How to create habits that ACTUALLY stick

Why is it so difficult to get a new habit started? It feels like it takes so much effort, so much motivation, and even if you do manage to get it started after a couple of weeks, when the excitement's gone, you feel burnt out and exhausted by your own efforts for the whole thing to stop stall and your plans and routines just crash. You feel defeated. You wait a few weeks and for the whole cycle to start all over again. And you go through this month after month, year after year, never getting things off the ground. Yet in other areas of your life, you find that you can do things pretty easily, pretty frictionlessly. And we can see that with other people who have habits that we aspire to. It seems like it's not taking much energy. How is this possible? Well, we can think of this like an airplane taking off at the beginning. When it's taxiing down the Runway. What happens? The throttle goes on full power, it charges down the Runway, and it starts to take off and, and ascend. During that period of time, throttle's on full power, pilots and passengers are buckled in and the plane shaking as it's going up. It's climbing up through the clouds, and it's all not very nice during that period. This is like that startup phase when you're trying to start a new habit. Really, really, really difficult, and you have to kind of stick to your routine. If you hold it long enough, though, as it goes through the clouds, you eventually get above the clouds. What's it like up above the clouds? It's nearly always sunny. Once the plane gets up to a high enough altitude, cruising altitude where the air is thinner, the airplane can pull back on the throttle and it doesn't need to push as hard as it did during the climb. This can be similar to how our habits form. It's a really useful way of thinking about how to get something really difficult started and how that evolves over time. It can sometimes feel like I wouldn't be able to sustain this forever. Neither would an airplane. It uses all of that fuel at the beginning of the flight, and it really, really cranks back the power once it gets above the clouds. We want to think about building habits like this. We can think about how big is the plane that we're trying to take off. If we're trying to start a new habit and it's a really difficult one, we can think about that as a bigger plane, one of those jumbo jets. In that case, we need a bigger Runway and it needs a longer time for ascent, and it's going to consume more Fuel. This could be quite a useful way of looking at what we're trying to do. If we've got a bigger habit that we're trying to achieve, we'll need a longer Runway. We'll need to set up things a bit better. We'll need to commit to keeping full throttle for longer to get the plane up to cruising altitude. But remember, once you get up there, you can cruise at a much easier level and get to your destination. Likewise, with easier habits, you can think about it like smaller planes. They need much less of a Runway and it won't take so much fuel to get up to their cruising altitude. So we can start to think about which type of habits in our life we're trying to create. And maybe if you're not used to creating new habits, you start with the easier ones or the smaller planes first. Just to get used to what it feels like to take something off, get it into the ascent, get it climbing, and try and get to cruising altitude. What's it like in real life with an airplane on the way up? Most people are expecting a bumpy ride. Turbulence. We feel that when we're trying to adopt a new habit. The first few weeks, not as easy as we hope. There are days where you can keep things going and other days where it's really, really difficult. That's like your turbulence, which, if you've ever been on a plane, hopefully you'll be able to resonate with that. What do you need to do? Why are the seatbelt signs on? The seatbelt signs are on there to keep you in place while that turbulence takes place. In the same way, we can think about using that as a model for keeping our habits in check. We need to stay committed while we're in that ascent phase. The idea is that we are trying to get to this cruising altitude and we can start thinking about how long is our ascent before we're going to get to that cruising altitude. If we're trying to adopt new fitness habits or new nutritional habits, how long do we need our Runway and our ascent to be? 2, 3, 4 weeks? Most people don't think think about how long it's going to take to get to the cruising altitude. If we start thinking about that and be realistic, we can really help ourselves. So how does this actually fail for most people? Most people are in the ascent phase where the air is thick, lots of turbulence, and the plane is on full power. And people often give up during that phase. And you never get above the clouds or get through the clouds and get to experience what it's like to be at that cruising altitude where the air is really thin. So the repeated cycle that people tend to go through is this cycle of getting prepared on the Runway, full throttle, taking off just before they get or they start going through the clouds. But before they get to the other side, things stop, they give up, and then they come down and crash land. This happens on a repeated cycle. So much so that often people end up believing that their plane can never fly, can never cruise, can never reach altitude, and therefore can never get to the destination that they're looking for. What we might want to think about going forward and how you can fix this is where do we want to get to what is required to take this plane off? How long is our ascent, how many weeks is it going to take before we feel this habit will set in place? We can think about that before we start the habit and this can help the commitment. You can apply this to nearly any habit. We'll pick fitness. If you're trying to go to the gym, how many weeks would you need to be going before you. You genuinely believe this would start to become a real habit and routine that you could stick to. Another thing to consider is how much fuel you have available now when you're starting this. If you try and load a big airplane at the beginning, and let's say you haven't been to the gym for years, and you try and go in heavy six days a week, that's like using. That's like loading a big plane with a small amount of fuel. The plane might not have enough to get above the clouds. It might be better to start off with loading a smaller plane in this case. So you could be trying to aim to go to the gym for once a week or twice a week, just to get that into routine. You might say, let's try and get to the point where we can go once a week for six weeks. That might be a point where you can get to your cruising altitude for that little plane. Over time, you can think about taking planes off continuously. You as this little airport with air traffic control taking off lots of different planes. But one thing I always like to think about is how many people or planes are in the sky at any one time. I think I remember looking at this and there's over 5 million people in the sky right now all around the world, all at cruising altitude. And planes spend the majority of their journey at that level where the air is really thin. The same thing for our habits. Once we get there, things become a lot easier. But most people don't ever get to that point. And so when you see a lot of people getting things done and you wonder how, how do so many different things yet when I try just one of those things, it's so difficult often because they've got many planes at cruising altitude already, whereas you're constantly trying to take off a new plane every time in that thick, dense air right by ground level. So that's why it can sometimes feel like you're, you're never getting any traction. And you can't imagine having lots of planes in the air because you're constantly in that low zone of the atmosphere. Whereas someone who's got really good habits, they've built cruise altitude where they don't need to use much fuel. A reminder here is what can you actually do? Think about your planes. Try and concentrate on taking smaller planes off first. And if you really want to take on a larger plane, think about respecting the process and what it would take to take that, to get that plane off the ground. A long Runway, a decent amount of fuel, nothing in its way. So if you're trying to set up a new big change in your life, think about clearing the path for this big plane. Making sure you've got time and weeks available to ensure that you can stay committed to working on building that habit up or getting that plane to cruise altitude. In the meantime, you can also focus on continuously trying to take off these smaller planes. When I've done this with clients, it's been, it's been one of the most effective ways of looking at habits. We can also think of it like during those periods of turbulence on the way up, you feel the plane drop out of the sky. Is that a problem for a pilot? If you ask a pilot, it's not a problem. It's part of the procedure. They're used to it and they know what to do. That's why the seat belts are there. So if we map it to this analogy, we can see how actually these up and downs of getting a habit stable are fairly normal. And we just need to have systems in place to keep things in check during the ascent. That's usually when things get really tough again, on an airplane. People are not walking up and down the aisle during the ascent. Everyone's sitting down. All of the people working on the plane are strapped in as well. Pilots are strapped in because it's so important we make it through the rough journey through the ascent to get to cruising altitude. What happens at cruise altitude once you get up there? Seat belt signs, the lights often go off. When you get to that point, people can start getting up off their seats and walking around. The same thing with our habits. Once we get to that point, after weeks or months where we don't have to think about it anymore, that's the place people want to get to. Just like a plane getting to cruise altitude where you can walk up and down the aisles and we only need a small percentage of our throttle on at that time. Now, a further note, once you do get up there, it doesn't mean you can go to zero. Just like a plane, you have to keep the throttle somewhat at a percentage on. Still, if you keep it off and you turn it off, that's also how people who do have good habits, if they keep it off for long enough, the plane starts to decline or lose altitude. Eventually it starts going back through the clouds where the air is thicker and it starts to accelerate. And that's how we can end up having to start the whole procedure again when we fall out of the sky. So it is important once you do get to cruise altitude to keep on some pressure, but you don't need to put the same amount as when the air was really dense. Then the other scenario is what happens when you do fall out of the sky. And, okay, so if you do fall out of the sky, you come down for a crash landing, even if you have been at cruise altitude, what needs to happen? Well, you need to take the plane off again. You have to go through the same procedure. I see this with lots of people I work with. People try and adopt the same practices from a time when they remember being at cruise altitude, but they can't because the air is not the same as it was up there. We have to check in with reality and think, actually, what is our situation right now? Well, the plane is now down on the floor. Unfortunately, we have to go through the same procedure, but if we do become aware of the real situation, we can get to the nearest Runway. We radio in to air traffic control, get ready for another takeoff, and follow the whole procedure again. If we follow the whole procedure again along the Runway, through the ascent, through the dense, thick atmosphere, it won't be long before your plane gets back up to cruise altitude where you can pull the throttle back, walk up and down the aisles, do other things while you maintain this habit and potentially work on other habits. We've covered taking off. We've covered what it's like to be at cruise altitude and also recognize that turbulence can hit you at any point on the ascent, but it also hits you at cruise altitude. And this can be. I mean, this happens to us all the time. This happens to me. Got a good routine going on, and something in either personal life, work life, or some curveball hits you just like turbulence, out of nowhere, it hits you or what happens. Seatbelt signs come on again. Okay, get back into your seats. We have to go back through our turbulence routine, gain control again. You might drop 100ft out of the air in an airplane. With your habits, you might lose a few days of your daily routine. In the first instance, if you've been at a good cruise altitude, you might not need to do too much. Just get back into the track and slowly readopt your routine and get back through it again. If the turbulence kicks in for long enough and you take the throttle off, yep, you may come down for another landing. But think about it like that. Now, with airplanes, we can travel thousands of miles to get to destinations that we, you know, 100 years ago, we couldn't have dreamed of. But using this strategy, with physics and air molecules, we can think about exactly the same thing with our habits. And this can really explain how you can reach a point where you can maintain numerous habits all at the same time. And it will often look unreal to others and unachievable. But most people are at that front end where they're dealing with planes all trying to take off. And you're constantly trying to take off planes in this dense, thick air, whereas people who are really killing it, they have taken their time sequentially taking off planes one after another, focusing on one first getting the plane off, through, across the Runway, ascending, up above the clouds. Wait until that has reached cruise altitude, then you can take off the next plane and follow the same procedure, get it up to cruise altitude and then the next plane. And so after a period of time, this could be months or even years. You've got 10, 20 planes all in the air, all at cruise altitude. Other people are watching continuously, trying to take off new planes. They can't. They can't get one off the ground. And this may be you right now. Then you see someone else with 20 planes in the air. Well, the process, right, that's how they've done it. And we can map it even further by thinking how air traffic control plays a role in this. Air traffic control is spending most of their time and effort with taking planes off. Right. Just like you with your new habits, should be focusing on that specific habit, ensuring a safe takeoff, a safe ascent, ensuring it gets to a good cruising altitude. And then radio can go down to a much lower frequency, and then you can focus on the next plane. What becomes very tricky is when you, you. You're trying to radio in to lots of planes all at the same time, and you definitely. Well, with planes, you can't take off two planes on the same Runway at the same time. So with this, yeah, definitely start thinking about sequencing your planes now. I always like to do this myself. A lot of people will ask me, how do you manage to keep so many habits going at the same time? And it looks so easy. And when they're going through the process of one, they can't imagine how they could multiply it up again. There's this. It kind of looks like an illusion or a bit of a trick. It's because you only send up one plane at a time. And once they're at cruise altitude, they don't need nearly as much fuel or throttle or focus and concentration as they did when they take off. Okay, so I'm going to wrap up there. That's it for my airplane analogy. I hope that was useful. You will find with all of my content, I love using analogies. I think they're really useful for compressing and visualizing very powerful ideas and ways of thinking with very common, difficult problems that we face. So stay tuned and keep an eye out for the next installment.