Breaking Habits: How to Bounce Back After Failure

In response to my previous article, “Why Planning for Failure is Essential to Building Great Habits”, Rob Adams asked an excellent question…

“I definitely understand allowing for some failures, but it seems this is the stickiest part. How do you avoid one failure spreading to two, and then three, and then next thing you know it’s been months and you didn’t even realize you’d long ago dropped the goal?”

Before I answer his question, I’ll quickly recap my original article. In the article, I shared how my experiences both successfully and unsuccessfully building new habits lead me to learn three strategies for building healthy habits…

1. Start small. Get yourself started with some quick wins and build momentum over time.
2. Think long-term. Keep in mind why you set a goal or started a habit — consider your ends goals.
3. Don’t be afraid to fail. It’s ok to teak breaks if it makes your progress more sustainable.

I can definitely relate to Rob’s question about preventing one failure from spreading to more failures. I’ve had the experience of slipping a bit and then continuing to slide. I eat chicken fingers for lunch and then use that to somehow justify eating a cheesesteak for dinner. I skip going to the gym for a day or two and then that time slot is filled with some other activity. The list goes on.

Many people, like Mark, use the “break the chain” approach or otherwise add stuff into their calendars in order to keep themselves on track. And indeed, there is a lot of psychology to support that even though such strategies don’t physically support your habits, they do persuade your brain to maintain habits.

However, I don’t want to just add more process onto a broken system, like putting a band aid on a severed arm, or adding more water to a leaky bucket instead of fixing the bucket. Rather, I try to figure out what within the overall system is broken and fix it. Here’s a three step process for doing that…

1. Learn from the experience

What went wrong? Why?

Failure can be deeply upsetting if you allow it to be. Failure can also make you stronger if you take the time to learn from it.

My failed attempt to start lifting weights taught me to start small. Through my failed attempts at self-publishing books, I learned about book marketing. I failed at resisting junk food until I learned to stop testing my willpower.

After a failure, take time to assess what went wrong and why. Here are two next steps to take once you’ve understood the reality of the situation…

2. Manage expectations

Was the goal realistic? Or were you only setting yourself up for disappointment?

The difference between what you set out to achieve and what you actually achieve is failure. That gap between expectations and reality is disappointment.

Continually failing and battling disappointment is not going to be good for your motivation over the long-term. It’s a blow to your self-confidence that leads to self-doubt. To solve for that, you have two options. The first is to improve your achievements. The second is to foster more realistic expectations. Because setting proper expectations is the more sustainable strategy, and can actually help you improve outcomes, I recommend starting with that approach.

Determine what you can realistically achieve. I often don’t even quantify my goals. For example, I try to do something helpful everyday. That could be as significant as donating money or time, but often it’s as little as writing an article like this one or telling someone I love them.

With more realistic expectations, you’re less likely to experience the damper of missed expectations, and more likely to experience the motivating dopamine hit of accomplishment.

3. Use ends goals as a motivator

Was the goal compatible with your ends goals?

As I’ve written in previous articles, I much prefer systems to goals. A goal is something specific and measurable that you want to achieve within a deadline. A system is something you do on a regular basis to continually improve and achieve results.

Despite my preference for systems, I do set goals, but not in the way, or for the purpose, that most people do. I don’t set “S.M.A.R.T.” goals or anything like that. I set “ends goals”. Ends goals are the ultimate outcomes you’re looking to achieve. They are representative of your values and what makes you happy and fulfilled. Ends goals are different than “means” goals in that means goals are the outcomes we think we need in order to reach our ends goals. Means goals include things like become a doctor, make a million dollars, etc.

Here’s what’s strange about my approach: I don’t set ends goals with the intention of actually of accomplishing them. In fact, my ends goals aren’t specific or measurable and don’t have a deadline of any kind. “Be helpful” and “be healthy” are two of my ends goals. My type-a, goal setting readers are probably pulling their hair out reading that. So let me explain my thought process.

I set ends goals as a source of motivation. They provide motivation over both the short and long term. In the short-term, I can accomplish those ends goals pretty easily each day. I can write a blog post like this as a way to be helpful and drink a cup of tea to be healthy. Doing so gives me that dopamine hit of success that motivates me to accomplish even more. But more importantly, and as is relevant to my reader’s question, my ends goals are what motivate me to take breaks and what help me bounce back after a failure.

Taking a break on a habit can help you make more progress on your ends goals. Pushing through the fatigue when you’re too tired to write will help you eek out another ounce of productivity in the short-term. But in the long-term, it may only set you back further.

It’s like accumulating debt. The more you push yourself beyond your personal thresholds, the more “interest”, in the form of fatigue or burnout, you will have to pay back later. Paying it back will required you take take a much longer break than if you had taken a break sooner.

Consider if your reason for failure was because the goal wasn’t in line with your ends goal or because the “failure” is going to help you accomplish your ends goals, which are in line with your values and what’s fulfilling to you. If the latter, don’t worry about spilled milk — play the long game.

That’s my perspective based on my experience. It’s what’s worked best for me. As always, I recommend experimenting and seeing what works best for you.

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