The Ultimate Guide to Building Habits That Stick

We all want good things to happen in our lives. We make plans ahead in life, and we create visions for our futures.

But do you know why we don’t follow through with some of the things we set out to do? The simple reason is we are human. We are vulnerable people with emotions.

As humans, we have to fight our demons. The powerful forces inside of us that want to bring us down. Deep down we know what’s good for us, and, consciously, we know how to get there. But something is always pulling us behind. The invisible forces that sabotage our minds.

We’re in constant battle with our inner selves. Our mind is trying to get control. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we don’t. On good days, our rational mind takes over, and we win a battle over temptations. But on bad days, we give in and we lose.

What it all comes down to is your willpower. Some people have stronger willpower than others. The stronger your willpower is, the more self-control you have over your behaviors and actions. People who have a higher ability to withstand temptations are stronger mentally, meaning they have stronger willpower.

But did you know you can build your willpower over time? It’s not rocket science, and anyone can do it.

Delay Gratification

Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel ran an experiment in the 1960s and early ’70s. He gave 4-year-old children two choices: they either had to pick one treat right away or two treats in fifteen minutes. Then, he followed them up years later and made an astonishing discovery: Those who chose to wait did better in life in many different ways. He concluded that they must possess a stronger mental power to withstand those temptations — their willpower.

It’s true for most of us — the majority of people would want to feel rewarded sooner or later. As humans, we’re hard-wired to fall into temptations. But the good news is, you can choose to delay instant gratification by exercising self-control. Just as you can train any muscle of your body, you can train a portion of your brain to do the same.

How you can apply it in life

Postponing a reward will not only make it feel more special but waiting longer will help you develop mental fortitude. When you practice withholding instant gratification, you tap into the power of self-control. The more you practice self-control, the more you build your mental resilience.

Envision Your Future Self

Your everyday actions have a collective value. With each action you take, you can mentally picture its impact in the future. Even though the future rewards are intangible to you at the moment, you can still experience them in your mind by projecting yourself into the future.

For example, if you’re a writer, telling yourself to wake up early in the morning to write won’t change you into a prolific writer overnight. But many nights of following this habit will. It’s all about the collective results of tiny habits accruing over time.

That said, it may be a struggle for you to get up every morning to write if you’re not used to it from the beginning. Many times you’ll feel defeated and wouldn’t be able to resist the urge. To overcome this minor discomfort, you should project yourself into your future self. Taking a glimpse at your future will help you better see the connection between a particular action you take and the outcomes of those actions.

It means if you don’t look into the immediate rewards and focus more on the future outcomes resulting from waking up early in the morning, you’ll be more motivated to write. For example, you can envision your future self years from now. How would your life be like in one, two, or three years from now? How will the benefits of waking up early today play out for you in the future? You may land a successful writing career, or you may write a book that will end up on the top rack of the best-selling books. As James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, put it: “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

The bottom line is, don’t focus on the immediate rewards, focus on the future benefits. It may be a long journey to get there, but every little step you take along the way counts. Crawling up the tall mountain every day will eventually bring you to the top. There may not be an immediate value in little actions performed today, but those little actions can all add up and lead to enormous outcomes in the future. As James Clear said: “Success is the product of daily habits — not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”

So if you compare a slight inconvenience of, say, waking up an hour earlier every day to write vs all the future rewards that can follow as a result of writing every morning, it’s well worth the sacrifice. In retrospect, your future self will be proud knowing you didn’t give in to the temptations when the time was right and did the right thing.

Apply this trick to anything in life, and you’ll succeed. One caveat, though — your willpower isn’t permanent — you need to feed it regularly, so it stays strong. This next step will teach you exactly how.

Build Self-trust

Every day we’re faced with temptations. How do we not give in to them? It boils down to the level of trust you have in yourself. When you cast out feelings of doubt about yourself — in anything in life — and develop confidence in your abilities, you can successfully withstand the temptation to give in. Practing this may take some work, though.

To help you start building trust in yourself, start small. You start with a tiny change, and then you build from there. And the best thing is, it doesn’t require an enormous effort on your part. Choose a simple task that you will most likely succeed in and follow it through. Practice behavior that you can repeat over and over without a fail.

For example, if you want to start exercising, start walking once a week and do it repeatedly. If you want to be a writer, write every day for 20–30 minutes. If you want to be more organized, make your office space tidier. Whatever you wish to change in life, make sure you repeat the same steps so the habit sticks.

When you’ve successfully managed to make a small change, take it up a notch. You may, for example, increase the duration of your exercise to twice or three times a week instead of just once a week. For a writer, it may be pushing your time to write to 1 hour each day. You’ll find that in time you’ll ingrain the habit so well it becomes your identity. For me, as a writer, since I’ve already built my writing habit, not writing every day will be out of the ordinary. I’ve practiced this habit so many times it stuck in my mind like a stamp on an envelope.

Follow this simple rule, and you’ll be able to change virtually anything in your life.

The Takeaway

People don’t always follow through with what they’re set out to do. As humans, we’re bound to fall and give in to our temptations. The antidote to temptations is willpower. You can increase your willpower by exercising self-control and building self-trust.

Every action you take, look at its collective value. By envisioning your future self, you’ll be more motivated to take action and build habits that stick. Imagining your future self and your new state of being will help you become a new version of yourself.

Habit formation starts with building self-trust, and you can grow it gradually by making a tiny change. Start small and repeat the behavior over and over until it sticks, and build from there. The tiny changes you make will over time create substantial results in the future.