How to (actually) start changing your life

(Apologies for the clickbait title, but the opportunity seemed too good to pass up.)

We humans are creatures of habit, and habits are hard to break. Our natural instinct is to gravitate to things that make us comfortable. The problem is: sometimes things that are comfortable are also harming us. It might be easy to see this harm or we might be totally unaware of it. The harm could also be indirect; perhaps our habit isn’t bad in and of itself but it takes our time and energy away from more productive or fulfilling things.

There’s an endless volume of advice on the internet about how to break habits/break out of our comfort zone, as well as a few common sayings. One somewhat humorous one that comes to mind is “eat the frog” - referring to an imaginary scenario where you have several things you need to eat, and one of them is a very unappealing frog. The idea is to get the undesirable situation over with first before tackling the rest of the day.

My issue with most of the advice is it largely restates the problem, while not providing much in the way of actionable steps one can take to make it easier. Mantras like “if it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you” are somewhat helpful midway through the challenge, but don’t really provide the motivation needed to get started.

I want to share some advice that did help. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was made aware of Admiral William McRaven’s speech at the University of Texas in 2014. If you have not seen the speech, I highly encourage you to check it out.

McRaven is only a minute or two into the speech when he summarizes his first key point: “if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” This sounds simple but there’s a very important lesson behind it.

For a bit of context, McRaven and his fellow students were going through simulated rigorous military experiences in the Navy SEALs training program. At the start of each day, they were expected to perfectly make their beds - a seemingly simple task which McRaven even remarks “seemed a little ridiculous at the time.”

“What’s so important about this?” you might ask. Making their beds each morning forced the students into a routine where they always accomplished something. It might not be anything glamorous, but it was still productive. Moreover, it meant that even if the rest of the day went poorly, they could expect to always come back to a prepared bed at night.

I believe that the “make your bed” example can be applied more broadly. It helps to push yourself out of your comfort zone in a very small way consistently. Don’t let people ridicule you for taking baby steps. Just be consistent and be content with the progress you’re making. Once you adopt this mindset, a change of habits becomes a lot easier to implement because you no longer have to do everything at once.

There is another relevant point in McRaven’s speech: as part of SEAL training there were intense physical activities. The students who didn’t perform well enough would be selected to participate in what they called a “circus”; it was actually several more hours of intense physical activity.

Nobody wanted to be part of a circus, because it meant that you were the underdog, that you would be more tired at the end of the day, and that you would probably end up in another circus the next day. That said, no matter how hard they tried, everyone eventually found themselves forced to partake in a circus.

Unsurprisingly, though, the circuses weren’t all bad. Students who regularly participated in them became noticeably stronger over time. McRaven concludes this part of the speech by advising the class to “[not] be afraid of the circuses.”

As I mentioned at the start, one really hard thing about changing habits is the discomfort of trying something new. Like the circuses in SEAL training, change is hard and it can make us feel disoriented and discouraged at the beginning. It’s important to build a positive mental space to have the motivation to keep at it (more on this in an upcoming post).

Still, once we can get over that initial stumbling block, things become a lot easier very quickly. Seeing the benefits to a new habit becomes a little bit of extra motivation to keep going, or maybe to try changing another habit.

It is very helpful to pair these types of changes together: for example, when trying to break a bad habit, do it alongside the introduction of another enjoyable (and ideally not harmful) habit. If you balance them correctly, it will be surprisingly straightforward to quit the old. However, it is critical to choose the new habit correctly, otherwise it may be even harder or more painful to break than the old one.

While nobody can expect to change their life overnight (absent the presence of a miracle), it’s already a great step forward to start by changing your mindset about it.