How to Finally Master Your Habits — No More Failed New Year’s Resolutions

I’ve struggled with building good habits and dropping bad habits for many years and it seems I’m not alone: the probability of achieving New Year’s Resolutions by end of the year is a pathetically low 8%. We usually attribute this to us being undisciplined and having a weak will. But the reality is that your body and brain are working exactly as they’re supposed to, you just have been approaching it the wrong way this whole time. You can’t logic your way to good habits, it takes a more…subliminal approach, if you will. You have to approach your habits in a way that not just your logical mind can get onboard with but that your more primal unconscious side can get onboard with as well.

That’s what we’ll discuss in this post. Once you finish this you’ll have all the tools you need to understand why you keep falling off the wagon and how to stop it from happening once and for all. Let’s jump in.

You are an animal

Yup. We like to think we’re so sophisticated with our “civilization” and our “modern monetary theory” but the truth is that humans are pretty much the same biologically now as we were before all this *waves hand*.

Modern civilization is less than 1% of our time on this here planet we’re so keen to destroy; roughly 99% of our history has been hunting and gathering. We may feel far removed from that life of “savagery”, but we are still unconsciously deploying the strategies that were effective throughout all that time. Your brain was simply not built for the modern world.

To make this distinction easier to visualize, we can picture our brains as divided into two parts: the logical, deliberate, analytical brain we identify ourselves with and the more primal, emotional, unconscious, lizard brain. Another way to visualize this is as an elephant and a rider. The rider (you) feels like they are in control and with your hands on the reins you can easily maneuver the elephant to where it wants to go. This works fine as long as the elephant is in agreement, but if the rider and the elephant disagree on where they’re going, the elephant is going to win every single time.

If you want to change your habits for good instead forgetting about them a few weeks after you promised yourself that “this time is different”, you have to convince your elephant that it’s a good idea. This brings over to habit principle number 1:

Use Immediate Rewards

Getting good habits in place or dropping bad habits is difficult because most of the time the reward (gym for 6 months = hot bod) or the punishment (smoke for 10 years = lung cancer) is often some abstract thing in the future, while we tend to surrender to the reward in front of us.

The more distant a reward or punishment is into the future the less value it seems to have. If you want to set yourself up for success you need to give yourself a reason to take action right now.

So what, should you pop some kibble in your mouth every time you go to the gym like you do when your dog sits? Well, no. I mean, unless you like the taste. You want to ideally see the reward or the punishment within the activity itself. The easiest way to do this is to be as aware and mindful as possible while you’re doing your activity and see what that’s like. We’re bad at this usually, which is why meditation can be so helpful. Telling smokers to simply notice themselves smoking made them realize that smoking tastes like shit, which helps them quit. If you pay attention during a meditation session or a good workout you can almost sense those feel-good chemicals being released. Tap into that.

Dopamine is released in anticipation of pleasure, that’s why you get more excited when you get a notification than when you’re actually checking your phone. Creating a positive association with the things you want and creating negative associations with the things you don’t want will begin rewiring your brain pathways and move you towards your desired action.

If you can’t find a way to make the present activity rewarding, you can always bribe your elephant in a pinch. To steal an example from Martha Beck, how much would I have to pay you to clean up a truck stop bathroom? $5? $50? $500? $5,000? $50,000? $500k??? At some point you’ll go from “hell no” to “hmm maybe” to “ok fine I’d do it for that much.” Try the same with yourself. If you go to the gym tomorrow you can grab one of those healthy but also $10 smoothies after. No? How about you grab a smoothie and go to the movies this weekend? Still no? Okay, how about you grab a smoothie, watch a movie this weekend, and get a small popcorn while you’re there? At some point you’ll feel the “yes” within yourself; go ahead and do the thing and follow through with what you promised 100%. Try not to use bribes that conflict with your goal though, going to the ice cream sundae buffet might get you to go to the gym, but is it worth it?? Popcorn is okay, of course, it has almost no calories. Now on to principle 2:

Change Your Environment

In addition to making it gratifying in the moment when you’re implementing your new habit, another thing you should do is to make it as easy as possible for you to complete the action you want. This means making habits you want to reinforce easier to do and habits you want to drop harder to do.

You can’t spend every evening binge watching Netflix if you don’t own a TV. Smoking will become a lot harder if you have to go the corner store every time you want to smoke (because you don’t keep any cigarettes in the house). Even a small change as leaving your remote or your phone in the other room or logging out every time you use social media will add a bit of friction the next time you unconsciously find yourself falling into your old habit.

Alternatively, leaving your gym clothes and shoes ready to go by your bed will make it easier for you to get up and put them on so you go to the gym. Leaving your guitar out on your couch will make it more likely that you’ll pick it up every time you sit down.

You will choose the path of least resistance, it’s human nature. Trying to increase your willpower is a waste of time because willpower is always attached to your emotions (the elephant). By changing your environment your willpower will tend more easily to follow along. That segues perfectly into principle 3:

Set a Ridiculously Low Bar for Success

When you’re trying to implement a new habit, the hardest part is always getting started. Once you get past the hurdle of starting, you’re much more likely to keep going. So if you want to go to the gym make the goal to literally put on clothes and step inside the gym. If you decide you want to leave after that, feel free, since you already completed your goal. I’ve even gone as far as making the goal to put on my gym clothes and stepping outside.

The goal has to be so easy it almost feels like there’s no point. When I started meditating I made it my goal to sit for 2 minutes. That was a time I felt I could easily do anywhere, but no shame in making it 1 minute or even 30 seconds. Thanks to this, I now I have a regular meditation routine (see here if you want to copy it). Just like a video game, you can progressively increase the difficulty at your own pace.

Another tip to help with this is chunking down your habit as much as possible and making your goal the first step in your habit. For instance for meditation you could make your goal: sit cross-legged on the couch. Figure out what the very first step is in your habit and make that the goal.

Doing both of these will aid you nicely in your habits. Let’s move on to principle 4:

Use Cues to Trigger a Habit

One of the most helpful things I did when trying to start a meditation habit was tie it to something I already did every day: brushing my teeth. In your current habits you have a way of doing things that you are completely unaware of, a specific order you do everything. So make it easier on yourself by using this trick.

If you’re trying to drop a habit, figure out what the cues are for those and replace them with a new habit. So if after lunch you always want to smoke a cigarette replace it with 2 minutes of meditation or take a walk instead. The key here is to find something that is rewarding as well, if you hate walking it’s not going to work, pick something that you enjoy. Experiment with this until you find something that gets you there and no worries if it takes way longer than you’d expected. Now on to the last principle:

Focus on One Habit at a Time — Start With a Keystone Habit

I know you want to exercise daily, meditate daily, eat healthy, do intermittent fasting, stop using social media, etc. all at the same time but slow your roll there partner, we don’t want to overwhelm your elephant. As I’m sure you know, doing this usually starts off fine in the beginning but sooner or later you will burn out and be back to square one. The best approach is to start with one habit and focusing on just that until it’s as natural for you as brushing your teeth, however long that takes.

And if we’re going to start with one habit, might as well make it a keystone habit. This is a habit that ripples across other areas of your life and affects other habits. For instance with me, when I’m going to the gym regularly I am also more likely to do intermittent fasting since I like working out fasted, I’m more likely to eat a healthy meal afterwards since I want to make sure I provide my body with the nutrients it needs to recover, and I sleep better which makes it easier for me to do healthy things the next day. None of this is guaranteed, of course, but it is almost done automatic which certainly helps.

Find out what your biggest keystone habit is and focus all your efforts on that one. Exercise is a common one, meditation is another. You’ll know you’ve found it when you start to notice that other things fall into place without you even putting in any additional effort to do so. Experiment and see what works for you.

Conclusion

James Clear talks a lot about the importance of identity in habits. If you can get to the point where you become “the type of person who exercises” the end goal of exercise will take care of itself. These tips will set you up to begin to create momentum and as you chug along diligently, one day you will look up and realize you were doing that behavior in autopilot. You are now the type of person that does that habit.

If you want a more in depth reading and additional tips, I recommend James Clear’s and Charles Duhigg’s books on habits, but this post will get you 80% of the way there.

Thanks for reading!