We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.

Introduction

You want to achieve a certain thing, or you want to stop doing a certain thing. But after several months of trying, you're still not making any progress. What's wrong?

Your new habit is hard to maintain every day, and so you stop doing it after a month or two. How do you make the new habit stick? Not by giving up! No matter how many times we fail or slip back into old behaviors, we must persist in our efforts if we ever hope to succeed at anything important. The key is to make our habits first—then our habits will make us better people who can accomplish more than we ever could have hoped for before this moment in time!

You want to achieve a certain thing, or you want to stop doing a certain thing.

You want to achieve a certain thing, or you want to stop doing a certain thing. Maybe it’s something like:

• You want to write a book

• You want to run your first marathon (or finish one)

• You want to learn how to do stand-up comedy

You have a bad habit.

You have a bad habit. It affects your life in a negative way, negatively affecting others as well. It may be a physical or mental habit, but whatever it is, it's taking up room in your brain and making you less of the person you want to be.

You feel like this habit is slowly killing you—but why? Why would anyone continue with something that hurts them so much? What would make someone continue with such self-destructive behavior?

You made a change in your life and you've been doing it for months. But then you slip back into old behaviors.

You made a change in your life and you've been doing it for months. But then you slip back into old behaviors.

And now you're frustrated because you feel like all that work was for nothing.

It's not for nothing—it's just that the brain likes to tell itself stories about what happened, and sometimes it gives in to temptation or distraction more easily than we'd like it to. The first trick is recognizing when this is happening so that you can start again with a clear mind from the beginning of your habit-forming process: "This is my plan." And as long as we know what our goal is, we can set up our environment around us so that every action has us moving towards where we want to be instead of away from where we don't want to be.

Your new habit is hard to maintain every day, and so you stop doing it after a month or two.

If you want to make a new habit, you’ll need to do it every day for at least 30 days. That’s how long it takes for your brain to begin associating the new behavior with something positive, and stop responding to it as if it were harmful. After that, though? The process becomes much easier: by this point, you have made the activity into an old friend—and one that is infinitely more likely to stick around than when they first started hanging out together.

You may think that this means all habits are born equal, but they aren’t: some are harder than others. For example: I used to consider myself an avid runner who would happily take on any challenge presented by Mother Nature (or my own body). But then came along four years of severe depression and anxiety disorder in my life; suddenly running became impossible because of physical ailments related to both conditions (and there were many).

How do you make the new habit stick?

"How do we make the new habit stick?”

Makes sense, right? It's a question worth asking.

In this chapter, we'll look at how to make sure your new habits stick. I'm going to share with you some of my favorite ways. But first, let me tell you what it's like when they don't stick: it's not pretty! This can lead to frustration and disappointment in yourself—and probably also in others who are trying hard with their own habits as well!

It's important for us all know how important persistence is in forming and maintaining good habits. When we give up easily or get discouraged by failure (which happens quite often), our chances of success go down significantly:

Stick with your plan! Persist! Don't give up!

We can't control everything that happens to us, but we do have control over how we respond to it. The same principle applies to our habits: while they can be difficult to build, they're also hard to break. When you've planned out your habit and are doing it regularly, stick with your plan! Persist and don't give up!

Like any other skill, willpower is a muscle that needs to be trained. You might not feel like you want to go for a run right now—or read this book—but if you keep pushing through those initial feelings of resistance until the habit becomes automatic (and enjoyable), then success will follow. Remember: "The difference between winners and losers is that winners do what losers don’t want."

Conclusion

Your new habit is hard to maintain every day, and so you stop doing it after a month or two. But don't give up! Stick with your plan! Persist! Don't give up!

Tim Moseley