I followed advice from the book "Atomic Habits" to change my identity. Here's what happened.

"Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become." -James Clear

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Atomic Habits by James Clear

The book Atomic Habits by James Clear needs no introduction as it's been on the top of the charts for a hot minute now. In case you haven’t heard of it, it’s the number one self-help book on the shelves today and it is loved by many for its practicality and how applicable it is. The guidance the book gives is very straightforward and makes sense logically. Does it stick, though? Will the advice it boasts actually help you change your habits and, therefore, yourself? It did for me.

In the book, one of the things that stuck with me the most was that our habits make us who we are and that each time we perform these habits, they further confirm our identity. It seems like an obvious thing to say that what we do every day makes us who we are, however I had never thought of it that way. Habits are mostly unconscious behaviors thus they are things we often do not even recognize as part of us or things that constitute our identity - especially not the smaller habits. So, I began reflecting on my habits to learn about who I was and what kinds of things I was confirming each day in my identity. Plus, who did I want to be and which habits were counterproductive to that person? Which habits were essentially disproving who I wanted to be, which habits were in contradiction with my goal and kept me from being a specific person? 

Essentially, each time I performed those habits that were contradictory, I was becoming more deeply entrenched in what I didn't want to be. This idea was extremely profound to me. It meant that you could change who you were based on your every-day actions. So how do you change your habits? The book emphasizes that you should look at the new habit as part of your identity, not just a goal. For example, if you want to eat healthier, think of yourself as a healthy person and each time you eat healthy, you will confirm this new identity.

The main idea of atomic habits is that if you make a 1% change each day, you will be 365% better at whatever it is in a year's time and that you should change your habits on an identity-based level. So, I didn’t have to do anything drastic. Each day I just had to make a 1% change towards my goal and I would be 365% more of who I wanted to be. According to the book, there are four laws of behavior change. Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying.

First, I had to think about my identity and I wanted to choose something other than fitness to see if the advice could be applied to anything. After some reflection, I decided that I wanted to be someone who was very clean; the type of person who never left unwashed dishes in the sink, whose kitchen was organized into those little containers, and whose home felt like perfection. Now, let me be clear, my home had never been a pigsty. I would have described myself and my home as having a “messy aesthetic” with the cozy look you get from a roughly made bed. The careless, put-together look. So, nothing was ever perfect, in fact it was strategically not which was fine for a long time, but I wanted to make a change. Like most people, I couldn’t fathom washing dishes as soon as I was done eating or packing away laundry as soon as it was dry. 

I thought I couldn’t do these things because “it wasn’t me” which was confirmed by the fact that I did the opposite most days. I couldn’t imagine cleaning before I went to sleep or organizing things as they came up. I’ve never considered myself messy but I definitely let a few cups in the sink slide. However, telling myself I was a clean person instead of focusing on the goal of having a clean house allowed these habits to become permanent parts of who I was, making the goal reachable with the least resistance. If it's who you are, you don’t mind doing it as much. Now that I made my habit identity-based, I could apply the steps.

Make it obvious

With the idea of 1% in mind, I focused on taking steps little by little. The book says that the habit you want to adopt should be obvious, otherwise you will forget and it provides a couple of methods for doing so. It states that you should set a specific time of when you should do your new habit. It should be very specific and should include the time and place, which apparently makes you more likely to do it. So, I would wash the dishes in my kitchen sink before getting ready for bed. This is something the book also describes as habit stacking, the other method for making it obvious, where you attach the new habit to a habit you have already established. So, I stacked my desired habit on top of my already situated habit of getting ready for bed. 

Make it attractive

Let’s face it, we don’t like unattractive things and, you know what’s really unattractive? Washing dishes at midnight. The author explains that we will be significantly less motivated to do things that are unattractive to us, so we should make them more attractive by, say, lighting a candle when you read, playing a podcast when you walk, or the like. Basically, you pair what you need to do with something you want to do. What I did was focus on the aftermath instead of the process. Who doesn’t like the feeling of a super clean house? So, instead of self-loathing in my kitchen sink, I specifically thought about the result and how happy my future self would be. On top of that, if it was a larger job, I listened to a true crime podcast so it became more of an activity than a chore.

Make it Easy

James Clear, the author, also makes the point that there should be as little friction as possible between you and the habit. This means laying out your workout clothes the night before or getting a large water bottle so you don’t have to get up to drink more water. Another important point in the book is that it shouldn’t be too difficult or too intense to start out with. The more difficult it is, the more likely you will quit. So, to make it easy for myself, I didn’t wait until I was too tired and I started out with the very small step of washing whatever big dishes were in the sink. I didn’t have to put them away and there could be one or two things there, but no cooking utensils, pots, or the like were allowed. Big things had to be washed. This seems like a very simple task but it was often one I left for my future self because it was typically just me eating and “it was only one pot.” So, for a while I focused on making sure the big stuff was clean and slowly added in other things like making sure to fold the throw blankets in the living room and prop up the pillows before going to bed. As I was doing these things, I realized that, on the nights I forgot to do so, I felt differently the next morning. It gave me a sense of cloudiness in my head, almost like my mind was a reflection of what I was looking at. 

Make it Satisfying

As human beings, we want to be immediately rewarded. We don’t want to wait until the end of the day or the next week. We want a reward right now. So, a key in building a habit is to make it satisfying. The author provides tools to do this such as getting a habit tracker because seeing your “streak” and checking it off each day is satisfying in itself. This seems like such a simple thing, but trust me, it works. There are days you will do the habit just because you want to keep your streak going. Another tool is to give yourself an immediate reward. For me, my reward was the feeling of a clean home, which never gets old. Do you ever stand in the doorway after you clean and just admire your beautiful space? That’s what I did each time. I made sure to take a deep breath of relief and take it all in, to soak up every drop of satisfaction I could possibly get. It worked.

Results

So, what happened? I kept the habit cycle going. I slowly added in more things such as making sure there were no random objects sitting on surfaces like the entryway table and packing away the dishes before bed as well. There were definitely nights that I wanted to hand the task off to my future self, but on nights that were particularly difficult, I tried to make it more attractive by playing music, lighting a candle, making myself tea afterwards, whatever needed to be done to convince myself to do it. Were there nights that I skipped out? You bet. However, I was always so upset with myself the next morning, it was so unsatisfying waking up to an unorganized home, that leaving it for the next day was worse than just doing it before bed.

I eventually reached the point of being the type of person who does indeed wash their dishes as soon as they are finished eating and cleans the kitchen after every meal. What I realized is that I started wanting to do these things more than I didn’t want to do them because the satisfaction outweighed the cost. Now, it almost feels like these things need to be done because, otherwise, it creates some sort of dissonance, a mental fog. Seeing random things on counters began to bother me, I started lining everything up in rows which I had never done in my life. I began cleaning things as soon as I saw they needed to be attended to, walking around with a microfiber cloth to dust the light switches and it created an endless loop of satisfaction from a spotless home. On top of that, by confirming that I was a very organized person through my habits each day, other areas of my life became more organized as well and I found it much easier to add to my habit because it was part of my identity. Almost a year has passed since I began this process and I can say that it is now an unconscious part of my routine. 

Most Profound Part

One of the most powerful steps for me, I think, was making it attractive. Seeing unenjoyable tasks as their future result has changed the way that I do many things in life and is something that I will elaborate on in the future, so stay tuned.

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