How habits can change your life

Aristotle said “We are what we repeatedly do”. Our daily routine and habits manifest over time as behaviors that either advance or hinder us. The root of this is our identity; the regular actions we take shape our identity.

Let’s say you want to get good grades on your coursework. You are the kind of person to sit down and get it all done last minute and you make a habit of doing this every time the deadline for your assignment comes up. You may get a decent mark if you know you can do it, but you may very well miss out on marks you would have gotten had you habitually sat down for 30 minutes every day, done your research, and typed out a few important points.

Another example is if you drink every day. After work, you have a few drinks to unwind after a long day. Hangovers are a natural feeling for you in the mornings, weight gain is a near certainty, and that fixation on getting through the day so you can get to relax with a cold one plagues you and prevents you from being fully in the moment.

Habits also grow over time. They progress and increase in momentum and magnitude. James Clear, author of the international bestseller Atomic Habits refers to this as “the compound interest of self-improvement”. This is true for both good and bad habits. Looking at the coursework example, overtime spending 30 minutes a day studying will automatically increase to an hour as you find it easier to focus for longer periods of time. You will get your assignments finished quicker and will have gained the writing and research skills to earn you better grades. Likewise, if you drink every day, overtime just two drinks won’t give you the same buzz it used to, so you start drinking more and more. This will cause you to have a worse hangover, more weight gain, a loss of focus throughout the day and eventually a full blown, out of control addiction to alcohol.

You can see the progression of habits in the model below:

When adopting new habits and incorporating them into a routine, it is important to remember this model as habits that are done simply for the routine with no intention of progression leads to stagnation. Author Bill Eckstrom in his 2017 TedTalk Why comfort will ruin your life stated explicitly that “growth only occurs in a state of discomfort”. He talked about how order begets predictability and in predictability, we find comfort. Eckstrom goes on to say that comfort is dangerous because “science shows that anytime you continually do something, or you even think about something the same way, you’ll eventually stop growing” [Eckstrom, 2017].

A perfect example of this would be weight loss. If you keep to the same diet, the same intake of calories and the same workout routine, you will lose weight to a point but eventually your weight loss will plateau once you reach the point where your caloric intake and calorie burning maintains your weight. In order to continue losing weight, you need to increase your output and decrease your intake – what James Clear would refer to as “the aggregation of marginal gains”. A 1% improvement on your habits over time will culminate in a desired outcome achieved sooner or an outcome better than expected.

As our habits develop, we in turn change. Our habits dictate the kind of people we are. Someone who wakes up at 5am to get their work done identifies as a proactive morning person. Someone who smokes, drinks heavily and eats whatever they want identifies as someone who doesn’t take their health seriously. We may not feel connected to our identity all the time as our identity changes as we change, though to get a good idea of the kind of people we are, we can look at our habits to get some idea of what our identity is. With this knowledge, we can seek to change our identity by changing and improving on our daily habits.

I want this to be very clearly understood: your identity is tied to what you do, not what you like or how you look. It is simply down to the type of person you are – your daily habits that show people exactly who you are. This idea that your identity is fixed and unchangeable is a fallacy and holds people back from realizing their potential. Everything is a possibility for you. It is not luck or genetics or super powers; it is simply down to the actions you take every day that dictate the kind of person you are. “We are what we repeatedly do”…I think Aristotle was onto something there.