Why is it hard to change our habits?

This article is the second in a series of articles on how to use in GMAT preparation the principles of habit formation outlined in the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. Here’s the link to the first article.

In this article, we’re going to discuss two reasons why we find it hard to change our habits.

1. We try to change the wrong thing

   The author says that there are three layers of our life:

   • Identity i.e. who we believe we are. This is the deepest part of our being.

   • Processes i.e. what we do. In other words, our behavior and actions.

   • Outcomes i.e. what happens to us, or our circumstances

The author says that we try to change our habits by changing our goals or desired outcomes. And then, we try to change the processes to align with those goals. Thus, we focus on the outer two layers.

However, the author says, this approach is bound to fail most of the time since we’re ignoring the innermost layer i.e. our identity.

Imagine two people resisting a cigarette. When offered a smoke, the first person says, “No thanks. I’m trying to quit.” It sounds like a reasonable response, but this person still believes they are a smoker who is trying to be something else. They are hoping their behavior will change while carrying around the same beliefs.

The second person declines by saying, “No thanks. I’m not a smoker.” It’s a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was part of their former life, not their current one. They no longer identify as someone who smokes.

The right way to change any habit is to work on the identity. For example: if you want to score 760 on the GMAT, you realize that you need to study daily for 3 hours without distractions and do the hard work of regularly analyzing your mistakes. This is something you need to do. Now, you think, “what kind of person would do these things?” A disciplined person who values long term success over short term distractions.

Now, you change your identity and accept that you are such a person. And then work on changing the processes to align with your new identity. Every time, you’re faced with a choice, you ask yourself, “what would a disciplined person focused on long term success do?” You make the choices that such a person would make. Over a period of time, you’ll be that person. In this case, you’re changing your processes not to achieve a certain outcome but to become the person that you want to become.

It’s not about achieving external measures of success like earning more money, losing weight, or reducing stress.

Habits can help you achieve all of these things, but fundamentally they are not about having something. They are about becoming someone.

Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.

As you make changes in your life to reflect your new identity, your new identity will get reinforced. And the stronger the new identity becomes, the easier it will become to make even bigger changes to align with your identity.

2. We try to change our habits in the wrong way

IN 2001, RESEARCHERS in Great Britain began working with 248 people to build better exercise habits over the course of two weeks. The subjects were divided into three groups. The first group was the control group. They were simply asked to track how often they exercised. The second group was the “motivation” group. They were asked not only to track their workouts but also to read some material on the benefits of exercise. The researchers also explained to the group how exercise could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and improve heart health. Finally, there was the third group. These subjects received the same presentation as the second group, which ensured that they had equal levels of motivation. However, they were also asked to formulate a plan for when and where they would exercise over the following week. Specifically, each member of the third group completed the following sentence: “During the next week, I will partake in at least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise on [DAY] at [TIME] in [PLACE].” In the first and second groups, 35 to 38 percent of people exercised at least once per week. (Interestingly, the motivational presentation given to the second group seemed to have no meaningful impact on behavior.) But 91 percent of the third group exercised at least once per week—more than double the normal rate.

Why did the third group perform significantly better than the first two groups? The author answers:

Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action. Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.

When your dreams are vague, it’s easy to rationalize little exceptions all day long and never get around to the specific things you need to do to succeed.

So, one way we go wrong in changing our habits is that we fail to be specific. The more specific we are, the better are our chances to succeed. Here’s an example of how you can go about it:

1. I will study 20 hours this week (Very generic and thus very unlikely to work)
2. I will study for 2 hrs every day from Mon to Fri, and 5 hrs on Sat and Sun each (More specific)
3. I will study 7 AM to 8 AM and 9 PM to 10 PM on Mon-Fri and 7 AM to 10 AM and 2 PM to 4 PM on Sat and Sun. I’ll block my calendar at these times. If I’m not able to study at a slot for any reason, I’ll block another time for study. (Very specific and thus very likely to succeed)

Of course, you can go a level further by also designating the place of your study and even where you’ll keep your mobile so that you are not distracted during your study hours. The more of these decisions you take upfront, the fewer things you’ll need to decide when you actually sit down to study. Thus, your studying experience will be much smoother, and your chances of studying much higher.

Another way in which we go wrong is working on our motivation rather than on our environment. If we fail to study, we blame ourselves, not the environment. However, our environment is equally responsible, if not more. If I keep a packets of chips in front of you and ask you to not eat it for four hours, how likely is it that you’ll be able to resist the temptation to eat it? On the other hand, if the packet is not in front of you and not even in the house, now how likely are you to go to the store to buy it to eat it? Much less than the first case. Right?

When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations. The people with the best self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least. It’s easier to practice self-restraint when you don’t have to use it very often. So, yes, perseverance, grit, and willpower are essential to success, but the way to improve these qualities is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.

In the next article, we’ll learn how to design our environment and our life in such a way that we build the habits that we want to build.