Make Habits, Not Goals: Why Habits Create the Foundation for Goals

By Marcus Cervantes

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

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Goals are So Cliche

Okay, I’ll admit, that pained me to type that. It goes against everything I’ve ever learned and implemented in my personal life. My life revolved around goals, making them, breaking them down into smaller chunks and then accomplishing them. The cycle repeats itself over and over.

However, I always found myself writing the same goal later down and following the same steps to achieve a goal I had already accomplished previously. For example, I lost a bunch of weight in my late twenties and now in my early thirties, I’m losing the same weight I had lost previously because I gained it all back. Ugh.

Now, that’s not to say goals are not important because they are. They’re important for setting the vision of what you accomplish. However, the primary engine for goal setting isn’t writing down your goals on a piece of paper on a moment's whim of motivation, The primary engine to achieving your goals is the habits that you set in your day-to-day.

..And cue the uprooting of everything I once knew about goal setting and time management.

Building Habits

In my research, I found that habits drive us — even if we recognize it or we do not. These could be good habits or bad habits. We’ll say bad habits prevent us from reaching our vision for ourselves and good habits form the foundation to achieving our goals.

In Michael Bungay Steiner's book, “The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever”, he challenged my viewpoints and pushed them to the brink.

My favorite: “It does not take twenty-one days to build a habit, it’s just something someone said and it stuck”. It challenged what I would preach to family, friends, colleagues, etc. It made me rethink my approach to coaching individuals upon further research.

I appreciated Steiner’s approach to building habits, in which he identifies five components.

1. A reason
2. A Trigger
3. A Micro-habit
4. Effective practice
5. A Plan

There’s some really good stuff in this book and I would personally recommend you check it out at your leisure.

Habits are the building blocks that allow you to achieve your goal and maintain it, without forming beneficial habits, we’re doing our future selves a disservice.

“If you want to change the world, start by making your bed!” — Navy Seal William McRaven.

I love this quote because William is describing a simple habit. It’s nothing remarkable by any means, it is simply the act of making your bed every morning.

It’s a short & effective habit-forming process. This action takes less than a minute of your time every morning.

If you want to become a millionaire, you’ll have to examine your habits when it comes to finances and money.

If you want to lose weight, you’ll have to observe your habits that can help you achieve your goals.

Habits are the engine that plays multiple roles within your life that impact your mental health, physical health, financial health, self-esteem, and social health.

It’s always possible to build new habits that serve you and discard the old habits that no longer benefit you.

Tips for Building New Habits

To build new habits, there must be a sense of self-awareness and willingness to change.

All change within our lives begins with a simple choice, a choice where we make a promise to ourselves (and perhaps others) that we’re going to strive to do better.

As someone who is also experimenting with building new habits, here are my tips for beginners (Just like me).

1. ) Self-awareness. This is the crucial aspect, the most important part of habit-building is a sense of self-awareness and a desire to change. Are you aware of what are your good habits and detrimental habits?
2. Keep it Simple (KIS). When developing a habit, keep it simple. Building a new habit shouldn’t feel like a full-time job and it should be simple to complete. The shorter the time, the more likely you’ll incorporate it into your daily life. For example, I make my bed every morning.
3. What are your values? This is an important topic in goal setting and time management, however, I think this should apply to habits as well. Identifying what you value will help you tailor what habits work for you.

Just like goal setting, write what habits work for you and what doesn’t.

It’s okay to switch things up, the most important part is that you keep doing your best to change the habits that impact your daily life.

Goal setting and time management are highly important but habits are the primary engine that will help you achieve the goals you want.