How To Build Habits That Stick (so you can stop being average)

Look at everyone around you.

What do you see?

You see mediocrity.

You see mindless actions, an unwillingness to challenge themselves, and an inability to delay gratification.

They don’t have any habits that push them forward or that help them get beyond average.

And it’s not like they haven’t tried.

Everyone at some point has tried to build a habit that would improve their life, but the majority of people couldn’t make it stick.

And since they couldn’t make the habit stick, they didn’t benefit from it, they gave up building it and they stayed stuck in mediocrity.

You see, to stop being average, you have to build non-average habits and give it time.

So you need 2 things;

• You need a habit that most people don’t have and that’s beneficial

• And you need to be able to make it stick

Which brings into question, how do you build beneficial habits that last?

Life Through The Lens Of Goals

You live your life in accordance with your goals - whether they are conscious or unconscious.

So in every situation, you will see the desired outcome that helps you achieve your goal.

A classic example of this is someone so anxious that they can’t leave their bedroom.

That person is insecure.

So they have a goal of remaining inside, hidden away from the scrutiny of the world.

This causes their brain to manifest the feeling of anxiety that stops them from leaving their room so that they can achieve their goal of hiding from the world.

This doesn’t mean their anxiety isn’t real.

But it means they are the creator of their anxiety.

Now, you’re human, you are goal, progress and routine-oriented.

So you will automatically create and fall into routines and habits that create progress toward your goals.

And you always have goals that you want to achieve.

The problem with this is your goals might be conscious or unconscious and for the average person, all of their goals are unconscious.

They haven’t taken the time to figure out what they want to achieve, so their subconscious mind creates their goals.

And since you’re hard-wired for the path of least resistance so that you can conserve as much energy as possible, these goals will be goals that are mindless, that don’t require effort or challenge, and are full of instant gratification.

They are pleasurable now but damaging later.

For example, if you’re too anxious to leave your house, that anxiety is great right now because it’s protecting you from the big bad world and all the judgement you might face, but if you don’t leave your house, how can you expect to build meaningful relationships, make progress in your career or whatever else - it is damaging you in the long run.

And if your goals are unconsciously set by your primal brain, the habits you naturally perform to achieve those goals will also be unconsciously set.

If they’re not consciously set, they’re mindlessly set and therefore they’ll follow the path of least resistance.

So both your macro view of life, your goals, and your micro view of life, your day-to-day habits, are dragging you down this path of instant pleasure and delayed damage.

But once you understand this and the concept of viewing life through the lens of your goals, building habits becomes easy.

Your life is the result of your habits, the things you’re doing every day.

And your habits are aligned with the goals that you’ve consciously or unconsciously set.

So they won’t change unless you change your goals and drill that goal into your subconscious mind.

If you want to stop being average, you have to build beneficial habits that stick over time.

If you want to build beneficial habits that stick over time, you have to consciously set meaningful goals that improve your life.

Set Meaningful Goals

Every action you take is guiding you toward a goal that you have.

That goal could be something small like to stop feeling the hunger you feel right now - a goal that you haven’t consciously set.

Or that goal could be something big like build a million dollar company - a goal that you have consciously set.

But even the small goals, like removing hunger, are affected by bigger goals.

If you’ve consciously set the bigger goal of losing fat, you’ll treat the smaller goal of removing hunger much differently than if you’ve not consciously set the goal of losing fat.

The actions you’ll take massively differ.

Which, day by day, means the habits you have massively differ and the results you get are wildly different.

For that reason, you need big goals that act as filters for the smaller goals that you don’t consciously set.

I’m a massive proponent of everyone having these 3 bigger goals;

• Physical

Something like gain 10lbs of muscle

• Financial 

For example, consistently earn $10k a month

• Purpose

Something related to the impact you want to make

Goals in these 3 areas will ripple into every area of your life, influencing the smaller unconscious goals of each area, improving your actions and habits on a broader scale and improving your damn life.

But the goals also need to be meaningful.

If they don’t add up to your dream life or help you become all you could be, the goal doesn’t have enough significance for you to consciously pursue it for a long enough period of time to achieve it.

Nor does it have enough meaning for you to do the damn work that you know you need to do, whether you feel like it or not.

So make sure it’s meaningful and you’re not just setting the goal because it sounds cool or because you think other people will like you more for achieving it.

Reverse Engineer The Goals

By consciously setting meaningful goals that improve your life, you, to some degree, create actions and habits that improve your life.

But there’s always going to be that primal part of your brain that’s trying to drag you to the path of least resistance, especially if you don’t actually know what the habits that the goal you’ve set create.

So to stop you from falling down the path of delayed damage, you need to reverse engineer your goals down into daily actions.

This creates clarity around the habits that the goals require and the actions that’ll improve your life.

And since the goal is meaningful, these habits will be meaningful as well.

You’ll find them easier it stick to.

You’ll find them more enjoyable to do.

And you’ll actually want to do them.

This is 90% of the battle with habits, if you can figure out what habits that improve your life are necessary for your goals and then stick to them, it’s only a matter of time before average isn’t even a word in your vocabulary.

Write Down Your Goal Daily 

Knowing your goal is one thing.

Having your goal ingrained into your subconscious mind is another.

When your subconscious knows your goal, you’ll subconsciously build habits, take actions, make decisions and find opportunities that push you toward the goal.

It’s like playing life on easy mode.

But printing that goal onto your psyche involves 2 things;

1. Meaning

The goal needs to be meaningful and true to you.

If it’s not, your psyche will reject it. 

It won’t value it, because you know deep down inside you that goal has no significance.

2. Repetition

You get this repetition through 2 methods

The first is repeating the habits daily.

Since you’ve consciously chosen your goals and the habits, each time you perform the habits it’s a reminder of your goal.

The second is writing your goal down daily.

This isn’t some sort of woo-woo manifestation crap, it’s psychology.

Repeat something enough to the subconscious and it will take it on board.

By writing down your goal every single day, you keep it in the front of your conscious mind and the back of your subconscious mind.

Which is damn powerful for achieving anything.

Plan Your Day

Even when you know your goal and your habit, both consciously and subconsciously, part of you will always try to take the path of least resistance.

And since beneficial habits require effort and challenge, you’ll be tempted to skip them.

The best way to get around that is to plan your day.

Plan every single hour and schedule your habit(s) to a set hour.

Take your mental plans and turn them into reality by putting them onto paper.

This is incredibly simple but it’s the no. 1 thing I can recommend if you want to be more productive, more accountable, and get shit done.

Especially when you combine it with everything else we’ve already discussed.

Because since the goal and habits are meaningful and you’ve dedicated a specific amount of your time to do them, you’re going to do them.

Don’t Start With The Habit, Start With The Goal. 

This is exactly how you stop being average.

You build beneficial habits that most people don’t have and stick with them over time.

But to do that, you don’t start with the habit, you start with the goal.

For example;

Let’s say you decide you want to build the habit of going to the gym.

You shouldn’t just start there.

Ask yourself why? What’s the goal here? Why do you want to workout?

Maybe your answer is to get more jacked and increase your self-respect and confidence.

Sweet, that’s cool. That’s the true goal.

Let’s attach a more tangible outcome to it, let’s say put on 10lbs of muscle over the next 12 months.

That’s the tangible goal.

You can then reverse engineer that goal into the habit of working out.

Every day you write down your goal to “get more jacked and increase my self-respect and confidence by putting on 10lbs of muscle over the next 12 months”

And every day you schedule your workout.

You’re creating meaning by turning your unconscious goal into a conscious reality (because there was a reason you wanted to build the habit of working out, you just had to figure out what it was), you remind yourself of that meaning daily by writing down the goal and you increase accountability by scheduling the habit.

All adding together to help you do the damn work, build a habit that sticks and stop being average.

- Ross

And when you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:

• Achieve Self-Mastery, unlock your true potential, and smash every goal you set with MasteryOS

• Join the waitlist for cohort 2 of Done In 4

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