You are changing the wrong thing

How many times have you picked up a new book, hoping to finish it at least this time? Or formulated a 30-day meditation routine to get rid of the chaos in your head? Or tried intermittent fasting in the hopes of becoming skinny?

How often have you tasted success in these ventures and for how long?

James Clear, the author of the New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits, points out what is essentially wrong about the ways we try to change our habits. He says,

Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.

He says that there are three levels at which changes can occur:

1. Outcome-based changes happen at the first layer. This layer is associated with goal setting: finishing the book that you started reading, meditating for 30 days, losing weight.

2. Process-based changes happen at the second layer. This layer is concerned with changing the processes that you have in place to reach the goals that you set in the first layer: reading 15 pages of a book everyday, developing a meditation practice, trying a new fitness routine.

3. Identity-based changes happen at the third layer. According to James Clear, the third layer is the deepest of all because it is concerned with changing your identity: your worldview, your self-image, your judgements about yourself and others. In essence, it is concerned with transforming your beliefs about who you are as a person into who you want to be.

Identity-based changes are a way of evolving who you are and such an evolution is by no means a smooth process. The path to changing your identity is involved because not only are you forming new habits, but you’re also fighting with the old ones that hinder your progress. It may take years before you see an actual outcome and there may be times when you question this metamorphosis. But you must remember that the word identity is derived from the Latin words essentitas, which means being, and identitem, which means repeatedly.

Your identity is literally your “repeated beingness”.

Once you understand that every belief, including those about yourself, is learned and conditioned through experience, you can align your goals to resonate with the identity you want to build.

The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader.

The goal is not to get rid of thoughts, the goal is to co-exist with your thoughts.

The goal is not to lose weight, the goal is to become fitter.

Want to learn more about building habits the right way?

Read Atomic Habits for getting started on that path.

What about you?

What do you do to build habits that stick? Let me know in the comments section!