Q: As someone who’s struggled with starting and maintaining habits for a long time, I've built up a lot of evidence of failure. How can I cultivate a sense of self-belief despite this negative history?
It’s natural to doubt your ability to change if you haven’t found success with establishing new behaviors in the past. To counteract this, it’s important to keep your mind open to the fact that you can always change your behavior in the direction you desire. One way to do this is to view your "failures" simply as indications that you haven’t yet discovered the on-ramp to that habit that’s best-suited to your needs. Keep your eyes on your goal and don't give up until you get the results you wish for. Here’s what that looks like:
First, forgive yourself.
There are many, many reasons — lots of them out of our control — why new habits don’t stick. Forgive yourself for past disappointments or slip-ups, and start fresh today with a new goal and a new approach. Once you practice forgiving yourself, you’ll see much more clearly what needs to be done and what you can accomplish. Often, it’s the negative feelings about yourself that take the oomph out of your habit-changing efforts — so let them go.
Next, think small.
To strengthen your self-belief, you need to experience small successes. Often, we set giant goals at the start, which sets us up to fall short. Lose 10 pounds, exercise every day, practice meditation. These are fine long-term goals, but it can be difficult, if not impossible, to reach them without smaller stepping stones. Tiny goals may seem silly or inconsequential, but they’re important for offering up new evidence that you can execute the action you set out to take. No matter how small, these steps will provide forward movement toward change.
The idea is to start with a habit so modest you really can’t fail. Think of this as the “One Carrot” approach to change. If you want to develop healthy eating habits, which so many of us do, and you’ve struggled to do that in the past, start by committing to eating one carrot a day.
Will this radically change your nutritional profile? No. Will it cause you to shed instant pounds? No. But will it likely happen in a reliable way? Yes. When you start, the goal is not to revolutionize your diet. The goal is to make this one, tiny thing happen.
Keep track.
Every day that you eat one carrot, you track it, and by the end of the week, you’ll have seven successes. Amassing these wins will boost your confidence and motivate you to adopt another tiny habit.
Acknowledge your efforts.
What’s just as important as completing the tiny habit is how you frame your efforts. Self-criticism is demotivating. Remind yourself that you followed through and that every time you follow through, your self-belief is strengthened, which makes the next effort easier. Celebrate your resilience and determination. Your positive self-talk will increase the odds that you’ll maintain a new habit.
If you slip up, don’t default straight to a “failure” framework. Acknowledge that life got in the way today, reset, and recommit to your tiny goal tomorrow.
