29 Ways to Change Your Habits

Our lives are often a series of habits played out through the day, a trammeled existence fettered by the slow accretion of our previous actions.

But habits can be changed, as difficult as that may seem sometimes. I’m a living example: in tiny, almost infinitesimal steps, I’ve changed a laundry list of habits. Quit smoking, stopped impulse spending, begun running and waking early and eating healthier and becoming frugal and simplifying my life and becoming organized and focused and productive, run three marathons and a couple of triathlons, started a few successful blogs, eliminated my debt … you get the picture.

Habit change is not that complicated. While the tips below may seem overwhelming if tackled altogether, there’s really only a few things you need to know. Everything else is just helping these to become reality. Remember, keep it simple.

Here are my tips to help you change a habit.

1. Choose just one habit at a time. Habit change is difficult, even with just one. If you do more than one habit at a time, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Keep it simple, allow yourself to focus, and give yourself the best chance for success. Btw, this is why New Year’s resolutions often fail — people try to tackle more than one change at a time.
   
2. Start small. The smaller the better, because trying to take on too much is a recipe for disaster. Want to exercise? Start with just 5-10 minutes. Want to wake up earlier? Try just 10 minutes earlier for now.
   
3. Do a 30-day Challenge. In my experience, it takes about 30 days to change a habit, if you’re focused and consistent. Of course, this will vary from person to person and habit to habit. Often you’ll read a magical “21 days” to change a habit, but this is a myth with no evidence.
   
4. Write it down. Just saying you’re going to change the habit is not enough of a commitment. You need to actually write it down, on paper. Write what habit you’re going to change.
   
5. Make a plan. While you’re writing, also list the steps of a plan. This will ensure you’re really prepared. The plan should include your reasons (motivations) for changing, obstacles, triggers, support buddies, and other ways you’re going to make this a success.
   
6. Know your motivations, and be sure they’re strong. Write them down in your plan. You have to understand why you’re doing this. The benefits of doing it need to be crystal clear in your mind. If you’re just doing it for vanity, while that can be a good motivator, it’s not usually enough. We need something stronger.
   
7. Don’t start right away. In your plan, write down a start date. Maybe a week or two from the date you start writing out the plan. When you start right away (like today), you are not giving the plan the seriousness it deserves. Tell everyone about your date. Put it up on your wall or computer desktop. It builds up anticipation and excitement, and helps you to prepare.
   
8. Write down all your obstacles. If you’ve tried this habit change before (odds are you have), you’ve likely failed. Reflect on those failures, and figure out what stopped you from succeeding. Write down every obstacle you’ve encountered in the past, and others that are likely to happen. Then write down how you plan to overcome them. That’s the key: write down your solution before the obstacles arrive, so you’re prepared.
   
9. Identify your triggers. What situations trigger abandoning your plan? Most habits have multiple triggers. Identify all of them and write them in your plan.
   
10. For every single trigger, identify a positive habit you’re going to do instead. Some positive habits could include: exercise, meditation, deep breathing, organizing, decluttering, and more.
    
11. Plan a support system. Who will you turn to when you have a strong resistance to doing the thing? Write these people into your plan. Don’t underestimate the power of support — it’s really important.
    
12. Ask for help. Get your family and friends and co-workers to support you. Ask them for their help, and let them know how important this is. If you’re struggling, call on your support network for help.
    
13. Become aware of self-talk. You talk to yourself, in your head, all the time — but often we’re not aware of these thoughts. Start listening. These thoughts can derail any habit change, any goal. Often they’re negative: “I can’t do this. This is too difficult. Why am I putting myself through this? I’m not strong enough. I don’t have enough discipline. I suck.” It’s important to know you’re doing this.
    
14. Stay positive. You will have negative thoughts — the important thing is to realize when you’re having them, and push them out of your head. Squash them like a bug! Then replace them with a positive thought. “I can do this! If Leo can do it, so can I!”
    
15. Have strategies to defeat resistance to change. They’re going to come — they’re inevitable, and they’re strong. But they’re also temporary, and beatable. Some strategies include deep breathing, self-massage, eating some frozen grapes, taking a walk, exercise, drinking a glass of water, calling a support buddy, or posting on a support forum. •
    
16. Prepare for the saboteurs. There will always be people who are negative, who try to get you to break your new habits. Be ready for them. Confront them, and be direct: you need their support, and if they can’t support you then you don’t want to be around them.
    
17. Talk to yourself. Be your own cheerleader, give yourself pep talks, repeat a mantra and don’t be afraid to seem crazy to others.
    
18. Have a mantra. When I wanted to quit my day job, it was “Liberate Yourself”. This is just a way to remind yourself of what you’re trying to do.
    
19. Use visualization. This is powerful. Vividly picture, in your head, successfully changing your habit. Visualize doing your new habit after each trigger, overcoming urges, and what it will look like when you’re done. This seems new-agey, but it really works.
    
20. Have rewards. Regular ones. You might see these as bribes, but actually they’re just positive feedback. Put these into your plan, along with the milestones at which you’ll receive them.
    
21. Take it one day at a time. Just make it through this next 24 hours.
    
22. No exceptions. This seems harsh, but it’s a necessity: when you’re trying to break the bonds between an old habit and a trigger, and form a new bond between the trigger and a new habit, you need to be really consistent. You can’t do it sometimes, or there will be no new bond, or at least it will take a really really long time to form. So, at least for the first 30 days (and preferably 60), you need to have no exceptions. Each time a trigger happens, you need to do the new habit and not the old one. No exceptions, or you’ll have a backslide. If you do mess up, regroup, learn from your mistake, plan for your success, and try again (see the last item on this list).
    
23. Get rest. Being tired leaves us vulnerable to relapse. Get a lot of rest so you can have the energy to overcome resistance.
    
24. Drink lots of water. Similar to the item above, being dehydrated leaves us open to failure. Stay hydrated!
    
25. Renew your commitment often. Remind yourself of your commitment hourly, and at the beginning and end of each day. Read your plan. Celebrate your success. Prepare yourself for obstacles and resistance.
    
26. Set up public accountability. Blog about it, post on a forum, email your commitment and daily progress to friend and family, post a chart up where you see it daily, write a column for your local newspaper (I did this when I ran my first marathon). When we make it public — not just the commitment but the progress updates — we don’t want to fail.
    
27. Engineer it so it’s hard to fail. Create a groove that’s harder to get out of than to stay in: increase positive feedback for sticking with the habit, and increase negative feedback for not doing the habit.
    
28. Avoid some situations where you normally do your old habit, at least for awhile, to make it a bit easier on yourself. If you normally drink when you go out with friends, consider not going out for a little while. This applies to any bad habit — whether it be eating junk food or scrolling social media, there are some situations you can avoid that are especially difficult for someone trying to change a bad habit. Realize, though, that when you go back to those situations, you will still get the old urges, and when that happens you should be prepared.
    
29. If you fail, figure out what went wrong, plan for it, and try again. Don’t let failure and guilt stop you. They’re just obstacles, but they can be overcome. In fact, if you learn from each failure, they become stepping stones to your success. Regroup. Let go of guilt. Learn. Plan. And get back on that horse.
    

RESOURCES Find Leo at zenhabits.net