Create Good Habits And Destroy Bad Ones - One EASY Trick

Judge a man not by his goals, but by what he does everyday.

That line has been echoed throughout the personal development world for a long time, and for good reason.

Your goals, dreams and motivation means absolutely nothing if you don't put in the effort everyday.

That's why habits are so powerful. They tell our subconscious brain EXACTLY what we should be doing - without us even thinking!

So, how can we make creating good habits as simple as possible? Here's how:

We make it easy.

That's right, the plan here is to make good habits as easy as possible. Let's use the example of getting fitter.

Let's say you want to go for a run every day at 7am before work.

The first day you'll get up, go for a run, and feel great!

Then the second day comes, you'll still feel good. Then, after a while, you miss one. Then you miss another.

Now, because you've lost your momentum, you've lost your motivation. Running before work is now something you 'went through a phase of doing'.

Let's reframe this...

Instead of waking up one day and saying 'I'm going to change my life and get fitter, starting from tomorrow', you decide to take it gradual.

First you work on waking up and putting on running gear. That's it. No running, no exercise. Just put on your running clothes.

Then, after a while, you say you're going to run for 2 minutes then come home.

You do that for a while. Do you see what's happening here?

Rather than a huge jump to re-invent yourself, you are slowly becoming the type of person who exercises in the morning - thereby engraining the habit.

Everyone has 2 minutes in their day, so everyone can run for 2 minutes. This makes the habit easy.

Then, when you miss a run one day - which you eventually will - you'll have no problem waking up the next day, putting on your running gear and jogging away. Because it will be a habit.

Your running gear will be in the same place in the morning when you wake up, it will be second nature to get up and put it on. Then, once it's on, you may as well go for that run.

That's how to make a habit easy.

Now, the same is true in reverse.

If you find yourself watching TV instead of working in the evenings, it means the habit is too easy.

Instead try logging out of Netlix after finishing, so it means you have to go through the effort of logging in every time you want to watch.

Or better still, try moving your TV out of your room completely. Then you'll only watch TV if you really need to.

Do you get the gist?

Make good habits easy and bad habits hard.

The book this technique is from is called Atomic Habits by James Clear - which I 100% recommend to anyone reading this.