New Year, New Habits?

by Ellen Owusu

Why Habits Don't Last.

It's a new year. With a burst of inspiration you make that New Year’s resolution everybody talks about. You promise yourself drastic changes, brand new habits and a new you. By February most of the habits are already gone.

You decide this is the year you’ll go to the gym for that “summer body”. Summer comes and the body is still non-existent, not because you didn't want it desperately enough but because the habit never stuck. This cycle repeats itself yearly for many people, and raises an important question: why don't our habits last?

Big Goals With No Systems

The issue is how we approach habit building. We focus on the big goal and ignore the process. We want major change and fast results, forgetting that Rome was not built in a day and that little drops of water fill a mighty ocean. When we aim too big and fast we overwhelm ourselves which makes that habit hard to start or to stick to.

Motivation is Unreliable

Another reason habits don't stick is because we rely too heavily on motivation. We make bold decisions at midnight on January 1st fueled by excitement and emotion. But motivation is unstable as it depends on how we feel and how life and the things around us are. So when motivation fades , the habits fade along with it .

The Solution; Start Small and Stacking

To solve this we need to start small and go back to the basics by making the habits small, easy and enjoyable. Instead of aiming for drastic change, we begin with actions so simple that  they are hard to resist and cause us to show up consistently. As time goes by, we can gradually build on it.

 A powerful way to do this is through habit stacking, a concept popularized by James Clear, a renowned writer of the New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits. Habit stacking is linking a new habit to an existing one. For example, to start a journaling habit: after I turn off my 5:00 a.m alarm, I will pick up my journal and write what I'm grateful for. By attaching the new habit to the norm, something you already do, your brain learns to adopt the habit easily.

The lasting change we desire will not come out of the blue from motivation or the New Year’s resolution but from intentional systems and consistency. When habits are structured correctly, they do not rely on feelings to survive, they stand firmly.