10 Simple Steps to Change Your Habits

Are you sick and tired of failing to change your habits?

Do you want to change your habits, but don’t know how?

Do you find yourself making resolutions only to abandon them a few weeks later?

If so, you’re not alone.

I failed to change my habits for years until I developed and followed the habit change system that I’ll show you in this article.

Learn the simple ten-step system that will make you successful at changing your habits, whether you want to eat healthier, exercise more, or live more mindfully.

Read on to learn how to make changing your habits as simple as possible and part of your new identity.

Are you ready?

Let’s start!

10 Easy Steps To Change Your Habits

Let’s dive right in and start with the first step:

1. Pick The Habit

If you already know which habit you want to change, go directly to step two.

If not, these are simple habits you can start with:

Drink a glass of water a day.
Meditate for one minute a day.
Run for two minutes a day.
Floss your teeth every day.

Here is a longer list with 100 good habits to develop.

Pick something you can do at a certain time every day and be done with it.

Some habits (like smoking, gossiping, or playing games) are a bit harder to change because they require constant awareness. Not to say you can’t change them. You can. It’s just harder than changing your habits to drink one glass of water or floss your teeth every night.

That’s why I recommend starting with something simple and easy, especially if it’s your first try at changing your habits. Because habit change is a skill, you learn.

The more habits you change, the better you will be at it.

So, start with something easy and go from there!

2. Pick A Time When You Want To Do It

Tie your new habit to something you do every day.

Otherwise, it’s easy to forget.

A good time to do your new habit is:

After you wake up
After or before you brush your teeth
After or before you eat a meal
After you finish work
Before you go to bed

For example, if your new habit is to meditate once a day, put a note on your mirror that reminds you to meditate for one minute each time after brushing your teeth in the morning.

That’s how habit change becomes easy because you can’t forget it.

That’s also why internal or mental habits, such as gossiping or negative thought patterns, are harder to change because you do them all the time, and why I recommend starting with simpler habits first.

3. Make It Small And Short

Make it as easy as possible for you to succeed.

That’s why you should pick something so short and small that you can do it every day, no matter what, even when you are traveling around the world or feel sick.

Make it so small that you are sure you will accomplish it.

If you fail, make it even smaller.

For example, if you want to start running, that could mean that you only need to put on your running shoes once a day. That’s it. You don’t need to go for a run.

Of course, if you want to go for a run, you can; you can even run for an hour or three, but if you don’t want to, you don’t need to.

You just put on your running shoes, and that’s it!

If you accomplish that successfully for a whole week, you can increase your goal to a one-minute run every day. If you achieve that for another whole week, make it a two-minute run every day.

Keep it at a level at which you cannot fail and build your habit up from there.

That’s how you achieve habit change success.

4. Find Your Why: Why You Want To Do It?

What is your motivation to do your new habit?

What is your why?

In reality, it doesn’t matter what motivates you as long as you Howeverut of course, the st’ron’ger your why is, the easier it will be for you to accomplish your goal.

Do you do it for you?
Do you do it for your family?
Do you do it for your kids?
Do you do it for your friends?
Do you do it to impress others?
Do you do it to help others?
Do you do it because of everything combined?

What is your why? Why do you want to do it?

The more reasons you find, the better.

And if your only motivation to work out is to impress the girls on the beach, so what? As long as it works for you, it’s good.

5. Get Support

Support is important. Because if it were easy, you would have changed your habits already.

Get Support:

Ask your family and friends to support and cheer you on.
Get a habit change partner (for example, if both of you want to quit smoking or pick up running together). If you can’t find a habit partner in real life, join my habit change accountability program.
Join a support group.
Join a sports team (if your habit change is sports-related).
Put reminders everywhere (put Post-it notes everywhere, change the background and screensavers of your phone, and have a motivational password).
Prepare the day or night before (If you want to go for a run tomorrow morning, sleep with your running clothes on or put them in front of your bed next to your running shoes).
Get rid of your old crutches (You want to eat healthier? Go through your home and throw everything away that is unhealthy).
Block distracting websites

Write down a plan and what you will do if X occurs.

X can be anything because your day-to-day life will not always go as planned.

Let’s say you want to quit eating junk food, but your boss invites your whole team to McDonald’s. What’s your plan?

If you are prepared for the situation, it will be easy. If not, you might rebound and give up your new habit altogether.

For running, an injury or illness could be X. For smoking, a party.

Be prepared for whatever comes up.

There are a few more ways to get support, but the general idea should be clear.

Don’t let it be destiny or fate that your habit change is successful.

Be prepared and plan for your success!

6. Decide To Be A New Person That Does Your New Habit

This step might be the most overlooked step in changing your habits: See yourself as a new person who does your new habit no matter what.

The old version of you that might have been late, ate junk food, or procrastinated is gone. That’s in the past. That was you, but you are no longer this person. You learned from it, and it’s a valuable part of your past, but it’s no longer you.

You are your new self, who does your new habit and sticks to it, no matter what!

Resolve and decide to be that new person.

There is no going back, and what happened in the past is not important anymore.

In the past, you might have struggled to change your habits, but that is not you anymore. From now on, you are a person who gets it right and changes their habits and their life.

7. Do It

This step is the easiest and hardest at the same time. Just do it.

If you followed the previous six steps and decided to be this new person, that does your new habit, that got support, and made it small enough, then changing your habits will be a piece of cake.

Please do it. Start today!

8. Review

Every day, review how your habit change is going!

Either use a habit count streak app or journal every day before you go to bed and write down:

How is your habit change going?
Which obstacles came up, and how can you overcome them?
What can you do to improve your chances of success even further?
What has been a success till now, and how is it changing your life (write down every tiny bit)?

Especially if you didn’t do your habit today, take a moment to reflect on why you didn’t do it and what you can do to pick up your new habit again tomorrow.

Note: It can always happen that you miss a day. Don’t view that as a failure but as an opportunity to learn and improve your system even further. The real failure is if you stop altogether and give up completely. Don’t do that, even if you missed ten days or half a year. Restart tomorrow and be back even stronger than before.

9. Adjust And Increase

If you missed a day, adjust your habit.

Why did you miss it?

Was it too hard? Then make your habit easier and smaller.

Did you forget to do it? Connect your new habit to something you do already once a day.

Did anything unforeseeable happen? Try to plan for it the next time. Write it down!

If you did your habit for a whole week, increase it. But only as far as you think you can manage. You win nothing by setting the bar too high and then giving up because it’s too hard.

Who will achieve a goal faster:

Someone who starts with a new habit so small that they cannot fail, and then goes from there and increases their habit from time to time?

Or someone who has lofty goals and sets the bar too high, to then give up altogether because it’s just too damn hard after a few weeks?

Increase the intensity of your habits just slightly, so you don’t even feel that it’s hard to change them. That’s how you become successful in changing your habits. When it’s so easy, you cannot not do it.

10. Congratulations

Did you manage to change your habits and change your life?

Then throw yourself a party!

It’s not easy to change your habits, but you have done it. You have changed your life, even if it’s a small change, but nonetheless, you changed it.

And if you can change one thing, you can change another thing. And if you can change another thing, you can change ten other things. And if you can change ten other things, you can change your whole life in any direction that you want.

So, congratulations. You are awesome!

Let’s take a moment to be proud and celebrate!

Common Habit Change Obstacles

Here are some common reasons why you fail at changing your habits!

Especially if you tried to change your habits for a while and still can’t do it.

Too Much Too Soon

As described in step three: make it small, short, and easy.

Most people fail at changing their habits because they want too much too soon.

It’s the magic bullet syndrome and why advertisements work so well, because we want the new life, not in one year or five, but right now, right here, without doing any work.

We want it now. That’s why we try to do it all today and change our whole lives.

Which can work, if you really want it, prepare for it, and endure all the difficulties that come with it.

But more often than not, it fails, because after the first few days or even hours of enthusiasm and motivation, your old habits, ways of thinking, and life come in the way, and your whole plan to change your life falls apart.

That’s why, for most people and most of my clients, short and small steps work best because they are manageable and will lead you to success.

Trying Harder Habits Changes Before Mastering Smaller Ones

Being good or becoming good at changing your habits is a skill you can acquire.

The more habits you change, the easier it will be for you to change even more habits of yours.

That’s why you should start with an easy habit first, because if you can change one habit, you can change all of them. But the important thing is to stick to that habit, which is why easy habits are the way to go.

No Support

Built up a support system.

If you don’t build up a support system, it’s like wanting to lose weight and quit eating sweet stuff but having candy around you all the time. Especially if you are tired and hungry, that won’t work.

Instead, try to build up your support system.

For example, if you want to run more often, get a running partner.

Your running partner will get you out of the house and running, even if it’s 5 am and you are not in the mood for any sport whatsoever.

Just make sure you pick a partner who will actually be there.

Don’t have a habit partner? Join my habit accountability program and learn how easy habit change really is.

Giving Up After The First Setback

If you miss doing your habit, that doesn’t mean that you are a failure or gives you permission to give up altogether.

But that’s precisely what a lot of people do.

A person fails to do a new habit and completely abandons it afterward as to say: “I know I couldn’t do it. Now, I am not perfect anymore. I missed one day, doesn’t matter if I miss a second or a third one.”

But it does matter!

You are not a failure for missing one or even a couple of days. That’s part of life and a key aspect of creating new habits.

The critical part is getting back on track, even if you fail again and again, because it’s not over until you give up for good.

You are constantly learning. You just have to apply what you learned to get better at your habit each day.

That’s how you are going to be successful by not giving up and going after what you want.

You can do it.

I know you can, and you know it too, even if you might not see it right now. Trust the process and the habit change system I just showed you.

Habit change is a skill. And you just learned how to do it.

Start now!