When trying to form a new habit, ensure you feel successful after performing the behavior, as emotions, not mere repetition, are what truly wire habits into your brain.
To create new habits, scale the desired behavior down to be super tiny and easy to accomplish, ensuring a feeling of success to reinforce the action.
To create a new habit, first scale the desired behavior down to be super tiny, then find a natural trigger in your existing routine, and finally, celebrate or help yourself feel good immediately after performing the tiny behavior.
If past attempts at behavior change have failed, understand that it’s likely due to poorly designed programs or methods, not a personal lack of motivation or willpower, which can reduce self-blame and encourage new attempts.
When attempting any behavior change, fundamentally prioritize making the desired action as easy as possible to perform, as this is a critical factor for consistent success.
Recognize that motivation naturally fluctuates like a wave, so don’t rely on high motivation for long-term consistency, and plan for periods when motivation will be low.
Approach behavior change as a set of learnable skills, rather than an innate ability, which empowers you to actively practice and improve your capacity for change over time.
If a desired behavior isn’t happening, systematically troubleshoot by first checking for a prompt, then assessing if it’s too difficult (ability) and making it easier, and only then considering if it’s a motivation issue, in which case you might choose a different habit.
Instead of trying to ‘break’ bad habits with sheer force, view them as tangled cords that need to be ‘untangled’ gradually, which sets a more realistic expectation for the process.
When forming a new habit, resist the urge to automatically increase the difficulty or quantity of the behavior; keep the bar low to ensure consistent success and avoid setting yourself up for failure.
Approach behavior change with a playful, experimental mindset, exploring different approaches and redesigning as needed, rather than striving for perfection, to find what truly fits and makes the process enjoyable.
Consistently engage in behaviors that allow you to feel successful to build ‘success momentum,’ which increases confidence and self-efficacy, enabling you to overcome future challenges more effectively.
Instead of attempting many large changes simultaneously, concentrate on helping yourself or others feel successful with one very small behavior, as this can lead to significant ripple effects and broader positive changes.
When guiding behavior change, identify what the individual is passionate about and what they can easily do, then start there to maximize the likelihood of success and positive emotional reinforcement.
View your habits as a garden; be flexible, evolve them over time, and don’t be afraid to remove or replace habits that no longer serve you or fit your current life circumstances.
Before starting a new habit, consider where it naturally fits into your life and if it’s the right time of year or life stage for it to flourish; if it doesn’t take root, don’t blame yourself, but reconsider its placement or timing.
If a habit isn’t working, redesign it to make it easier or a better fit; if it still doesn’t stick, don’t force it, but move on to other habits that might be more suitable for your current situation.
Leverage periods of high motivation to learn the mechanics of a new behavior, so that when motivation inevitably wanes, the behavior is already familiar and requires less effort to initiate.
To increase the likelihood of performing a new behavior, reduce the number of steps required to initiate it, as more steps create more opportunities to procrastinate or give up.
Allow individuals to feel in control of their habit formation process, letting them choose when and how much to do, rather than dictating actions, to increase long-term adherence and personal investment.
Actively seek or create a net gain in positive emotions immediately after performing a desired behavior, as this emotional reward is what makes the behavior automatic and habitual.
To initiate any behavior or habit, ensure that all three essential factors are present: sufficient motivation, the ability to perform the action, and a clear prompt to trigger it.
To stop an unwanted behavior, strategically remove one or more of its core components: reduce motivation, make it harder to do (remove ability), or eliminate the prompt that triggers it.
To untangle a bad habit, identify the easiest or least ingrained instance of the behavior and address that first, then progressively move to the next easiest, rather than tackling the most difficult one initially.
Focus on untangling a few of the easier instances of a bad habit, as this often leads to the remaining, more difficult instances diminishing in impact or disappearing on their own.
If traditional methods like setting ambitious goals and daily tracking lead to feelings of failure, set them aside, as you might be able to change your behavior more effectively without them.
Cultivate the skill of knowing when to push yourself to do more than the minimum and when to simply do the minimum (and celebrate it), especially on busy or low-motivation days, to maintain consistency.
If you feel motivated to do more than your tiny habit, do it, but consider it ’extra credit’ rather than a new minimum, ensuring that your baseline remains easy to achieve on days when motivation is low.
If you push yourself to the point of pain during a behavior, compensate by celebrating ’extra hard’ immediately afterward, as this strong positive emotion can help prevent the negative experience from undermining the habit.
When your motivation wanes, avoid self-blame by recognizing that this is a normal part of the ‘motivation wave,’ which can help you persist rather than giving up.
Immediately upon waking and standing up, say ‘It’s going to be a great day’ to yourself, even if you don’t fully believe it, to start your day with a positive mindset.
Use moments of frustration with others as a prompt to remind yourself that ’everybody’s doing the best they can’ and ’nobody tries to screw up,’ fostering empathy and patience.
When you turn on the shower, use the waiting time for the water to warm up as a prompt to think of one new positive thing about your body each time, fostering appreciation for your physical self.