a perfect accountability partner here. As already mentioned, don’t hesitate to look in our Facebook community either. Look for someone who is just as committed to dieting as you are and who is both sympathetic and firm. Keep up contact, check in with each other, and help each other succeed.

6. 20 ESSENTIAL TINY HABITS CHECKLIST

“Good habits are worth being fanatical about.” — JOHN IRVING

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any of the habits you practice will be very personal and specific based on your lifestyle. You might develop different habits based on your job, what you like to do in your free time, chores that need to be done around your house, side projects you’re working on, aspirations you want to achieve, and much more. The list of habits that matter most to you will probably look completely different from someone else’s. However, there are some habits that just about everyone should practice. These are habits that improve your overall health, make you more productive on various tasks, and help you live a happy life. Here are 20 habits that apply to just about everyone. 1. Eat a homemade meal at least three times a week. This cuts down on the chances of eating too much over-processed fast food, encouraging you to enjoy a cleaner, more nutritious diet. If the biggest barrier to this is time, you can prepare your meals on the weekend and simply heat them up throughout the week. 2. Drink two liters of water or more each day. All you need for this one is a large water bottle. Keep the bottle with you throughout the day and try to finish it before you go to bed. If plain water isn’t your thing, you can add cut-up fruit for flavor without the processed sugars. 3. Make a list of what you need before you go to the grocery store. If you don’t have anything in mind before you get there,

you’ll be more susceptible to the allure of junk food. With a list, you know exactly what you should and shouldn’t be getting, and you can likely skip whole sections of the store for less temptation. 4. Do a small exercise for 10 minutes each day. This could be jumping jacks, jogging, yoga, or anything else that isn’t too strenuous to start out with. You can build on this later. 5. Get your exercise gear ready, so it’s easily accessible when you need it. If you need to wash your gym clothes, do it the night before. If you have a set of weights, keep them all in one spot and clean them as needed. Eliminate as many barriers to exercise as possible. 6. Start your day on the right foot. This might mean adding some stretches, light exercise, reading, or meditation to your morning routine. When you think positively in the morning, you set yourself up to keep thinking positively for the rest of the day. This helps you better manage conflicts and aggravations. 7. Adjust your sleeping schedule by five minutes each week until you reach your desired time. If you’re going to bed at 11:00 PM and waking up at 7:00 AM, shift this to 10:55 PM and 6:55 AM for week one, 10:50 PM and 6:50 AM the next week, and so on. 8. Get at least eight hours of sleep each night. No matter how busy you are or what you have going on, sleep is important. A good night’s rest will leave you more alert and ready to take on the world in the morning. 9. Wash your sheets every two weeks. Fresh sheets make it easier to fall asleep, keep you clean, and just feel extra pleasant when you wrap yourself up in them. 10. Read two pages of a book each day. This can be fiction or nonfiction depending on your preference, as there is plenty to be

gained from either type of book. Even if you’re not a big reader, reading two pages is easy enough that anyone can do it. 11. Make a to-do list before every day at work. Start with the most important tasks with the tightest deadlines and work your way down the priority list from there. Aim to complete at least the three most important tasks on the list. You can also use a to-do list for chores and other responsibilities. 12. Log out of your social media accounts when you’re done using them. This creates an additional barrier to constantly checking them throughout the day, which can help you redirect your focus toward the real world. 13. Clean a single item of clutter off your desk every day. Maybe you have an empty cup from the day before, or maybe you’re guilty of leaving a distracting book in close proximity when you should be working. Either way, get rid of just one item that doesn’t help you work, and you’ll cut down on your distractions at work in no time. 14. Every night, write down three things you’re grateful for and two good things that happened that day. These can be small events, like your pet excitedly greeting you at the door or enjoying a really nice meal. Take some time to reflect on sources of positivity in your life. This will help you avoid getting caught up in all the negativity in the world. 15. Deal with laundry once a week. Set a specific day where you have free time and make that your laundry day. This keeps you from running out of clean clothes, and it means you spend less time on your laundry than if you waited multiple weeks and washed everything at once. 16. Practice a power pose for two minutes each day. Power poses are stances that make you look confident, like pushing your chest out, tilting your chin up, and straightening your back. These

somewhat-goofy stances have incredible long-term effects. Holding a power pose for just a few minutes can help you develop more confidence, and they can improve your posture too. 17. Do something fun each day. Reward yourself with an enjoyable activity, as long as it doesn’t feed into your bad habits. Improving yourself doesn’t have to come at the cost of your happiness. 18. Put 10% of your paycheck in a savings account. It’s so easy to spend your entire paycheck on bills and impulsive purchases without saving a single penny. When you save first and foremost, you can do what you like with the rest of your money. 19. Pay the minimum balance on all of your credit lines on the same day. By grouping your debts together rather than spreading out different payments over the course of each month, you start to remember what day you need to be ready to pay your bills, and you’re less likely to forget to pay them. If you can’t afford to pay the minimum balance on everything, start with the credit lines with the highest interest rates. 20. When you’re about to make a purchase, ask yourself, “Do I need this?” Give yourself time to answer truthfully. If you slow yourself down and you still feel like you’ll use whatever you want to buy, then it’s a worthwhile purchase. If not, then you didn't need it in the first place.

CONCLUSION

Your lifestyle is the sum of your habits. If your habits have a net positive effect on you, you’ll find your life circumstances improving. If you fall victim to bad habits and they outweigh your good habits, you’re going to keep feeling like you’re losing ground. If you don’t pay attention to your habits, they’ll start to control you, not the other way around. Habits can be dangerous things in some cases. They can worsen addictions, lead you down a self-destructive path, interfere with your productivity, harm your physical and mental health, and make your life seem difficult and unfulfilling. Bad habits left unchecked will only increase their hold over you until it hardly seems possible to escape their influence. But no matter how many bad habits you’ve accumulated over the years or what kinds of habits they are, you always have the chance to turn things around. You have the power to take a bad habit and replace it with a good one. Through your actions alone, you can rewrite your habits and change your life for the better. For as much power as bad habits have, good habits are equally powerful. They are just as unbreakable as bad ones, if not more so, since you get to experience their incredible positive results. You know you’re doing something good for your body and mind, whether you’re working out, eating right, getting your work done, or responsibly taking a break every now and then. Each good habit piles onto the previous one until you have a towering stack of positivity and productivity in your life where there was once nothing at all. You can make this kind of change in your life, and you don’t need to completely overhaul your way of life in a single day to do it. If there is anything you take away from this book, it should be that change does not have to start on a huge scale for you to see huge results. The

greatest of changes can come from the smallest of habits. Every habit is just a tiny step in the right direction. It is a positive change you repeat over and over again. At first, it is like a drop in the bucket compared to what seems like an ocean of bad habits. But don’t give up hope. Before long, each drop in the bucket will start to fill it up until it’s spilling over the sides. Eventually, you will have your own ocean of good habits, and the bad habits will have shrunk to a fraction of their original size. Don’t be fooled: the power of a great habit is nearly unrivaled in this world. If you can get your habits to work for you, you can accomplish just about anything. There will be no task too daunting and no goal too far-fetched, so as long as you have self-discipline and determination on your side. Keep practicing good habits and adding new ones, and in time you’ll become a master of your habits. If you enjoyed this book and found it useful in your quest for selfimprovement, don’t forget to leave a positive review on Amazon. This helps others discover the book for themselves and get the same great benefits from reading that you did. Help others unlock the secrets to effective habits and lasting changes in their lives, all with a simple review.

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