This Mindset System Helped Me Master Any Habit (6-Steps)
I quit smoking 8 years ago.
It took me 10 years to do it.
I stopped and started 40 to 50 times. I tried 10 to 20 different tools. I spent thousands of dollars.
No matter how bad I knew it was for my health, I just couldn’t overcome the urge.
My mouth would water every morning as I rolled out of bed and hurried to make a fresh cup of coffee to sip along to the first glorious drag of that sweet, sweet tobacco stick.
I couldn’t wait to get into my car for a long drive, crank the windows (yes, my 1999 Pontiac Sunfire had cranks), pop in my favourite Pearl Jam album (Ten, it was always the album Ten), and smoke half a pack of my favourite Belmont Blues.
My mouth is still watering to this day as I write this.
Understanding The Depth
If you’ve tried to quit smoking you know what I’m talking about.
If not, I’m sure you can relate to a nasty habit you’ve tried to overcome.
Scarfing down a whole bag of your favourite chips after you promised yourself you’d only have one bowl.
Staying up way too late watching the same 10 episodes of The Office after telling yourself you’re going to start going to bed early so you can get up earlier and work out.
Hitting the snooze button for the 7th time in a row so you can get exactly 30 more minutes of “sleep” after committing to never hit snooze again.
One day, after purchasing a fresh pack of Belmont’s only to smoke one single cigarette before throwing the rest of the pack in the garbage because for the 50th time, “I just needed one more and that was that”, it hit me like a ton of bricks:
This habit is not just one simple behaviour pattern that I can’t kick. It’s rooted in something far deeper that I need to explore.
Philosophy-First
Habits are more than a series of actions; they start from our very core—shaped by our environments, beliefs, and ultimately manifest in our daily routines.
Recognizing this complexity is the first step towards meaningful change.
If we want to break bad habits and build positive ones, we must be aware that that it all starts with this understanding:
Your environment creates your beliefs, your beliefs impact your thoughts, your thoughts create your emotions, your emotions influence your behaviours, your behaviours form your habits, and your habits create your outcomes.
This is where systems thinking comes in.
[System Framework]
A journaling system for mastering your habits
After years of research on habit formation, and 1000 different failures, I finally found a simple system that not only helped me stop smoking and drinking but also helped me transform my sleep routine, create more intention with my family and overcome an autoimmune disease my doctor told me I was going to have for the rest of my life.
Six Journal Prompts For Successful Habit Change
Identify your ultimate goal: Start with the end in mind. What outcome are you aiming for? Is it about personal health, career, or relationships?
Prompt: What healthy outcome am I trying to create for myself?
Define the behaviours: List out the behaviours needed to achieve your goal, then list out the current behaviours holding you back. Your behaviours are your habits, so dive deeper here. Awareness is your ally.
Prompt: What are the behaviours I’m acting out today that are keeping me from achieving my outcome? (Spend lots of time in the negative behaviour-identifying stage to build your awareness.)
Explore Your Emotions: What feelings emerge when you think about these behaviours? Is it shame or anger? Explore these emotions deeply—they're key to understanding your blocks.
Prompt: When I think about the outcome I desire, and why I can’t reach it, what emotions arise for me in my mind and body? How do I want to feel when I achieve the outcome?
Challenge Your Thoughts: Reflect on your thoughts about these behaviours and emotions. Spend time looking at your negative thought loops that you get stuck in when you’ve tried to transform this habit in the past. Again, awareness is your ally.
Prompt: What negative thoughts do I have when I am actively trying to transform these behaviours? How do they make me feel?
Examine Your Beliefs: Sit with your beliefs about these habits. Often, they trace back to early experiences. Understanding these beliefs is crucial for change. Look for the negative loops again here as they are the key to overcoming the thoughts and emotions.
Prompt: What do I believe about myself as it relates to this habit I desire to transform? What do I want to believe about myself that will help me reach my outcome?
Assess Your Environment: Consider your inputs — media, books, people, podcasts. These inputs shape your habits. The primary shift needed for positive habit change is redefining your environment to support a new path.
Prompt: Looking at my past and present, what are the 5 core environmental inputs that have made me believe the things I believe about myself as it relates to this habit? What are the things in my environment that are in my way? What are the changes that I need to make to create a positive environment for change.
[System Application]
The key to applying any good system is building a stack of simple actions that will help you execute.
Here is how you can start:
Change your environment: You know the inputs that are creating the beliefs, thoughts, emotions and behaviours. Pick one environmental input and change it.
Shift your beliefs: Your beliefs shape your identity. Write out all the limiting beliefs you have on a single cue card, then on the back, write out an identity statement that you can read every day as you take action towards your habit.
Write about your thoughts and emotions constantly: Set time every day to write about the thoughts and emotions that came up when you were in the process of changing your habit. This is called meta-cognition. The analysis of your thoughts and emotions is a massive skill for transformation.
Create a routine: On a second cue card, write out the simple, easy to start routine that you can achieve each day as you aim to reach your outcomes. Make it no more than 4 steps and less than 15 minutes to execute. You can build from there.
[System Maintenance]
Tips for maintaining your system
Start small. If you want to workout more, start with a walk, if you want to eat less, start with one chip. If you want to work less, start with 30 minutes.
Don’t miss twice. Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day, just make sure you never miss twice. This is a valuable tip for creating personal accountability.
Awareness is your ally. The more you can become aware of each element of the framework and the negative pieces holding you back, you can identify them in the moment and change them on the spot. Awareness is a skill that takes practice.
Putting It All Together
There is a great quote from Clayton Christensen from his book How Will You Measure Your Life?
“It's easier to hold your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of the time.”
In other words, 100% commitment is greater than 98% commitment.
I will talk about commitment in the future, but for now, understand the outcome you are committed to and take it seriously.
That’s it for now.