If you are like most people, there is a gap between the person you are and the person you wish to be. There are little things you think you should do and big things you should achieve. Maybe you’d like to start working out regularly, eating healthily, learning a language, working on your novel, reading more or simply doing your hobby instead of browsing Reddit. Fear not, in this post we will discuss how you can change your life one tiny step at a time.

Sometimes it may seem that you must become someone different to achieve your goals. Someone consistent who puts in more effort and has discipline and willpower. Maybe you have tried your hardest to be like that. And it worked for a while until you find yourself slipping back into your old ways, in the end, you always seem to fail. And with every failed attempt, you become increasingly frustrated and annoyed with yourself.

If you believe in the “success and hustle” internet, it is your fault: if you fail, you don’t want it enough, and the failure is all you. But change is hard. And as with most things in life, understanding why makes things easier.

The Jungle

Imagine your brain as a lush and dense jungle. Moving through it, say to decide to do something, is like driving through an *actual* jungle: It is hard and costs energy. Your brain hates expending energy, so it came up with a trick: All your actions and behaviours leave paths in the jungle of your brain.

As you start doing something, you trample down some plants and make rough, improvised trails through the undergrowth. The more you do the thing, the more pronounced the path becomes.  

Over time it turns into a path that is easier to tread, so you take it more often, and it turns into a street. As you repeat doing the thing, over and over for years, the road turns into a highway. Traversing it becomes effortless, familiar and comfortable.

The more pronounced your brain highways, the more you get used to their comfort. So we continue to use them, which means we tend to do what we have always done.  

Change is hard, especially as an adult when many established streets and highways criss-cross your jungle. But, to understand how those highways are built, we need to distinguish between two things:  Routines and habits.

Routines 

A routine is a sequence of actions you carry out the same way because they’ve worked out well for you. For example, you get the same ingredients for your favourite dish and cook them in a specific order because you like the taste of the result. Or, before going to bed, you set the alarm at 6:30 because this is when you want to get up.

Imagine routines executed by a wise planner. It is slow and analytical, responsible for strategizing and mental calculations. The planner is aware of the future and carefully considers what kind of result you want. Based on that, it chooses actions to achieve specific outcomes, even if they are uncomfortable, like taking a shower after getting up. By mastering simple routines you can change your life one tiny step at a time.

Habits

Routines can eventually become habits, which feel much easier because they are a sequence of actions carried out without thinking about them. You have done them so often that your brain considers them rewarding and a great response to a situation. So a habit can feel like you’re on autopilot.  

You don’t have to convince yourself to do something that’s a habit – you do it. The critical thing about practices is that they are set in motion by triggers and context cues. Single things or situations can signal your brain to start the behaviour or action.

You already have a lot of triggers in your life: when you see your phone, you almost always unlock the screen. Or you reach for the seat belt when you sit in a car. Or when you buy your coffee before work, you also get a cookie, even though you aren’t hungry.

But Why?

An impulsive toddler executes habits. It responds to your immediate desires based on your surroundings without considering any longer-term goals. The toddler’s future doesn’t exist, and he hates hard work. So when it notices a trigger, it steers you to take this easy road inside your brain that leads to a typical rewarding result. If you get coffee, the toddler also wants the cookie because that’s what you do every morning.

​This rewarding feeling is also how most of your bad habits started: chocolate is tasty, and browsing Reddit is occasionally mildly entertaining. The rewarding feeling is why you repeat these actions, even if they are bad for you.  

Rewarding feelings associated with an action demands to be repeated, so a bad habit is born. While the toddler sounds like a built-in sabotage mechanism, it is as important as the wise planner; they work together most of the time!

It would help if you had your wise planner for thinking big thoughts and parallel parking and doing your taxes. But letting your wise planner do everything would cost too much energy. Outsourcing mundane and repetitive tasks to habits managed by the toddler allow your brain to easily manage your daily life while simultaneously dealing with more complex mental challenges.

So if we want to change and introduce a new behaviour into our lives, we can use these energy-saving mechanisms to make it easier.

We will focus on small things, not big ones. Improving your life a little is much better than aiming high and changing nothing, mainly because small changes can do a lot over months and years.

How To Build a Habit

If you want to make change easier, the best way may not be to force it with willpower. But convince your brain that it’s not that big of a deal by creating new routines and then turning them into habits. You want your wise planner to construct that first trail and then use your toddler to help initiate the action effortlessly.

Let us say you want to work out to be fitter, a common goal. So the first thing to do is to break down this pretty vague goal into clear, separate actions because the idea is to make the action itself as easy a threshold as possible: so small it is manageable and so specific that you don’t have to think about it a lot.

For example, a tangible, controllable action might be “doing ten squats” every morning. So you can start by trying to create a routine but already include clear triggers that the toddler can pick up later on.

Things to remember

A trigger is nothing more than a signal you always associate with the action. Triggers can be visual pointers like seeing a particular object, like your training outfit. Or a specific time of day, a designated place like a nearby park – or even better, all of these combined. The important thing is that you always start doing your action in a specific context. This trigger is the start button that will eventually set off the action automatically.

So to establish a home workout habit with ten squats, you could always do them with your exercise gear on, at the same place and time, like in your living room at 8 am. 

Once you have your trigger and action, you must repeat them regularly, ideally every day. If you keep going, they will change from a routine to a habit, from a trail to a highway. Don’t get this wrong, the squats will still take your energy to do – but the decision to do them will feel much less like a chore and a regular part of your day. Forming simple habits can change your life one tiny step at a time.

While this is simple, it is not easy.

Many things you want to turn into habits don’t offer as much instant gratification as wasting time on Reddit. To make your new action easier to repeat and more likely to be picked up by the toddler, try to make it pleasurable. Not necessarily by rewarding yourself after you did it, but by making the action or behaviour more enjoyable. Like only listening to your favourite podcast while working out or chipping away at your taxes while you wait for your favourite video game to load the next round. You need to figure out what works for you.

In principle, that’s it.

Frustratingly simple, like most things you can do to make your life better. How long it takes for your toddler to take over and establish a habit varies. It depends on the behaviour you are trying to get used to, what kind of person you are, your stress levels and many more things.  

It takes between 15 and 250 days until a new habit is kicked off automatically by its trigger. You won’t know how long it will take for you. Starting is the easy part, especially in the first week or two. After that, continuing to do it every day is the hard part. But it does get easier as you keep going.

There are no silver bullets for change. But the science of habits is a reminder that it is possible, no matter how old or young you are. Even if you only do a little more good stuff or a few new things, that’s still a success. Being a little bit more healthy or knowledgeable is a million times better than being unhappy about something and changing nothing. In the end, change is a direction, not a destination and changing your habits is how you can change your life one tiny step at a time.

Key Takeaways

If you’re like most people, there’s a difference between who you are now and who you want to be. The things you do and how you act leave trails in the jungle of your brain. The more clear these paths are, the clear and easy they are to follow. A routine is a set of things you do over and over again because you like how they make you feel. A habit can make you feel like you’re on autopilot because you don’t have to convince yourself to do it.

The most important thing about habits is that they are set in motion by cues from the environment and triggers. If you want to make change easier, forcing it might not be the best way. But by making new routines and turning them into habits, you can show your brain that it’s not that big of a deal. We’ll pay attention to little things, not big ones. Once you know what makes you do something, you need to do it often. We hope this post helps and motivates you to change your life one tiny step at a time.