5 Ways to Make Sure Your New Habit Crashes and Burns
If you’re like me, your clothes fit too well, you have too much money in your savings account, and your mood is stable enough to support a champagne flute pyramid. So the last thing you can afford is a new, invigorating habit that sets off a cascade of positive changes in your life.
Well today is your lucky day! Here are the 5 best ways to make sure every new habit you try to build never sticks around. Just one can be enough to take care of a pesky incipient practice, so I encourage you to experiment.
#1. Pick the wrong habit to build
This is first for a reason – it’s by far the most important thing you can do to avoid becoming one of those insufferable daily exercisers/meditators/readers/goal-setters. You are looking for a habit that will require a Herculean amount of motivation and effort. If it feels like it could fit seamlessly into your current routine, that is a flashing warning light! Don’t stop until you find something that your friends and family are shocked to hear you’re trying and makes you feel like you are living someone else’s life.
If you’re having trouble, just read about the daily habits of the richest person in your home state and emulate them exactly.
#2. Set a high bar for success
Our brains are hard-wired to build habits, so you must ensure your new behavior is a real slog. A good rule of thumb is if it happens after 6 AM or takes less than 60 minutes/day, you’re playing with fire. It’s also helpful to remind yourself that if you can’t commit to doing something forever, it’s a waste of time to do it at all. Lastly, it’s best to pick something that your environment is purposefully designed to make difficult or awkward.
The perfect layout for your new home yoga studio
#3. Don’t celebrate until you reach your ultimate goal
Don’t make the rookie mistake of celebrating “little wins” along the way. Commit to only rewarding yourself if, and only if, you blow it out of the water. If you were smart about picking your goal, the reward will be so far in the future that your brain doesn’t have a chance to associate any current actions with immediate rewards.
#4. Measure outcomes, not process
If you insist on tracking something related to the habit (which I highly discourage), repeat after me: Immediate, visual results are the only things that count. Once you decide what to track, fully commit to linear, or even better, exponential improvement. The sooner you can hit a plateau, the better.
Your before and after should look at least this good.
#5. Take off the kid gloves!
If you followed steps 1-4, your motivation to maintain the new habit should be on life support but you can’t risk self-compassion sneaking into your subconscious and screwing everything up. Ramping up your critical self-talk is an easy, effective way to stop any momentum dead in its tracks. Spend a few minutes online to find examples of people who’ve achieved more than you can dream of in much less time. Videos with both “HUSTLE” and “GRIND” in the title are great starting points.
If all else fails, you can resort to the nuclear option. Think about all the other times you’ve tried to start doing something new and didn’t stick with it. Isn’t that enough proof that you weren’t born with enough willpower to make a positive change?