 It can be so tough to break old habits and start making new ones. Habits are all about having discipline to do the things that you actually want to do. You've got to be clear about why you want things to change, but it can be tough to keep habits going for a long period of time, especially if you don't see success towards the beginning. If you feel like your discipline is wearing thin, then here are some tips to help you make new habits and stick to them and also break bad ones. I think we've all been in the position where we've promised ourselves we'll drink more water or exercise more often or just study more efficiently, but it just doesn't happen. Instead of making new habits, excuses become routine. In this video, I want to use scientific literature and evidence to figure out how we can convert the intention of changing our habits into actual change and growth. If your goal is to go to the gym five times a week, then it's going to be very difficult for you to have the discipline to suddenly make that big change from zero days to five. It's really important to start small with the habits that you want to implement into your life so that you can actually get gradual progress and get going. If you want to go to the gym five times a week and you're currently not going at all, then it obviously makes sense to start with once or twice a week and then work your way up from there. Of course, there's a lot to say about setting realistic goals and that's something that I'm going to cover later on in this video, but for now, making small changes that you can build onto to make bigger changes in your life has actually been proven to be really helpful to habit formation. In one study, volunteers wanting to lose weight were randomized to a habit-based intervention based on things like 10 small diet and activity behavior changes or a non-treatment weighting list control. After eight weeks, the intervention group had lost two kilograms compared to 0.4 kilograms in the control group. And at 32 weeks, the completers of the intervention group had lost an average of 3.8 kilograms. It's always worth breaking down your goals into bite-sized chunks so that you're not feeling so overwhelmed that you give up early. This is something that I do every single day in medical school. It's very easy to see a huge mountain of a task that you need to climb and it's easy to get overwhelmed and get put off after a day or two. Instead, breaking down that mountain of a task into a bunch of smaller hills makes it a lot easier to tackle. Try focusing on what's directly in front of you. Just worry about jumping over that first hurdle before you even think about the next. So, you've got to know your narrative. What I mean by this is the things that you tell yourself that get you out of committing to the habits that you actually want to stick to. If you already know all of your usual excuses, then you can figure out good ways to address them. Getting out ahead of the narrative that you tell yourself that prevents you from success is a great way forward. Some of the most common things that people tell themselves when they're trying to break bad habits are that I have to do this thing because I can't help myself or I don't have the time or I'll do it later and, of course, later never comes. With the absolute classic, I'm just not motivated right now. Spoiler alert, it's not about motivation. Motivation is a myth. It's all about discipline. If you can have an immediate response to your own excuses of not doing something, then you're already way ahead of the game. For example, if you often tell yourself that you're not motivated to study or do X or Y activity, then instead you can focus on changing your thought patterns into thinking about discipline, thinking about creating consistent patterns over time, and small gains every day which lead to overall success and achievement. It's not about any one event or activity, but it's about the whole period of time in which you're doing something. You can also find ways to cheerlead yourself or, you know, be your own hype man and do the task until it becomes a habit. I do this all the time. I play Jedi mind tricks on myself to convince myself to get things done even when I might not really want to. And before you know it, it becomes a habit. Every day, it gets easier. So the process of habit formation itself actually varies a lot in the amount of effort that's needed. We've all probably heard of that statistic which says that it takes 21 days in order to build up a habit, but it's not that straightforward. In fact, one study showed that some people managed to form certain habits as quickly as 18 days, but others needed as much as 6 months. This might seem really overwhelming even deter people from starting to put things in place to form habits that they want to stick to or to break bad habits that they already have. The prospect of this journey taking 6 months can seem like a lot. I think what we need to do is accept that, you know, we're all different and that for me, one habit might take a very long time to build or break whereas for someone else, it might take a very short time and vice versa. Patience is really important and realizing that you don't have to be at the same standard as everyone else for every little thing can really take that burden off your shoulders. In order to keep up with your habits, you need to reduce friction as much as you want to help you stick to them. For example, if you want to go for a run every morning, then you need to do everything you can in advance of that run to make sure that you have the best chance of actually going through with it. Now, this might mean getting your work done the night before so that you don't have your usual excuse of, well, I'm not going to go on a run because I need to study or I have a lot of work to do. It might be laying out your work clothes on the couch next to your bed. It's about building and changing the environment around you to help you get the task done that you need to do. Whatever it is, whatever you choose to do, try something that will make getting the actual habit done easier or breaking your current habit easier. You can start by asking yourself why you haven't followed through with this particular habit in the past, and then you can address that particular and specific problem and go from there. One great technique that's discussed in James Clears' book called Atomic Habits, which is a fantastic read if you're into habit forming and making, check it out, is to anchor a new habit to an existing one. So for example, if you want to go for a run, you can place your toothbrush on top of your workout clothes in the bathroom. And that way, next time you brush your teeth in the morning, your workout clothes are literally right there. You can't ignore them. And so those two habits become linked together. This is one of my absolute favorites. Something that I learned in my first degree of university and that has stuck with me throughout all my years in higher education is the importance of making appropriate goals. The general principle is that you need to make smart goals. Smart is an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. This is so important because all the time people set unrealistic goals for themselves, which are never going to be completed, and it just makes the entire thing such a waste of time, causing you to give up early. I've had friends look me dead in the face and say something like, I'm going to study for 15 hours today or I'm going to write three essays, which are due next week all today. Or I'm going to go to the gym, study four hours, see my girlfriend, meal prep for the week, and then go party in the evening. And I'm always like, dude, you obviously can't do all of that. Just choose one or a few tasks that are most important to you. Focus on those and complete them one at a time. When making goals, you want to be really specific about them and tied to that. You want to be really specific about what you're trying to achieve by forming a new habit or where you're trying to achieve by breaking an old or bad one. If you're not, then you run the risk of letting yourself off each time and not having a clear path of where you want to go and be. Goals that are measurable help you know exactly when you've hit the goal that it is you're working towards. So for example, if you want to study at least two hours a day, then you know how to measure how long you're spending studying on Anki or past papers or whatever it is. Your goal needs to be achievable so that you're not sending yourself up to fail. Honestly, don't play yourselves, guys. Just make sure that you're being realistic about the goals that you're setting. Not like, I'm going to go to the gym three times a day unless you're an athlete or something. It's crucial for the goal to be relevant to some life change that you want to make and you make it personal to you. And also make sure that you set clear goals about when you want to have achieved your outcome. If you're not clear with yourself about all of these things, then chances are you'll find ways around your goals and you'll cheat yourself out of your own success. I think it's easy for me to sit here and talk about all the ways you could form habits, but the truth is it's really tough. A ton of studies have shown how difficult it is to form new habits and how most people struggle to keep up with them. You can't expect all of your attempts to change or form habits to be successful. I've certainly tried and failed to form several habits in the last couple of years. But the point is that it's all right to try, even with all of these tips in place and fail. You have to be ready to slightly change your path and technique and try again. It's okay to not get things right the very first time. Personally, I think it's all about trying your best, whatever your best is, and having the expectation that you might fail. And then it might take a few tries to get this thing done. It's a lot easier to go into habit-breaking or making with a realistic expectation as opposed to one that's unrealistic, like being able to get everything right first try. If you have unrealistic standards, then this might lead to you giving up more easily or earlier on than the required amount of effort or time that it takes to make or break a habit. Try not to give up, have realistic expectations and keep on trying. I think that the language you use internally when thinking about habits is incredibly important. A big part of changing your habits is about changing your thought patterns around a new behavior you want to start doing in your life. The but rule is something that you can use to change around your thinking when you're feeling as though things aren't working out or if you're having negative thoughts that's getting in the way of your success. Essentially, you turn around your negative thought by adding but to the end of the thought and coming up with a positive to lift it. You might say, for example, that you suck at studying X or Y topic, but if you work on it tonight, more session is going to be easier and you'll have a better understanding of it next time or that you're currently not that fit and getting tired quite quickly so you don't want to go to the gym because it's a wasted effort, but if you go for even one day, then you'll improve bit by bit and you'll build up your stamina more and more. Immediately with this very simple attitude change, you feel better about the negative aspect of the tasks and you're more encouraged to keep going through it. Changing your thinking is key to changing your habits and like I said before, I play these Jedi mind tricks on myself all the time. 90% of the challenge is just starting and going to get the thing done. Once you show up, you can enter your usual autopilot mode and just keep on going. A great thought that I got from a Matt Diavella video, shout out to you, Matt, is this idea of the two-day rule. Personally, what I call it is once but never twice. The concept of the two-day rule is to never skip the thing you're trying to accomplish for more than two days in a row. For example, if you want to walk for 20 minutes every day as your new habit and you miss it for one day, then that's okay, but missing it for two days in a row is not. Once you miss that walk for the second day, then it becomes all too easy to tell yourself to miss a third day and then a week and then a month and, you know, before you know it, you've stopped trying to build this habit. You're back to where you started. So giving yourself that free day off of being able to miss something lifts a lot of weight off of your shoulders and it means that you can have days where life gets in the way and you're unable to continue working on your habit and that's fine. But keeping it to one day instead of two helps to keep you accountable and ensures that you keep up the habit for the long term. This is the exact technique that I use when going to the gym. I'm allowed to skip a day of going to the gym whenever I want, but I try really hard to not allow myself to skip too. I hope this video has helped any of you who are trying to start a new habit or break an old one. Remember that it can be tough and you're not alone and you don't have to get everything right the first try. A lot of us struggle with making or breaking habits but we have to try and at least set ourselves up for success in a great way to get off on the right foot. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed and I will catch you in the next one. Peace. God, there's a massive bumblebee in there. Ooh. Please don't come here. I'll be so scared.