You may have heard the expression, “You are what you do”. At its core, it highlights the importance of actions defining you rather than intentions, words, and thoughts. Your true self is revealed through the choices and behaviors you exhibit every day. So, rather than talking about your aspirations, why not shape your actions and habits to truly reflect your values?
Your Actions May Be Because Of Your Habits
Your habits, whether good or bad, define you. Once you’ve established them, they are tough to break. Unfortunately, bad habits are easy to form because they are easily and quickly reinforced. Conversely, good habits may take days, weeks, or longer before we begin to enjoy the benefits.
Unfortunately, the human brain wants immediate gratification, which bad habits readily supply. For example, procrastinating instead of taking care of an important task instantly spares effort and risk while freeing up time to do something more rewarding, like watching a movie or playing a game.
Good habits are hard to form since we are predisposed to repeat behaviors for immediate physical, social, and emotional outcomes. Therefore, you are likely to choose a behavior that lights up your brain with all those pleasure chemicals now instead of putting in more effort to feel those same chemicals in the future. For example, the benefits of exercise, a specific weight, and a desired lifestyle require more effort since the benefits can take time to achieve.
Fortunately, you have control of your life and can influence your destiny and behaviors. You won’t need to rely on willpower or discipline. Instead, you steer yourself into good habits while nudging bad habits out. As a result, you move closer to achieving your goals and improving your quality of life.
Breaking Bad Habits
Most destructive and addictive habits have reward systems that require little to no effort. Smoking, doing drugs, or drinking are all easy habits to form because your brain gets that sweet rush of pleasure chemicals quickly. Once your brain experiences a reward, it will encourage you to keep doing it even though it could be bad for your overall health and well-being.
However, you can change bad habits with time, patience, and effort. It’s easier to curb a bad habit by making it harder to do. For example, if you want to stop eating candy, make it harder to eat it. Don’t make grabbing some from a bowl on the counter easy. Instead, replace it with a bowl of fruit or other healthy snacks within reach that you can grab instead.
While this seems like an easy fix, you must be patient. Change takes time, so you must be kind to yourself and ignore your inner critic. You won’t be perfect, but if you’re good most of the time, you’ll eventually kick that bad habit out the door.
To keep yourself motivated, celebrate small victories, such as not engaging in your bad habit for a day, week, or longer. This helps reinforce the happy feelings your brain wants. So, tell your friends, throw a party, and journal about all those small wins.
You can overcome bad habits like staying up too late, snacking, and procrastinating. However, more serious bad habits, like drug or alcohol abuse, may require a professional. Don’t be afraid to seek help!
Forming Good Habits
There is no shortage of advice from social media and supposed experts. You may be led to believe you have to go big or go home. As a result, your goal-setting efforts may be too big, which leads to missing the mark.
Since good habits require consistency, commitment, and mindfulness of your actions, you must take a systematic approach to change your behavior. The foundation for success is establishing a clear goal of what you want to do. It cannot be aspirational, like “I want to lose weight”. It has to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Otherwise, pushing off your goal is easy as other priorities pop up from your day.
For example, the SMART goals method makes a vague proclamation like “I want to lose weight” into something more tangible to achieve:
- Specific: I will focus on losing 20 lbs of body weight in 3 months.
- Measurable: I will track my progress by weighing myself weekly and keeping a food and fitness journal.
- Achievable: I will create a calorie deficit by consuming 500 fewer calories daily and incorporating regular exercise into my routine.
- Relevant: Losing weight is vital for my overall health and well-being and aligns with my desire to live healthier.
- Time-bound: I will achieve this goal within the next three months by consistently following my calorie deficit plan and exercise routine.
Adapt Your Goals and Environment As Needed
SMART goals will help you set expectations and provide guidance. You can also redefine them as you learn more about yourself to make them more achievable. For example, maybe losing 20 lbs in 3 months isn’t doable. Instead, losing 1 lb in 2 weeks could be a better goal for you. Then, repeat this goal 20 times, no matter how long it takes. This helps you feel like you’re making progress, and making progress helps keep you motivated. So celebrate every milestone because those small wins are still wins.
Besides making goals to change your habits, you should set up your environment to make it easier to reinforce your new behaviors. For example, leave your workout clothes next to your bed or move unhealthy snacks out of sight. If something triggers you into a bad habit, try removing it from the equation. After all, the trigger starts the behavior, leading to the reward.
Those who repeat behaviors turn them into habits. It doesn’t matter how much you do every day as long as you do something to reinforce your new behavior most days. Eventually, you will go from consciously engaging in that behavior to unconsciously doing it.
The Takeaway
You are what you do. So, directing your actions and habits to reflect your values will steer you toward your goals. Bad habits can be challenging to break, while good habits can be difficult to make. However, both can be achieved with time, patience, and effort. Setting clear goals, making micro-progress, and staying consistent will help you establish new behaviors that reflect the actions of the person you want to be.
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Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
