How To Make Positive Habits Stick

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Change Habits Slowly
- Ch: 3.5 of How To Get Your Sh!t Together -

“Stop beating yourself up. You are a work in progress, which means you get there a little at a time, not all at once.”  - Anonymous

I exercise at least 10 times per week. These sessions involve running, weights or swimming in the mornings and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at night. I didn’t just start with this exercise routine. I slowly built it up over years, taking time to develop the conditioning and lifestyle needed to support this level of training.

Initially I struggled to run one kilometer without resting, and performing more than three push-ups was impossible. Now I can run 10 kilometers, and smash out 30 push-ups with ease. Initially weight lifting was a confusing and painful chore, but now I crave it. The feeling of my muscles getting stronger and the added endorphin release is wonderful.

Initially I struggled with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, having many false starts before I found my footing, it has since become a healthy obsession that has tremendous physical, social and psychological benefits. Initially I trained twice per week, and now I train almost daily.

Getting to where I am with my physical conditioning was not hard, once I took the right approach that is.

Slow change is the only way to make lasting change.

This applies to every aspect of life, including implementing positive changes (reading, exercising, studying, and practicing) as well as reducing unwanted behaviours (quitting smoking, drinking, changing diet, staying up too late).

What Not To Do

Before I go into the specifics of how to properly change habits, I want to first share what not to do. Or more specifically what I did and what I am assuming you have done as well. I will continue with using exercise as an example to demonstrate my point, but this issue was not unique to exercise, I made the same mistake in most areas when attempting to make lifestyle changes.

I went too hard, too soon.

I would read a blog, listen to a motivating podcast, or see a fit person exercising and think ‘I can do that’, and I would go all in. I would just begin the lifting program that they were using. I would plan the week out, rostering daily exercise sessions with specific lifts, repetitions and sets to complete.

The problem was that this set up wasn’t sustainable. The first week I did great, I was able to turn up to the gym each day, track my performance, and implement a diet. The whole lot. Week two was a struggle as life obligations started to creep in, but I persevered. By week three however I was beginning to falter, I started to skip days and began making excuses. I was tired, injury prone and irritable.

By the end of the month I was basically back to my original exercise levels. I couldn’t maintain the change. Then I would get down on myself for failing and suffer through a wave of self-loathing depression, until a new batch of motivation struck me. This cycle continued for years, only with a different exercise program (or diet, or self-help regime, or study plan … you get the point). Sound familiar?

Changing habits is a long term process. You can’t change overnight, because if that were the case almost everyone would be fit and healthy.

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TAKE ACTION

A great example to show the power of slow habitual change is through attempting to wake up earlier. Set a goal for yourself to wake up 60 minutes earlier than you currently do. So if you usually wake at 07:30, your goal will be to consistently wake at 06:30.

Rather than jumping straight into it by setting your alarm clock an hour earlier (it won’t work over the long term, and you will just hate me for it), I want you to try something different. Instead, set your alarm clock tonight to wake you at 07:29 – just one minute earlier. The next day set it one minute earlier still at 07:28, then the next day set it at 07:27 and so on.

Over the period of 60 days, you will have slowly changed your waking times and in the process not only demonstrated the power of slow habitual change, but also added an extra hour to your life. Why not try (slowly) adding an exercise program, meditation or a study session into that gap?

In 60 days you will be able to easily wake at 06:30, and the best part of all is that it won’t feel like a massive change. The slow transition to an earlier wake time will not shock your system.

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 An amazing example of people’s inabilities to change habits comes in the form of lottery jackpot winners. There is some variation in the exact statistics, however it has been commonly reported that winners regularly go through all of their money within 3 to 5 years following their jackpot.

They literally receive millions of dollars, more money than they could hope to ever earn in their lifetimes, yet within five years most are back to their old financial position.

While initially surprising, this phenomenon makes a lot of sense. Typically the people who play the lotto are not that great at managing their finances, there is a reason they are gambling and not investing their money in the first place. What’s more, they are not used to having access to such a large sum of money all at once. Thus they overspend. Winning the lottery does not give you the habitual lessons that come from years of sound financial management. Nor does it tell you how to effectively save, invest or even budget.

You need to have a long term approach to change. Be patient, it will come, but not instantly. The key is to slowly implement changes so that it doesn’t feel like a change. Using this approach feels like you are not changing your life at all because the daily change is minimal or ideally, unperceivable. Yet over time, those changes add up. It is like aging, we feel the same day by day, but over time we begin to notice the changes.

Apply this process to your life.

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TAKE ACTION

Choose something that you want to change in your life, but haven’t been able to. Consider the smallest change in a positive direction that you can think of and start with that today.

Possible examples:

- Fitness: Start by adding a five minute walk each day, increasing by one minute per day, up to 30 minutes each day.
- Savings: Start by putting $1 into a piggy bank each day, increasing this amount by $1 each week until you have found a comfortable level of savings that you can afford.
- Cleaning: Start by cleaning for five minutes per day, increasing by one minute per day each week, until you are cleaning enough each day to maintain your home.
- Learning a language: Start by getting an app like Duolingo or Memrise and do one short lesson per day, or by finding a language exercise book. Slowly increase the duration of the lessons.
- Reading: Start with reading one page per day and increase this by one page each week.
- Quitting smoking: Start by having one less than usual each day, reducing this by one each week.
- Eating healthy: Start by slowly reducing the portion sizes of desserts, soft drinks and alcohol. Still eat these foods, but just reduce how much by a small level each week.

Regardless of what habit you want to change, don’t rush! Just start small and incrementally make changes until you are at a level that you would love to be at. It will come with time.

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On Plateaus and Failure

When attempting to change a habit, it is important to remember that you are aiming for an upward trend, not an instant change. It is inevitable that at some stage, your progress may stall, and you may even suffer a setback or two. The best approach is to think long term.

It is far better to stay on the path towards change, than to rush and end up quitting.

But what if you fail? Many people stop a diet program, or stop attempting to quit smoking, drinking or drug use after a binge or slip up.

Everyone has off days, makes mistakes and has temporary weaknesses, so please don’t get yourself down about it. It happened, that’s ok, let’s keep moving! The key is to get straight back onto the program.

Your diet is not ruined if you eat a whole cake in one sitting. That’s just a bad day. It is however ruined if you eat cake every day and stop your diet completely. The same is true for smoking. If you managed to get down to two cigarettes per day, and then have an off day and smoke a whole packet, should you consider yourself as no longer attempting to quit? Of course not, the next day, address the reason for the binge and resume your progress.

Don’t be hard on yourself. If you slip up, that is ok, provided you get back on board as soon as possible.

Self-improvement often looks like two steps forward, one step back. While slow, this process will get you there in the end!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q) I am changing my habits slowly, but not seeing any results! What gives?

A) Not seeing results can be disheartening and demotivating. If you have only just started (for example within the last three months), keep persisting, the results will come. If you still are not seeing the results, consider making slightly larger incremental changes. Just don’t overdo it. Change takes time, and it is better to make small changes than no change at all.

Q) If I keep incrementally changing things, won’t I eventually run out of time or meet a natural barrier?

A) Yes. Take the example of waking up earlier from the first TAKE ACTION in this chapter. If you keep waking up one minute early, you will eventually reach a point where you can’t wake up any earlier without detrimentally impacting your day’s energy levels and performance. The same is true for most habitual changes, there is only so far that you can take each one before you are no longer able to change.

Your goal is to find the level of optimal performance.

Resources
Easy Way To Stop Smoking, Allan Carr

Summary
Change takes time. Move too fast too soon and you will fail. Small incremental changes over a longer time span is less of a shock to the system, it is easier to begin and easier to stick to.