The Truth About Habits That No One Tells You
I exercised for over 500 days in a row. Every. Single. Day.
Oh yeah, I also meditated and took a cold shower every day for over 500 days—even in the freezing cold winter.
I’ve also quit really bad habits like smoking, drinking, and messing around with prescription drugs like Adderall and Xanax, as well.
Why am I telling you that?
It’s to show you that when it comes to creating the “good” ones and stopping the “bad” ones, it can be done, but there is something the Habit Gurus don’t tell you.
The Secret to Building Habits
So what’s the secret?
Habits aren’t real.
At least not in the way that we always hear about them.
There is no “number of days” like 45, 59, or 66 days until you magically form a new habit.1 That is ludicrous.
You don’t eat a salad every meal for 45 days and suddenly you eat healthy for the rest of your life without conscious thought. In fact, if you haven’t turned into a giant head of lettuce, on day 46 you’d probably binge on some of those foods you’d been avoiding.
You don’t exercise every day for 67 days and all of a sudden you have the life-long habit of exercise under your belt.
You don’t meditate every day for 90 days and suddenly gain control over that little voice inside your head that tells you that you aren’t good enough (Spoiler: it will still be there).
To expect habits to work like that is harmful to people.
Many people think of a habit as this unconscious behavior that emerges over time. And it does. Kind of. But extremely slowly, and almost imperceptibly. And the level of unconscious skill that many of us expect to reach after just 67 days isn’t the same level of unconscious skill that Michael Jordan has when shooting jumpers.
It creates this unreasonable expectation of when a habit should “click” into place, and even what it should feel like.
What Habits Feel Like When They Stick
The truth is, it doesn’t feel like anything.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Instead of feeling “automatic” as everyone tells you it will be after some magic number of days, it becomes more of a conscious effort, an awareness, of a thing you do.
The market for helping people form habits is vast.
Why?
Because everyone on the planet struggles with them: good and bad.2
The advice is copious and reaches far and wide, from coupling a desired habit with an existing one, all the way down to simply making a list of the habits you want and then telling yourself that you are disciplined enough to do them.
Okay. Great. Now what?
There is this idea that you form a habit, and that’s it, your work is done. It just goes into “automatic mode” and you are set for life—that a habit is something we just “obtain” and then have for the rest of our lives.
Not. True. At. All.
Habits Take a Lifetime
The good habits, the ones that you want in your life, are actually going to be a life-long process.
But no one tells you that part.
In James Clear’s popular book, Atomic Habits, he outlines the idea that we need to do the tiniest little actions that will eventually compound over time and become habits—thus, our identity.
The book and the idea are great.
But what if he was wrong?
What if our identity is always in flux? What if it changes with age, environment, the roles we play in life, or even our internal processes?
Of course, it does get “easier” after a certain number of times doing something, but life changes, emotions change, environment changes, people change, we change.
If our identity is in constant flux, what does that mean for our habits?
A habit is not a habit in the way we think of it. It is a tool we use to improve our self-discipline. It is a life-long process. But the habit itself isn’t the answer. The ability to start and stick to, or stop, them is.
Habit Formation and Habit Destruction Are the Habit
You still have to make the choice every single day to wake up early. To go exercise, meditate, and step in the cold shower. Smile. To do deep work.
Does it get easier than when you first started?
Kind of. But not really.
Some days, well, it’ll seem impossible.
But here’s the thing: your mind gets stronger. You learn how to start and stop habits.
Consciously doing a good habit, or stopping a bad one, is simply the tool to strengthen your mind.
What if we stopped looking at each individual habit as the goal, but started looking at the ability to create or destroy them as the goal: the skill of habit formation or habit destruction.
Each day I continue on my path of self-improvement, I come to the same conclusion: it’s all in the mind. It’s all training.
I can now start, and stick to, any new habit I want with relative ease. It is a superpower.
I can confidently stop any bad habit without batting an eyelash.
Don’t get me wrong, the “voice of friction” is still there on both sides, but I don’t listen to it.
How is this possible?
Training. It’s all training.
The ability to start and stick to habits, or stop habits, is the skill.
So how do you get that skill?
The thing that no one ever talks about is the varying levels that habits have:
- Activities that require zero skill and that have a high level of reward are the easiest to form and hardest to break—drinking, smoking, scrolling, drugs, caffeine, biting your nails, etc.
- Activities that require a moderate amount of skill and attention with minimal reward like driving and brushing your teeth are moderately easy to form and to break.
- Learning to play Mozart or exercising for 311 days in a row without fail requires a level of skill and discipline that most people cannot reach. The skill and discipline needed are immense and the rewards are imperceptibly small, incremental, and seemingly fleeting. These are the habits that are the most difficult to form. And, luckily, to break once they are established.
Most of us don’t like that.
But as always, that is where the answer lies: do what is most difficult for the greatest long-term rewards.
But it doesn’t have to be difficult. You just have to do the difficult things atomically, stop expecting the habit to “click”, and most importantly, focus on the skill of habit formation and habit destruction, not the habit itself.
It really is all in your mind.
Everything.
Thoughts That Might Get Me in Trouble
I was thinking a lot about the obesity and type-2 diabetes epidemic across the globe, and while numerous factors are at play, I still come back to the same spot: it is ultimately caused by the mind. Any way I twist it, even when considering genetics, hormones, and environment, the hand must put the food into the mouth.
What if it isn’t the habit of eating healthy we need to focus on, but instead, the skill of being able to create or destroy habits and understanding that it actually takes a lifetime?
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.674 ↩︎
- https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0003-066X.54.7.493 ↩︎
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