September is the New January

I digress.

Back-to-school elicits a fresh-start effect. Temporal landmarks like a new month, a birthday, or coming back from vacation let us draw a line between the person we were and the person we intend to be, starting, say, next Monday. Sadly, we often bungle our fresh starts. We have a good first week, but by the following Friday we are already failing to follow through. Researchers call this the intention-behavior gap: we act on only about a quarter of our good intentions.

Here’s how to use a fresh start like Fall to build a habit that actually sticks.

1. Go easy on yourself

Forgive yourself for past failures. Before you start something new, let go of the past. Having failed to form a new habit before does not mean you don’t have the self-discipline to do so now. You failed because you didn’t know how to set yourself up for success. So forgive yourself for that.

When we’re hard on ourselves, it can feel like we’re encouraging ourselves to do better. High standards are fine, but self-attack is costly. It erodes our belief in ourselves and makes the resolution feel threatening, which increases the odds we’ll avoid it. Self-compassion does the opposite. College students who forgave themselves for procrastinating before one exam procrastinated less before the next.

You failed before because you didn’t know how to set yourself up for success.

Give yourself permission to take care of yourself. Researchers call focusing on others at your own expense “unmitigated communion,” and it’s linked to depression and illness. Women who feel less guilty about putting their own needs first are more likely to exercise, eat well, and get enough sleep. Self-compassion predicts lower guilt, so if guilt is keeping you from giving yourself permission, this practice can help.

If you’re worried about failing others, know that we’re reliably wrong about disappointing people, overestimating both how upset they’ll be and how long their disappointment will last. (See also this post about how to disappoint others with grace.)

2. Decide how you want to feel, not what you want to fix

Don’t start with what you want to stop. You might think you’re pretty motivated to give up red meat to lower your risk of heart attack. But we make less progress on goals framed around avoiding what we don’t want than on goals framed around moving toward something we do want.

Most people believe a behavior’s importance matters more than their enjoyment of it. But what best predicts whether someone is still doing it a year later is how much they enjoy it. Obvi.

Every habit that lasts has a rewarding feeling built into it. So decide: How do you want to feel? Do you want more calm? Relief from stress and overwhelm? To feel more energetic or more fulfilled?

Find your why. Here, two enormous ideas come together in one practical move. Ask yourself two questions:

• Who do I want to be? Identity is one of the two strongest determinants of whether a health behavior lasts, alongside habit itself. If a behavior doesn’t fit who you want to be, you’ll drop it no matter how badly you want the outcome. If you identify as someone who never rests because you’re so busy and important, a daily meditation won’t survive the week.

• What role do I play that gives me energy? Purpose is the intrinsic motivation to contribute to something beyond yourself, and it predicts whether people follow through on their health intentions. An energizing role is purpose married with identity.

You can be many things: somebody’s mother, an artist, a manager, a friend, a gardener, a daughter. Some of your roles feel like obligations, and others fuel you. Choose one that fuels you. It doesn’t have to be the role you love most, or the one you’d say matters most.

Every habit that lasts has a rewarding feeling built into it.

When my kids were toddlers, I found mothering exhausting. I loved my kids so, so much, and I was happy. But I was tired all. the. time. My role as a mother was not what I would call energizing, and it never would have gotten me out the door for a run. What got me out the door was my work. I was energized by positive psychology research, and when I exercised, I had more energy to write things I knew would help others.

Goals that reflect who we want to be stick around much longer, and caring about how we affect others predicts persistence most reliably when it goes hand in hand with genuine personal interest.

So put what you want to feel and your energizing role together. You’ll practice your habit so you can be a calm grandmother. A loving friend. A clear-headed leader. A focused writer. This is your why.

3. Get specific

First, be specific about what you’ll do. Specific goals beat vague ones so consistently that this is among the most replicated findings in psychology. Choose a behavior that you already know gives you the feeling you’re after. What has helped before? What does research say produces it? Don’t guess; humans are reliably bad at predicting what will make us feel the way we want to feel.

If you want more wonder, take a daily awe walk. If you want more joy, write down three good things each evening.

Then, decide when and where you’ll do it. Ideally, tie your new behavior to something you already do. After I pour my coffee, I will walk outside and get some morning sunlight. That’s an implementation plan, and 642 studies show that making one meaningfully improves follow-through. It works even when executive function is impaired, in people with frontal lobe injuries, schizophrenia, and opiate withdrawal, which tells you it isn’t running on self-discipline.

4. Expect it to go sideways, because it will

Plan for the challenges you’ll face. It’s counterintuitive, but imagining yourself successfully adopting a new habit decreases the odds that you’ll do it. Picturing the finish line makes us feel as though we’ve already crossed it, so the energy we need to get there is never mobilized.

We do better when we name the obstacles we’re likely to face and decide in advance how we’ll address them. Obstacles come in three flavors: internal, like feeling unmotivated; environmental, like that bag of chips on your desk; and other people, like the friend who doesn’t want you to quit drinking. List yours, and make a plan for each.

Change can be exciting, but more often it’s uncomfortable.

Allow discomfort and difficulty. Starting something new can feel awkward, frustrating, even fraudulent. There may be grief, both real and disproportionate, for, say, the glass of wine you aren’t having, and resentment toward the people drinking it in front of you. Often you’ll be bored. You might feel guilty for taking time for yourself instead of giving it to someone else, or ashamed after a missed day.

These are hard feelings, and avoiding them means avoiding the habit itself. Weirdly, what works is to surrender your resistance to them. Here’s a practice for doing that.

5. Take a few minutes every day for self-reflection

Daily reflection builds the self-awareness we need to keep going. Ask yourself what’s working and what isn’t. Noticing our own behavior motivates us to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be. None of this is self-criticism. It’s a willingness to look at ourselves without flinching, so we learn from our missteps rather than repeat them.

A fresh start isn’t a promise to become someone new. It’s a line you draw between who you were and who you intend to be, and now you know what belongs on the other side of it: one behavior, chosen for the feeling it gives you, tied to a role that fuels you, anchored to an existing habit, with a plan for the day it inevitably goes sideways.

Notice that not one of these things is trying harder; that was never what was missing. And it all fits on a single line in your brand-new planner.