How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)- 25 Day Reading Challenge-Day-01-Jan 01 -2025

 How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and
Vice Versa)

WHY IS IT so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good

ones? Few things can have a more powerful impact on your life

than improving your daily habits. And yet it is likely that this time next year you’ll be doing the same thing rather than something better.

It often feels difficult to keep good habits going for more than a few

days, even with sincere effort and the occasional burst of motivation.

Habits like exercise, meditation, journaling, and cooking are

reasonable for a day or two and then become a hassle.

However, once your habits are established, they seem to stick

around forever—especially the unwanted ones. Despite our best

intentions, unhealthy habits like eating junk food, watching too much television, procrastinating, and smoking can feel impossible to break.

Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons: (1) we try to

change the wrong thing and (2) we try to change our habits in the

wrong way. In this chapter, I’ll address the first point. In the chapters

that follow, I’ll answer the second.

Our first mistake is that we try to change the wrong thing. To

understand what I mean, consider that there are three levels at which change can occur. You can imagine them like the layers of an onion.

THREE LAYERS OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE

The first layer is changing your outcomes. This level is

concerned with changing your results: losing weight, publishing a

book, winning a championship. Most of the goals you set are

associated with this level of change.

The second layer is changing your process. This level is

concerned with changing your habits and systems: implementing a

new routine at the gym, decluttering your desk for better workflow,

developing a meditation practice. Most of the habits you build are

associated with this level.

The third and deepest layer is changing your identity. This

level is concerned with changing your beliefs: your worldview, your

self-image, your judgments about yourself and others. Most of the

beliefs, assumptions, and biases you hold are associated with this level.

Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do.

Identity is about what you believe. When it comes to building habits

that last—when it comes to building a system of 1 percent

improvements—the problem is not that one level is “better” or “worse” than another. All levels of change are useful in their own way. The problem is the direction of change.