We’ve all made New Year’s resolutions! But how many of us actually manage to stick to them—even for a week, or sometimes even for a day? Why does this happen?
Have you ever told yourself you’ll start a new habit from “tomorrow”, but that “tomorrow” eventually never comes? Or even if you manage to stick to it for a couple of days, you often find yourself losing momentum eventually.
This isn’t necessarily because you’re weak, or even because you’re not disciplined enough.
Being clear on your purpose and understanding the motivation behind your habits are the key to successfully building a habit.
Let’s understand the science behind habit formation and what changes happen inside our brain when we form a habit! Yes, there are real biological changes happening as our brain learns and repeats a behaviour!
When you repeatedly perform an action, your brain actually starts adapting to it through a process called neuroplasticity. Connections between the neurons involved in that behaviour can strengthen with repetition—often described by the phrase, “neurons that fire together, wire together.”
And here’s where it gets interesting.
As you repeat a behaviour over and over again, brain regions including the basal ganglia become increasingly involved in learning and automating that behaviour. Eventually, something that once required conscious effort can start to feel almost automatic.
Think about brushing your teeth. You probably don’t wake up every morning and have an internal debate about whether you should brush your teeth. You just do it! Your brain has learnt the routine so well that it requires very little conscious decision-making.
But a new habit is completely different.
In the early stages, you have to consciously decide to do it. In the early stages, your prefrontal cortex —the part of the brain heavily involved in planning, decision-making and self-control—has a much bigger job to do. In simple words, your prefrontal cortex has limited bandwidth as it supports functions such as working memory, attention, planning, cognitive control and decision-making, and our capacity to perform these functions is limited.
And this is partly why the initial phase can feel so hard. Your brain hasn’t automated the behaviour yet and is using the prefrontal cortex to make the decision of performing the task over and over again.
This is also where motivation becomes important. When we have a strong reason for wanting something, there is actually something happening inside our brain. Our brain is constantly evaluating whether an action is worth the effort based on things such as the value or reward we expect from it.
One of the key players in this process is dopamine. Often called the “feel-good chemical”, dopamine actually has a much more interesting role—it is involved in motivation, reward learning and our drive to pursue things we value.
At the same time, the prefrontal cortex helps us keep our goals in mind and use them to guide our decisions. These systems interact with areas of the brain involved in reward and action, helping influence whether we actually get up and do something rather than simply think about doing it.
So when you have a clear and personally meaningful reason for building a habit, you aren’t magically creating willpower. But you are giving your brain something important: a reason for the effort to feel worth it.
And that is exactly why understanding your why matters.
In other words, the goal isn’t to rely on willpower forever. The goal is understand your “why” and to repeat the behaviour enough that your brain gets better at doing it.
But here’s where I think many of us go wrong. We make our habit-forming plans on impulse.
Okay, that’s enough science for now!
I’m not claiming to be perfect at this either. None of us are. But over the years, I’ve thought about it a lot and have come to realise that a simple 5-step method is what has worked for me. So today, I’m going to share it with you, and I hope you find it useful!
Step 1: Be specific about your purpose
Why do you want to build this habit?
A purpose could be “to get healthier”. But that’s not specific enough. Your purpose becomes much more meaningful when you know exactly why you want it.
For instance: “I want to do yoga every day because it helps improve my flexibility and calms my mind.”
Having a clear purpose can help direct your attention towards what matters and make it easier to prioritise behaviours that support your goal.
Step 2: Understand the science or logic behind your purpose
Most of us need a reason to start performing a task consistently. If we find a task meaningless or don’t truly understand its benefits, we may not feel motivated enough to do it.
So before trying to build a habit, spend some time understanding why that behaviour matters to you and what benefits you hope to gain from it. When the reason behind the habit makes sense to you personally, sticking with it can become much easier.
Step 3: Write down what this habit means to you and how it could change your life
A strong sense of direction can help you focus your attention and spend less mental energy repeatedly deciding what you should do next.
Think about what this habit genuinely means to you. What would change if you were able to maintain it consistently? How would you feel? What would your life look like?
You need a strong personal reason for wanting to make the change. Once you have that, the process can start to feel a lot easier.
Step 4: Think about how you will implement it — for example, through habit stacking
Having a goal without knowing how you’re going to implement it is only half the battle won. The easier and more obvious you make the behaviour, the less you have to rely on making the same decision over and over again.
One of the things I read in Atomic Habits by James Clear has stayed with me, and that’s the idea of habit stacking.
You pair your new habit with an existing habit that you already perform day in and day out.
For instance:
“I will pause and take five deep breaths” (new habit) after “I brush my teeth” (existing habit).
Your existing routine effectively becomes a cue for the new behaviour.
Step 5: Accept that life will sometimes get in the way
By the time you reach Step 5, you may realise that you’ve already become pretty good at this!
However, life happens, and sometimes we’re unable to stick to our habits—particularly in the initial stages. But don’t worry. Missing one day doesn’t mean you’ve failed or that you need to abandon the habit altogether.
When you miss a day, revisit the steps above. Remind yourself why you started, reconnect with what the habit means to you, and simply begin again.
Slowly but surely, you may find yourself becoming more consistent—and, more importantly, more motivated to continue building your habit.
I hope this blog helps each of you form at least one healthy habit over the coming days!
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