Do you find yourself constantly starting a new health routine only to be back to your old ways in a couple weeks? Do you wonder why you can’t seem to get desirable new habits to stick? Learn the foundational key to start changing your habits for good.
We’ve all struggled at some time or another with behavior change. Old habits can be incredibly difficult to break. From personal experience, I have found that my most successful habit changes have come when there has been a shift in my identity.
Your personal identity is how you see yourself. It’s who you believe yourself to be. It’s often formed during the early experiences of life, and it’s a driving force in why you do the things you do.
For example, many people label themselves a procrastinator. If you believe this to be true about yourself, you will find it very difficult to get started on tasks ahead of schedule, instead choosing to wait until the last minute.
This is because your brain goes to work, often subconsciously, to make your beliefs happen. When you give the commanding statement or belief, I am a procrastinator, your brain goes to work to find evidence of that and prove it true.
Forming new habits becomes difficult when the new behaviors you desire are not in agreement with your personal beliefs about yourself. For example, if you desire to start an early morning routine but don’t believe yourself to be a morning person, you will most likely find it difficult to continue to wake up early once the initial motivation of starting a new routine wears away. What you believe about yourself and the desired habit are not in agreement.
Change Your Identity to Make New Habits Stick
So if identity is so important to creating long-lasting habits, how does one go about changing their identity?
I love the simple process James Clear outlines in his book, Atomic Habits:
- Decide the type of person you want to be.
- Prove it to yourself with small wins.
Get a Vision
Who do you want to be? In other words, get a vision for yourself as a person. Do you want to be a healthy person? A patient person? A stylish mom? A stellar homemaker? Build your vision, your faith, for what is possible for you. Hebrews 11:1 states, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (NKJV) Faith is seeing the end result in your imagination before it ever shows up in person. Faith has vision.
Take Action
Once you have your vision, take action. James 2:17 states, “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead works.” We can have the vision for the person we want to become, but if we do not take real actionable steps to move toward that vision, we will fail in any real change.
So if you desire to be a healthy person, think about what a healthy person does. Do they exercise? Eat well? Minimize stress through prayer and meditation? Make a list and pick a habit to start.
Confess It
One other step I like to add is to confess my new identity. I often do this right before I am taking an action that will prove my new identity true. For example, right before eating a salad, I might tell myself, “I am a healthy eater.” I gave my brain the command and backed it up with action that was in agreement.
To Conclude
So if you are struggling to stick to new healthy habits, I suggest you take some time to sit down with a journal and really look inward to see what you believe about yourself. Find where an identity shift may need to happen and start implementing the steps above. While changes in your identity will not be instantaneous, these small actions stacked and repeated over time will create the new identity you desire.