How to Build Life Changing Habits

A step-by-step guide to building habits that will change your life!

When I was 18 years old, I tried building a bunch of habits that I knew were beneficial. It was a Sunday and I decided that starting the next day, I will start doing all these habits at once.

But of course, one week in, it got overwhelming and I ended up breaking all these habits altogether.

After reading Atomic Habits by James Clear (honestly my favourite book of all time), I realised that I’ve been approaching habit-building wrong all along. Since then, I’ve implemented my own personal step-by-step routine to when I want to build a new habit.

This blog post will go through those steps! You will learn how to set yourself up for success when building a new habit. It’s definitely for all those who want to build better habits more effectively.

I definitely recommend any of my past blog posts on habits, but I also recommend that you read this blog post before you start a new habit. But before that, you should read this 🙂

Let me know what habits that you’ve been building (or are going to build). Feel free to comment since they will be submitted to me privately!

Now, let’s go into these steps!

Step 1 – List HABITS that bring beneficial long-term results you want

Whether you come across ideas from YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, list down the habits that you want to build.

It’s easy to see a whole bunch of habits, and want to do them because it’s popular to do so. But only list down the habits that you know will benefit you.

So list down the habits that you think will help you.

Step 2 – Pick ONE habit to focus on

This is an important step to get out of the way.

Yes I know, after we listed down a bunch of habits, we have to choose one to focus on.

But here’s the thing, when you try to build all those habits all at once, it’s hard to keep track of them. Then, what tends to happen is that when you lose track of one habit, you’ll end up losing track of all of them.

So pick just one habit to focus on. Then, once you feel like it’s part of your lifestyle, move on to the next one. You’re still making progress just by building one habit.

Step 3 – Write down the long-term consequence for the habit

Now, it’s important to be aware of how the habit will affect you long-term. We already know that just by doing a habit for a day or two, you’re not going to see those results. But when you keep doing them over a longer period of time, you eventually would.

For example, the long-term consequence of building a habit of healthy eating is having improved health. Another example is that the long-term consequence of building a language practice habit is that you may become conversational in that language.

So have a think about what the long-term consequence of building this habit would do.

Step 4 – Write down why you want to build this habit

Another important step is to know why you want to build the habit. Many people just start building a habit for the sake of it. They don’t actually think about why they want to build the habit.

Going back to the habit of healthy eating, a reason why you may want to start that habit is because you want to improve your health. With the habit of language practice, you may want to start building that habit because you want to be more conversational in that language when you travel.

Knowing your why is important because it’s one of the things that keeps you going with your habits. When you feel like slacking off, you remember the reason why you started the habit.

Step 5- Make necessary environment changes to set yourself up for success

Think about breaking a bad habit. If you were to break a habit of eating junk food, what will be the one thing that will help? Getting the junk food out of sight in your house. Because if the junk food is there, it’s going to be hard to break the habit of eating it. That’s why you get rid of it.

It’s the opposite for building a habit. Instead of getting rid of something so you’re not tempted to do it, you make sure you see it everywhere.

For example, if you want to build the habit of reading more books, you make sure that a book is to be seen as much as possible. For instance, you’ll put your book on your bed so you can easily see it, and hence be tempted to read it.

Another example is if you want to build the habit of eating healthier. That’s why, you put a bowl of fruits in your kitchen so you can always easily see it whenever you feel hungry.

We can’t just rely on discipline alone. We have to be a bit smarter and make those environment changes so it’ll be easier for us.

Step 6 – Make a list of exceptions for when you can skip the habit

Realistically, we’re not going to be doing a habit 100% of the time and that’s okay!

That’s why, you want to make a list of exceptions for when it’s okay to skip the habit. So when those instances arise, you don’t feel guilty about it.

For example, the exceptions for me not doing my exercise habit are:

• When I’m physically sick
• Family emergency
• I’m moving places
• I need a mental health day
• I’m physically tired

So, when any of these arise, I know that it’s an exception so I don’t have to feel bad for skipping my exercise habit.

The reason why this step is important is because missed days can be really discouraging. And when we’re discouraged, sometimes we tend to just drop the habit altogether. But having these exceptions ahead of time will help you remember that it’s okay to have skipped the habit.

Remember that it takes time & effort for the habit to become a part of your lifestyle

Habits aren’t built overnight. It’s when you’re always doing them that they eventually become a part of your life.

Just have patience and stay kind to yourself. Remember that habit building isn’t meant to be a perfect journey. It’s meant to give you progress and that is all that matters!

Take a SMALL STEP

Start this blog post from Step 1, and begin doing all the steps that follow! Here is a summarised list of steps for your reference:

1. List habits that bring you results you want
2. Pick ONE habit to focus on
3. Write down the long-term consequence of this habit
4. Write down why you want to build this habit
5. Make necessary environment changes to set yourself up for success
6. Make a list of exceptions for when you can skip the habit.

It’s always progress over perfection!

When it comes to building habits, it’s always progress over perfection.

The purpose of these steps that this blog post has gone through is to help you set yourself up for success with building a habit. By choosing one habit to focus on (and being aware of its benefits), knowing why you want to build the habit, and making the changes to further help you, it makes the habit-building process as easy as possible.

Just remember that we’re not going to get things perfect 100% of the time and that’s completely okay. As long as you keep going and stay consistent, that habit will be part of your lifestyle in no time.

And I talk about progress over perfection all the time, especially in my book Small Steps to Progression which you can download for free here! In that book, it can be your source of motivation to stay kind to yourself and focus on progress over perfection always!

-Lauren 😊

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How to Use Self-Talk to Break/Build Your Habits

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