EP | 20: Identity-Based Habits Excerpt from "Atomic Habits" by James Clear

James Clear is the author of "Atomic Habits" which explains the process of how to change your habits and shift your identity in order for these new habits to stick.

Growing not only in my personal life, but in my business, I've been solely focused on the mindset work of change. I've neglected teaching and looking at the action part of creating new results.

This week's podcast you'll hear me read from "Atomic Habits" second chapter about the Identity-Based Habit and the Outcome-Based Habit process. Combing this habit work with my mindset work is a game-changer.

I also highly recommend following Shelby Sacco on Instagram and TikTok because she teaches all about how to become that "It Girl" and change your habits.

https://www.instagram.com/shelbysacco5/

https://www.tiktok.com/@shelbysacco5

You can get James Clear book here: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits

You can grab Norman Vincent Peale's book, "The Power of Positive Thinking" here: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Positive-Thinking-Norman-Vincent/dp/0743234804 

Hope you enjoy this tidbit from "Atomic Habits" and be sure to keep your eyes peeled for my new 6 week course: Putting You Back Into Routine: You will learn step-by-step how to rewire your brain, learn how to love yourself, learn how to achieve goals, and learn how to create lifelong healthy habits in order to become your best self. 

Cheers!

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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@merittrollinsbrown

Website: https://merittrollinsbrown.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merittrollinsbrown/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@merittrollinsbrown?_t=8hC2ICTEGIY&_r=1

Transcript

Meritt: 0:03

I am Merrit Rollins Brown, your go-to mindset maintenance community coach for learning all about your thoughts, feelings, and habits in order to start achieving your goals and stepping into your future self. You ready? Y'all. I forgot to record my podcast last week. I had something that I was so excited to share and Thursday rolled around and I asked Rob, I was like, what day is it? He said, Thursday. And I was like, shit, I forgot it recorded my podcast. So I, for Future Me, I'm going to record an extra podcast that I have on reserve in the bank in case something like that happens, because I didn't wanna just throw together a podcast for y'all. So anyways, uh, I missed last week, um, and that's okay. Uh, today I wanted to talk about the identity-based habit. process that is from the book, atomic Habits from James Clear. So if you have followed me on through this podcast journey or on my Instagram, that I have changed my business a lot because, and I'm being honest and transparent. I have had trouble just finding my voice and what I want to provide in the world and. at the beginning of this business journey. Um, it was all about life coaching and life coaching and life coaching and more life coaching and mindset work. And that's, I've really solely focused on mindset work, which is great. Um, I mean, that's changed my life and it's helped my clients and, um, I'm all for mindset work. However, it. I felt like I was always missing something, and also I had to distance myself from other life coaches and sort of like that industry because I felt like I was just conforming to them and not thinking for myself, and I did not want to just be a copycat of somebody else. And so that's why I've been super inconsistent. with my business. Um, or I'll post on social media like three times a day, four, three months, and then I disappear for six months because it just, it just has not felt right. And, I wanted to create something that I have thought about before, but then I always thought, no, it's gonna. The wrong thing because so-and-so said this, or so-and-so said that. The mindset maintenance community is something that I'm passionate about building and growing and establishing, and it's something that represents what I want to represent. which is mindset work with, which is the new thing that I've dived into habit work. So learning about habits and which like I was never against. habit, learning about habits, I mean, for psychology, that's all we learned about was, um, like Pavlov and cognitive biases and, oh my gosh. Who are the other ones? Like Skinner and Freud, Carl Young, um, and how like this affects this or how. This affects this, which always interests me, but I don't know. For some reason I get tunnel vision on some things and like it was just all about mindset, mindset, mindset. And, so anyways, uh, back to what this podcast is supposed to be about, which is, um, reading from Atomic Habits, I have seen this. For years. And then, I don't know, I just thought I didn't need to read it and I am currently reading it, almost finished with it, and it's just a game changer for me. And I want to bring mindset, tips and tricks along with habit. In order for you to become your best self and create the life that you want to create, and that will include benefits of that would be you are going to rewire your brain and you're gonna learn how to love yourself and love yourself deeply and. Love your life and you're going to learn how to achieve your goals and create healthy habits. So this episode is about the identity-based habit process from James Clear, which is what my business. is focused on the mindset maintenance community. I'm gonna read a little bit from this book because he does a really good job of explaining it. So I'm just gonna read from this. This is from chapter two, how your habits shape your identity in vice versa. And I'm going to read says pages Through 36. Why is it so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good ones? Few things can have a more powerful impact on your life than improving your daily. And yet it is likely that this time next year you'll be doing the same thing rather than something better. It often feels difficult to keep good habits going for more than a few days, even with sincere effort in the occasional burst of motivation. Habits like exercise, meditation, journaling, and cooking are reasonable for a day or two and then become a hassle end quote there. Yes, this is what I. Have said before you start on something, something in life comes up either unexpectedly or your brain literally just gets lazy because it does not want to push itself out of that comfort zone or homeostasis so you revert back to your old patterns in your old thinking. And this is where the mindset work comes into play, because, well, I'm gonna read the rest, but, you have to, shift your identity before taking the action part and changing all of your habits. I am gonna continue with what James Clear said. However, once your habits are established, they seem to stick around forever, especially the unwanted ones. Despite our best intentions, unhealthy habits, like eating junk food, watching too much television, procrastinating and smoking can feel impossible to break. Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons. One, we try to change the world. The world. We try to change the wrong thing, and two, we try to change our habits in the wrong way. In this chapter, I'll address the first point in the chapters that follow. I'll answer the second. Our first mistake is that we try to change the wrong thing to understand what I mean. Consider that there are three levels at which change can. You can imagine them like the layers of an onion. The first layer is changing our outcomes. This level is concerned with changing your results, losing weight, publishing a book, winning a championship. Most of the goals you set are associated with this level of change. The second layer is changing your process. This level is concerned with changing your habits and systems. Implementing a new routine at the gym, decluttering your desk for better workflow, developing a meditation practice. Most of the habits you build are associated with this level. The third and deepest layer is changing your identity. This level is concerned with changing your beliefs, your worldview, your self-image, your judgments about yourself, and. Most of the beliefs, assumptions and biases you hold are associated with this level. Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe. So end quote there. So this is where, um, you are changing your thoughts and your beliefs about yourself, and that's where learning how to. break the limited beliefs that you have and breaking your current negative thought patterns or thought loops because like with habits, there's a habit loop and there's also a thought loop, and you can shift that fault loop. Um, like how you can break the habit loop. That is the foundation to shifting your identity because what you think you believe, because the belief is a thought that you've thought over and over and over again, and you've thought of it for so long that you attached meaning to it, and it creates this emotional reaction to that thought. and this is where challenging your thoughts, like asking, is this thought even true? Is this thought serving me anymore? Does my future self want to think? This thought, altering those will alter the, your belief about yourself. So your self-belief, your self-confidence, and then when that changes, you'll start to feel differently. because our, our feelings are generated from our thoughts, right? And how we feel creates what we do. Are we going to be confident in this situation or are we going to withdraw and. I'm creating a course called Putting You back into Your Routine, cuz a lot of times we put ourselves on the back burners. I know I did, especially when I had kids and I was a stay-at-home mom. I was doing everything for everybody else and I was not taking care of myself mentally, physically, or emotionally. And it was a tough, tough, tough decade in my twenties. And it wasn't until I learned about mindset work that changed everything. Because it changed my belief about myself, which then led me to do things that I would not have done if I had not implemented what I learned about mindset work. And learning how our. brain embodies are connected in the sense of like, yeah, the autonomic nervous system in the sympathetic nervous system, the fight, flight, or freeze response. And how when you implement meditation into your life, your brain actually alters like the cortex, your frontal cortex actually grows. And that's where we. Decisions from and our memories, and that's where we learn from. And the more you meditate, the less gray matter is around the prefrontal cortex. And the more you meditate, the bigger the hippocampus becomes. And I have like all of this research from scientists and neuroscientists. backing this up that I'm gonna share in my course. And it's just, it's fascinating. And then once you realize like how things are connected and why the brain works the way that it works and our body responds the way it responds to like stressful situations and how we react. I think it's just so cool. Okay, so anyways, okay, so let's get back to it. So he, so James Clear says, identity is about what you believe when it comes to building habits that last, when it comes to building a system of 1% improvements, the problem is not that one level is. or quote worse than another. All levels of of change are useful in their own way. The problem is the direction of change. Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity based habits with the, with this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become. in reading there, or in quote there, um, this is what this is, like, the first thing I learned when I was in this life coaching program was you have to become the who before the how. And I was like, I don't understand what that means at all. but after reading this book, it. Makes sense to me now, and this is like five years after I heard, heard that saying, because you need to shift, you need to look inward and change the things inside of you. Hint your mindset before figuring out the how to change it because that will follow. Let's keep reading. Imagine two people resisting a cigarette when offered a smoke. The first person says, no, thanks. I'm trying to quit. It sounds like a reasonable response, but this person still believes they are a smoker who is trying to be something else. They are hoping their behavior will change while caring around the same beliefs. The second person declines by saying, no thanks. I'm not a smoke. It's a dif, it's a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was part of their former life, not their current one. They no longer identify as someone who smokes in there. So that's why visualizing your future self is very important because you have to look at what your future self. And who you want your future self to be. Okay, let's continue. Most people don't even consider identity change when they set out to improve. They just think, I want to be skinny, which is the outcome, and if I stick to this diet, then I'll be skinny, which is a process. They get or they set goals and determine the actions they should take to achieve those goals without considering the beliefs that drive their actions. They never shift the way they look at themselves and they don't realize that their old identity can sabotage their new plans for change in that right there, this is why affirmations did not. shit for me because writing down, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself. I love myself. I love myself. 800,000 times did not change anything because to my core, I believed that I still did not love myself. I was trying to change something external versus internal. And I know I've talked about like external cues and internal cues from, uh, for eating like intuitive eating. but the same applies with your beliefs. Okay. I don't know why I yelled that, but there you go. Okay. We're gonna continue. He says, behind every system of actions is a system of beliefs. Because what is a belief? Oh, in end quote, what is a belief? A belief is a thought that we thought over and over and over again. Okay. Quote, behind every system of action is a system of beliefs. behavior that is incongruent with yourself will not last. You may want more money, but if your identity is someone who consumes rather than creates, then you'll continue to be pulled towards spending rather than earning. You may want better health, but if you continue to prioritize comfort over accomplishment, you'll be drawn to relaxing rather than. It's hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven't changed who you are. The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It's one thing to say, I'm the type of person who wants. It's something very different to say I'm the type of person who is. The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it. If you're proud of how your hair looks, you'll develop all sorts of habits to care for and maintain it. If you're proud of the size of your biceps, you'll make sure you never skip an upper body workout. If you're proud of the scarves you knit, you'll be more likely to spend hours knitting each. Once your pride gets involved, you'll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits. True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you'll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity. Anyone can convince themselves to visit the gym or eat healthy once or twice, but if you don't shift the belief behind the behavior, then it is hard to stick with long-term change. Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are. so he gives three examples. So the goal is not to read a book. The goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to turn or to turn. The goal is not to run a marathon. The goal is to become a. The goal is not to learn an instrument. The goal is to become a musician. Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are either consciously or uh, non-consciously. Research has shown that once a person believes in a particular aspect of their identity, they're more likely to act in alignment with that belief. So end. This brings me to something else that I discovered. So I have not read this book yet, but I watched a video on the summary of this book and uh, I'm pretty sure I ordered it, so I'm gonna read it, um, once I'm done with the other books I'm reading. But anyway, so it was in the book. Um, the power of Positive Thinking, and that was written by Norman Vincent Peele. He gives an example of the self-fulfilling prophecy when you, so his example from the book was, when you start a new job and on the first day of work, you think to yourself that you won't do a good job or people won't like you or you won't fit in, you end up behaving in a way that aligns with those thoughts. and again, our thoughts create our what? Our feelings and our feelings create our what? Our habits. So if you are thinking in a negative thought loop, your feelings are going to match those thoughts because feelings are vibrations. Go through our bodies and then our brains want to match what our body is doing due to the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight, fight or freeze response. And depending on our autonomic nervous system, is how our brain is going to react or respond. and if you aren't aware with it, then your brain's gonna match the vibrational frequencies that your body is giving off because they want to be in sync. Our brains are definitely accustomed to confirmation biases. where our brain stores evidence of such outcomes as true and real. And then we attach the meaning of, see, I knew I wouldn't fit in or, see, I told you I wouldn't be good at this job. The more evidence we store, the more we start believing this negative thought. and that negative thought loop is what gets wired into our brains. And if you aren't aware of something, then you can't change something. And that's why it's so important to do this mindset work and figure out who you are and what thoughts you're thinking and how you're feeling currently, but how you want to feel in the future and what you want to think in the future and what you believe about yourself and. Once you become aware of your thoughts and your beliefs, then just everything else changes in your life and it's just crazy. Yet at the same time, just fascinating to like link all of this, all of these things together. Okay. Whoops. I just hit my lamp. Okay. So getting back to Atomic Habits. James Clear said your behaviors are usually a reflection. Oh, wait, I think I just said that. Okay. Like all aspects of habit formations. This to you is a double-edged sword when working for you. Identity change can be a powerful force, uh, for self-improvement when working against you. Though identity change can be a curse. Once you have adopted an identity, it can be easy to let your allegiance to. it impact your ability to change. Many people walk through life in a cognitive slumber blindly following the norms attached to their identity. Like I'm terrible with directions. I'm not a morning person. I'm bad at remembering people's names. I'm always late. I'm not good with technology. I'm horrible at meth. Y'all. How many times have y'all said that stuff to yourself? I know. I have said like, I'm so bad at remembering people's names or, I know. I'm always like, I've even said that I'm not good with technology. He states that. in a thousand other variations. When you have repeated a story to yourself for years, it is easy to slide into these mental grooves and accept them as a fact. In time you begin to resist certain actions because that's not who I am. There is internal pressure to maintain your self image and behave in a way that is consistent with your beliefs. You find whatever way you can to avoid contradicting yourself, the more deeply a thought or action is tied to your identity, the more difficult it is to change. It. Okay. End quote right there. I think that is just phenomenal writing and it put two and two together for me, um, in a much easier way. And I basically have been teaching the. Identity based habit process anyways without picking up this book because that's how much I believe in the mindset work that one needs to do in order to change everything else in their life. Atomic Habits has been an awesome book and honestly can't wait to finish reading it. But that takes me into, so I, no, I've changed my business over and over and over again because it felt like I was always missing something and, and it wasn't until recently. that I discovered, like the habit loop and the power of habits and, atomic habits and adding that along with, the mindset work and all of the neuroscience and psychology, sociology and physiology that I've learned throughout the years. putting those two forces together is a game changer. So I next calling myself a life coach and I've next calling myself a mindset coach. And I think that's important because I, for the last couple of years trying to build this business, um, it didn't feel like mine. It felt more like I was copying another life coach's business. Not in the sense like word for word copy and paste, but like trying to do the membership and trying to do this and teach how they teach, teach, teach how they teach, I guess. And it was just, I don't know, coming across as just like not me being me. And then I didn't wanna put myself in a box either. I don't wanna put myself in where I just had to focus on like this one thing or this one thing, um, and teach only this. Actually shout out to Shelby Sacco with, she has the Saddest Savage podcast. And, uh, she came up on my TikTok and talked about the, habit loop, the q re, uh, q re routine and reward. I always wanna say reward, um, but the power of habits by Charles duh Higg. That's one of the books that she. and I was like, oh, that makes so much sense seeing that. and she teaches all about like changing your habits. And so I, and she also has, I think it's, I think it is a sad to savage course, but. honestly, like seeing her build her business and I think she's fantastic, but part of me changing my business all the time was, I needed to find my own voice and I needed to take a step back in order to learn how to think for myself and not just regurgitate what other people have said. So I'm sort of combining everything together because I've learned different things. then other people, and then I implement too, like the gut health and the microbiome and how what we eat and put into our bodies is just as important as what we think and what we believe about ourselves, which is just as important as how we show up in the world and what we do. Because I struggled with. not loving myself and really torturing my body for years with just restricting and of reading and all that stuff. So I'm bringing my experience to this new business venture, the mindset maintenance community, and just pouring my passion of learning. How to become your best self and learning about habit changes and how to physically become your best self and introducing meditation into my life and teaching you the neuro. Behind meditation and how that really does alter your brain. And sharing what I know from all of the gurus and scientists, psychologists, and authors that I've trusted over the last five years of my own self-development. And I'm here just to share my story and all of the amazing mindset tips and habit hacks that I have learned with you. And Shelby has a six week course and. I thought that is a great way to introduce the mindset maintenance community to you. I don't know what her course covers. I've only listened to a couple of her episodes of her podcast and I've watched a few of her TikTok videos. I'm not, following her religiously. Not because I don't not like her, but because I don't want to sound the same as her because everybody has their own personality and everybody has their own story. But she does teach the, from like atomic habits and the power of habits. And I know there's like a million other books too, and I'm sure we've read a lot of the same books, but, um, I like just how she presents herself and runs her business. And so I, uh, have been creating a course. Um, I was gonna do the membership, but I'm not doing the membership anymore. I'm doing a six week course that is putting U back into your routine, and that's gonna open up in March. This is where you're gonna learn how to rewire your brain and learn how to love yourself and learn how to achieve goals, and learn how to create healthy habits that will change your life. I'm going to teach you and show you how to do that step by step. And again, like. James Clear talks about through the identity shift is going to start with our mindset and our thought work and belief work, and then we'll dive in. Actually, I'll, I'll read out the, the weeks. So week one's gonna be brain 1 0 1. Why you think the way you think and why you do what you do and like why our body reacts the way that it reacts. Um, there's a lot of physiology thrown in in there, talking about. The parts of the brain and the primitive brain and the autonomic nervous system. Then week two is going to be about rewiring your brain through thoughts and belief work. Week three is feel your feelings. Learning how to regulate your emotions and process your feelings. And again, like that's when the meditation. data is gonna be presented there and you're gonna learn how to implement that into your life. Week five is gonna be all about habit loops. So what I've learned from Charles Duhigg and from James Clear, how to change your Habit loops. And then week six is going to be building healthy habits and creating new routines because I watched this awesome. Talk on, routines, practices and habits and how the presenter talked about Aristotle's view of fulfilling your potential in life and how we're all these little acorns that have fallen from a great oak tree. And we're rolling around on the grounds until we find the soft grassy patch. And that's where. Plant our roots and we start to grow into our own oak tree. And there are certain things, um, routines and practices and habits that you can do in order to fulfill your potential. So, it's about teaching you how to. become your best self and teaching you, um, how to just live your best life. Because I can tell you firsthand experience that just constantly hating yourself and hating your life and being in that like mom guilt or guilt, and. Cycle about every fucking thing that you do, being embarrassed all the time because you wanna try something new. But then you get social anxiety and then you don't do anything. Or you say something stupid and then you feel so much shame because you said something stupid. And like living in that little negative bubble is not. It is not fun. It's not a good life. It's not a good life. And to get out of that bubble and then create, What you want to create in life is just amazing. And, I, I am so excited about this course because, I w uh, I just wanna get into it right now. I know this is a long episode, but, um, I think this is amazing and like so many people have put in years and years of research and I love sharing what I've learned and, I'm loving where my business is going and I'm loving that. I am just gonna be like your best friend and mentor of how to manage your mind and just be you. Shelby calls herself your IT girl hype girl, which I think is a great description. Um, but I want to be like, I love kids. I've been a nanny. I've my best friend and I used to babysit. I mean, we used to babysit when we were like 13 years old. So I like to think of myself as like the mom to. my clients like I'm just taking, I'm there to take care of you. I'm there to answer any questions that you have. I'm there if you want coaching girl, I can coach. Okay? I can coach you what I love coaching, but this course, putting you back into your routine is going to consist of six weeks where we go over what I just talked about and it's gonna be a live thing. And then we'll have replays for those who can't make it. Cuz I know like different time zones and all that in life, just in general. Um, but there's gonna be a Facebook group so you can go back and watch the replays of the video, but you can also ask questions at the end. Um, and in the Facebook group, I'll probably will do. some coaching. if anybody wants to dive deeper into this the Facebook group is gonna be where you can go and ask questions about the worksheets because y'all are gonna have some homework to do and there's gonna be a workbook to fill out. And so if you have any questions about that or if you wanna hear somebody else's opinion on something or like an example of something, you'll have a safe space to do that. So yeah, I. you enjoyed that little tidbit from Atomic Habits by James Clear. I highly, highly, highly, highly suggest that book. I hope to see you in the putting you back into your routine course that I will be offering in. and also go look up Shelby Sacco cuz she, she is the IT girl, high girl. I love what she's doing and I'll be sure two lengthy other books and people that I mentioned. Okay. And if you don't already go follow me on Instagram or on TikTok or both, and I will see y'all next week because I'm not going to forget I'm not gonna forget to record for y'all next week. I Okay. Love y'all. Bye. Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you like this podcast and want to dive deeper into mindset management work, I want to invite you to work one-on-one with me. We go over what you want to achieve in your future. Create a customizable plan that will keep you engaged and propel you forward. Head on over to merit rollins brown.com. To book your free discovery call with me. That's M E R I T T R O L L I n s B r o w n.com. For more mindset, maintenance, community tips and tricks, be sure to follow me over on Instagram and on TikTok at me, Rollins Brown. I'll see ya.