How I Transformed My Life With Small Habits

The Trap of Radical Change

For years I believed that self-development meant big, dramatic lifestyle changes. I thought that real change required a complete overhaul of my life.

So year after year I would set ambitious and unrealistic goals, hoping to reinvent myself overnight. I thought goals like this were exactly what I needed:

• Run 4 times a week.
• Give up gaming.
• Read for an hour every day.
• Get up at 6 am every morning (This was especially unrealistic since I was getting up at 10 am most days)

I would start off each year feeling motivated, but that motivation never lasted. Every year, I failed to make any meaningful change.

The repeated failure was crushing my confidence. I started to question myself.

“Why can’t I stick to anything?”
“Am I just lazy?”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Why can everyone else get their life together, but I can’t?”

Eventually, I believed I was just undisciplined or lacking some quality that other happier and more successful people had.

Looking back, I now know that the issue wasn’t that I couldn’t change. The issue was the approach I was taking.

A New Approach with Small Habits – Realistic Self Growth

That perspective began to change after I was gifted two books, ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear and ‘The Compound Effect’ by Darren Hardy. These books taught me that meaningful change takes time. Self-development often doesn’t come from sudden, dramatic action.

It comes from small, consistent behaviors repeated over time.

In all my previous attempts, I never stuck to anything long enough for any change to matter. No matter how desperately I wanted to. My goals had simply been too ambitious.

It became painfully obvious that I needed to scale down my goals and habits. So I listened to the books’ advice:

• Read one page of a self-help book per day
• 2 minutes of stretching in the morning
• 1 minute of journaling before bed
• 1 short gratitude practice per day

But to be completely honest, at first, these changes felt pointless. I remember the first time I read just one page of a book, after I put it down, I thought “How could this possibly help me change my life?”

I often doubted whether this approach would work. And that doubt got to me more than once. When I saw no progress after a few weeks, I would give up. But every time I did, I felt ashamed of myself. The habits were so quick and easy. I couldn’t justify not doing them.

So after a few days of feeling sorry for myself, I would start again. And before I knew it, I had finished my first self-development book. I was even staying consistent with exercise—something I had struggled with since leaving high school.

And for the first time in years, I was actually sticking to my habits instead of quitting after the first two weeks.

The progress was slow and honestly quite boring. But it was working.

How Small Habits Create Identity Change

Another mistake I was making in my previous attempts to change my life was only focusing on the outcome of my habits or goals. A big part of self-development that I was neglecting was identity change.

I wish I knew earlier that, in self-development, identity-based habits or goals are often more effective than their outcome-based alternatives.

Outcome-based goals focus on what we want, whereas identity-based goals focus on who we want to become.

I first learnt this idea from ‘Atomic Habits’ and James Clear has written an excellent article that goes into further detail on this concept and explains it much better than I can.

What really helped me put this concept into practice was picturing every small habit or action as a vote for the person I wanted to become.

Each workout is a vote for being an active person.
Every time I made something, it was a vote for being a creative person.
Each page I read was a vote for being a reader.

Over time, these votes add up, and eventually, they determine your self-image. I started to truly understand why small wins are so important. They gradually change how we see ourselves.

I learnt the hard way that this concept can work for us, or against us.

Back when I was failing to stick to my habits, I saw myself as lazy, uneducated, and unhealthy because I was doing habits that reflected that. Each failure at attempting to change my life solidified those feelings.

But once I started to do these small habits, I began to see myself as someone who was at the very least, trying to be productive, knowledgeable, and healthy. Trying to improve.

After sticking with each habit for long enough, I stopped thinking about how I was trying to read more and I believed that I was a reader.

The biggest change wasn’t my daily routine. It was my identity.

Call to Action

If you can relate to any of my experiences, why not try it for yourself?
I would encourage you to learn from my mistakes. Forget the big, lofty goals or the idea overnight success.

Instead, think identity first.

Who do you want to become? What type of habits or goals would they have?

Once you have a good idea, prove it to yourself with small wins. These are just a few examples of how to turn goals into identity-based habits:

Goal – To eat healthier
Identity – Become the type of person that eats vegetables and fruits every day
Habit – Eat one serving of vegetables and one piece of fruit each day

Goal – To read more books
Identity – Become the type of person that reads in their spare time
Habit – Read one page per day before bed

Goal – To get fit
Identity – Become the type of person that moves every day
Habit – Go for a 10-minute walk every morning or afternoon

Conclusion

If I could go back and give my younger self one piece of advice, it wouldn’t be to push myself harder, be more disciplined or set bigger goals.

It would be to start small and trust the process.

The changes that really changed my life weren’t flashy, dramatic or impressive. But they were what I needed.

They helped me achieve something I never could before: consistency.

And from that consistency came progress, self-belief and eventually a life that I am proud of.