How do we create a new habit in 3 steps? We often know what is good for us, but there is often an unbridgeable gap between knowing and doing. In the time we live in now, anything is possible. You only have to google and you will find all kinds of free e-books, checklists, blogs, and webinars with step-by-step plans that describe how you achieve your goal. Yet it is very difficult to create a new habit or reach your goals. How come?

Comfort vs. development

Your mind wants safety and comfort but your soul wants development. That is because there is a difference between your soul and your mind. Your soul and mind want different things. Your mind wants to protect you. It, therefore, prefers that everything remains the same as it is now because that is safe and easy. However, your soul wants to grow and evolve. Evolution is a very natural longing.

Just look around you. Your hair grows. Your nails grow. Children grow. All cells in your body are completely renewed after every 7 years. Nature grows and renews. Every soul needs growth and development. Even if you have everything working out for you in life, routine is bound to get boring at some point. Your soul wants to keep learning and developing. As this longing is accompanied by uncertainty, fear, and doubt, your mind pulls on the brakes. Your soul gives you an impulse, inspiration, and the motivation to do something. This only takes 3 seconds. Then your mind and ego take over again. They say things like: is it wise, do you have the time for this, you can also start tomorrow, it’s not a good time or you are not good enough for it, etc. At that moment your brain switches back to autopilot and you’re back to your mundane daily routine and you do what you’ve always done -> nothing to evolve or to learn a new habit.

From knowing to doing in 3 steps

How do you bridge the gap between knowing and doing? How do you break your habits? 

Step 1: Start small

Often we make our goals too big. This first step is essential to kick-start a habit. If the first step is too big, the risk and the effort you have to put in will increase. So make your first step as small as possible. Choose one thing, make it small and go do it.

Also, you get what you send out. When you send out fear and doubt, that’s what you get back. By making your step as small as possible, you feel motivated and there is no fear. When thinking, doing and feeling are aligned, the goal becomes clear to internalize and execute. 

So grab your list of goals and pick one thing from it. Do not be scared that by picking just one thing you will be missing out on something. Decide which first, small step you can take toward achieving this goal. The step that you take should be so small that you can take it easily without an iota of fear or doubt.

For instance, if you want to meditate for 20 minutes, start with 1 minute or by taking just 10 breaths. If you want to do 100 push-ups a day, start with 1 push-up. You want to walk for half an hour every day, walk out the door and go straight back in. To go to bed earlier, start with 5 minutes earlier, instead of hours. To drink 2 liters of water a day, start with one glass in the morning. If you want to spend more time with your partner, give them a kiss tonight and tell them you love them. Do not wait for inspiration, motivation, or the right moment. JUST TAKE THAT FIRST TINY STEP. Use your willpower (see step 3). This is how you create the change you want in your life. This is how you break through your habitual patterns and create new habit circuits in your brain.

Step 2 Repeat & Repeat

Your brain wants to achieve the maximum with minimal effort. That’s why your brain develops automatic pilots. This is a very useful function of the brain. This way you don’t have to learn over and over again and things happen easily for you. Take the trash can in your kitchen, for example. You can find it blindly. When you put your trash can in a different place, it will take some time before the new place is etched in your memory. This is how a new autopilot gets created. An autopilot is a habit that arises from thinking, feeling, and doing the same thing a number of times. Through repetition, your brain creates a fixed circuit. Every time you think, feel, or do the same thing, this circuit is automatically activated. Building a new circuit takes effort and your brain would rather avoid that. That is why it is so difficult to change a habit, your brain prefers to choose the track that is already there because it is safe, fast, and easy. That is exactly the reason why you ‘know’ what is good for you and yet you ‘do’ something else.

For example, you know that smoking is unhealthy, but you still light up a cigarette every time. You know it’s good to exercise, but when you’re sitting on the couch in the evening after dinner, it’s very difficult to get up and move. You know you’re a few kilograms overweight and yet it’s hard to stick to your diet. That’s because it’s a habit. It takes effort to break a habit and learn a new one. But once you have laid a new track, a new autopilot will automatically arise and then it will be easy to follow through. This is why repetition is so important.

Brain research has shown that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. That means 10 years, 20 hours a week. This is independent and irrespective of talent! Your brain can learn anything if you put time and energy into it. Effortlessness is not the same as not making an effort. Effortlessness arises when you get more energy from doing something than losing energy while doing it. When you get more energy, you are in a flow and you experience effortlessness.

With enough energy and effort, you can learn anything, change anything and achieve anything you want. The only questions you need to ask yourself are:

• Do I like it?
• Is it worth it?
• Does it suit me?
• Does it give me energy?
• Will I be able to invest time, money, and energy in my goal?

Step 3: Willpower

The secret of successful people is that they persevere. They don’t give up easily. Even if things don’t work out right away. Such people have a very clear mission and a clear calling, they want to achieve something and make the world a better place. They don’t just do it for themselves, but they want to be of service to humanity. That makes them strong and powerful. But there are more people with big dreams and they are not luckier than others. What’s the difference then? Successful people use their willpower to persevere when others give up. For instance, Walt Disney visited 300 banks to get financing for his first film and Edison made 10,000 attempts before he could light a lamp with electricity.

Every human being has the willpower to be stronger than his mind. You probably use a glimpse of this willpower every morning when you get up. If you are still nice and warm in your bed and the alarm goes off, you would prefer to stay in your bed and sleep an extra hour. Yet you get up. That’s willpower. You are stronger than your autopilots and your habitual patterns. You have proven that several times in your life. Every time you’ve learned a new habit, taken a new path, you’ve been stronger than your old autopilot.

People who have had burnout, have an enormous amount of willpower, otherwise, they would not have become burned out. At the same time, that is also the danger of willpower. It is very important to use your willpower in alignment with what you think and feel. Using willpower should make you energized, not deplete you of your energy. Motivation is a powerful tool to get you moving, but on the days when you don’t feel motivated, you can use your willpower to take your biggest small step every time to achieve your goals. This will allow you to follow your life’s path, make a difference and become a true expression of who you really are.

If you want to work on creating new habits or achieve your goals, get in touch with us for a free discovery session where we explore the first small steps that you can take! Get in touch here.