Forget resolutions—these simple, proven methods can make lasting changes in your life

Just about everyone wants to cultivate better habits. The problem is, very few of us want to do the work to make those habits a reality. We hope they will magically develop, that one day we’ll just wake up (early, without even considering the snooze button) and head straight to the gym. Then we’ll have a healthy breakfast and sit right down with that creative project we’ve been putting off for months. At some point our desire to smoke or lie or complain will mysteriously disappear too.

The reality? This has never happened for anyone, and it’s never going to happen. This is what inspired Epictetus’ famous quote from 2,000 years ago: “How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?” He’s really asking how much longer you are going to wait until you demand the best of yourself.

I know I want to eat better and be more present. For a long time, I’ve wanted to do push-ups every day. I also want to work less and spend less time checking my phone. I want to start saying no so I can say yes to things I have been putting off. But I’ve wanted to make these changes for a long time. How do I transform my vague hopes into reality?

To start, I need to develop better habits, better accountability, and a clearer vision for my day-to-day life. Here are the steps I am taking. We are all staring down the barrel of a new year, and if we aren’t going to do it now, when will we?

Think Small—Really Small

The writer James Clear talks a lot about the idea of “atomic habits” (and has a really good book with the same title). An atomic habit is a small habit that makes an enormous difference in your life. He talks about how the British cycling team was completely turned around by focusing on 1 percent improvements in every area. That sounds small, but it accumulates and adds up in a big way. He emphasizes thinking small with big habits. Don’t promise yourself you’re going to read more; instead, commit to reading one page per day. Thinking big is great, but thinking small is easier. And easier is what we’re after when it comes to getting started. Because once you get started, you can build.

Create a Physical Reminder

A physical totem can make the habit or standard you’re trying to hold yourself to into something more than an idea, and that helps—a lot. The author and minister Will Bowen has a simple system that helps people quit complaining. He provides each member of his congregation with a purple bracelet, and each time they complain, they switch the bracelet from one wrist to the other. This method is simple and straightforward and makes it easy to hold yourself accountable. Over my desk, I have a picture of Oliver Sacks. In the background he has a sign that reads “NO!” that helped remind him (and now me) to use that powerful word. One of the reasons we made coins for Daily Stoic was that when you have something physical you can touch, it grounds you. The coins are made at the same mint where the first Alcoholics Anonymous chips were invented, and they represent the same idea. If you have 10 years of sobriety sitting in your pocket or clasped in your hand, you’re less likely to throw it away for a drink.

Lay Out Your Supplies

When I get to my desk in the morning, the three journals I write in are sitting right there. If I want to skip the habit, I have to pick them up and move them aside. So most mornings I don’t move them, and I write in them. You can use the same strategy if, for example, you want to start running in the morning. Place your shoes, shorts, and jacket next to your bed or in the doorway of your bedroom so you can put them on immediately. You’ll be less likely to take the easy way out if it’s embarrassingly simple to do the thing you want to do.

Piggyback New Habits on Old Habits

Last year, I kept telling myself I wanted to contribute more to my community or be of more service. When I heard about someone volunteering, I would say to myself, “I’m going to start doing that.” I read about William MacAskill giving up a great deal of his income and thought, “Wow, I’d like to do something like that.” And then, of course, I didn’t do much of either. Then I listened to an interview with David Sedaris, who talked about how he likes to go on long walks and pick up trash near his home. I go for a walk nearly every morning. It’s an ingrained habit that’s part of my routine. Boom: I just added picking up garbage to my walk. This was easy because I had already done the heavy lifting of creating the first habit. Now it’s harder not to pick up trash, like when I don’t have a bag. Will this little activity save the world? Of course not. But it helps. And I can build on it.

Surround Yourself With Good People

“Tell me who you spend time with and I will tell you who you are” was Goethe’s line. Jim Rohn came up with the phrase that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. If you want to have better habits, find better friends. Most of my friends are in good shape. None smokes. Most are in good relationships. Most seem to have their shit together. I’m inspired to be better because I’m around them (and I get lots of good ideas for habits and activities). I’m also shamed into not being worse. If I started slipping, I would stand out.

Commit to a Challenge

In 2018, we did our first Daily Stoic Challenge, which was 30 consecutive days of different challenges and activities based on Stoic philosophy. It was an awesome experience. Even I, the person who created the challenge, got a lot out of it. Why? I think it was the process of handing myself over to a script. It’s the reason personal trainers are so effective. You just show up at the gym and they tell you what to do, and it’s never the same thing as the last time. Deciding what we want to do, determining our own habits, and making the right choices is exhausting. Handing the wheel over to someone else is a way to narrow our focus and put everything into the commitment. That’s why Whole30 is so popular. You buy a book and follow a regimen, and then you know what you’re doing for the next month.

To kick off 2020 we’re doing another Daily Stoic Challenge, this time for 21 days. The idea is that you ought to start the New Year right—with 21 great days to create momentum for the rest of the year. If you want to have better habits this year, find a challenge you can participate in. Just try one: It doesn’t matter what it’s about or who else is doing it.

Make It Interesting

As I mentioned before, I’ve always tried to be someone who does push-ups every day. Since June, I’ve done at least 50 push-ups a day (sometimes as many as 100) almost without fail. How? I’ve been using Spar!, which is basically the most addictive and rewarding app I’ve ever downloaded. So we’ve been doing pushups challenges on a regular basis for the last month. Every day, we do 50 push-ups and upload video proof that we’ve done them. If you miss a day, the app charges you $5. At first you do the daily deed just so you don’t lose money. But soon enough, it’s about competing with the people in the group. Then a few days in, another motivation kicks in: The winners (people with the fewest misses) split the pot of everyone else’s fees. So you keep going because you want the reward. I’ve done thousands of push-ups, squats, burpees, and sit-ups (and even did one about cleaning my car and another about writing 500 words a day)—and in the process I also made a couple hundred bucks.

It’s About the Ritual

Professional dancer Twyla Tharp has written about how every morning she gets up early, dresses, and takes a cab to the same gym, where she works out for several hours. This is how she trains and keeps herself fit. Her workouts are tough and exhausting, and you’d think she would need a lot of discipline to commit to showing up each morning. But, as she writes in The Creative Habit, she just has to get herself to the cab. That’s it. The rest takes care of itself. The ritual takes over.

It Doesn’t Have to Be an Everyday Thing

I read a lot, but not usually every day. I do most of my reading when I travel, when I binge on books. Trying to force myself to read every single day (or for a set amount of time or a set amount of pages) would not be as productive or as enjoyable as periods of three to five days of really heavy reading (where I might finish three to five books). Binge reading may not be the right thing for everyone, but not every good habit has to be part of a daily routine. Sprints or batching can work too. What matters is that the results average out.

Focus on Yourself

One of the reasons I’ve talked about watching less news and not obsessing over things outside your control is simple: resource allocation. If your morning is ruined because you woke up to CNN reports of another ridiculous Trump 2 a.m. tweet-storm, you’re not going to have the energy or the motivation to focus on making the right dietary choices or sitting down to do that hard piece of work. I don’t watch the news, I don’t check social media much, and I don’t stress about everything going on in the world—not because I’m apathetic, but because there are all sorts of changes I want to make. I just believe these changes start at home. I want to get myself together before I bemoan what’s going on in Washington or whether the U.K. will figure out a Brexit strategy. “If you wish to improve,” Epictetus said, “be content to be seen as ignorant or clueless about some things.” (Or a lot of things.)

Make It About Your Identity

Generally, I agree with Paul Graham that we should keep our identities small, and generally, I think identity politics are toxic. It’s a huge advantage, however, to cultivate certain habits or commitments that are foundational to your identity. For example, it is essential to my understanding of the kind of person I am that I am punctual. I also have decided that I am the kind of person who does not miss deadlines. That I see myself as a writer is also valuable because if I’m not writing, I’m not earning that image. You can see why being vegan becomes part of people’s identity too. If it was just about choosing not to eat any animal products, the diet would be extremely difficult to adhere to. But because it is a lifestyle and an ideology, vegans are willing to push through all that. They don’t see it as a choice, but rather as the right thing to do.

Keep It Simple

Most people are way too obsessed with productivity and optimization. They want to know all the tools a successful writer or an artist uses because they think this is what makes these individuals so great. In reality, they are great because they love what they do and they have something they’re trying to say. When I look at some people’s routines and all the stuff they’re trying to manage, I shudder. Their habits require habits! No wonder they don’t make progress. My to-do lists are always short. I want my goals to be reachable, and I don’t want to be constantly busy or get burned out. This is why James Clear’s concept of atomic habits is so important. Look at the little things that make a big difference—not only is this more manageable, but the results will also create momentum.

Pick Yourself Up When You Fall

The path to self-improvement is rocky, and slipping and tripping is inevitable. You’ll forget to do the push-ups, you’ll cheat on your diet, you’ll get sucked into the rabbit hole of Twitter, or you’ll complain and have to switch the bracelet from one wrist to another. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. I’ve always been fond of this advice from Oprah: If you catch yourself eating an Oreo, don’t beat yourself up; just try to stop before you eat the whole sleeve. Don’t turn a slip into a catastrophic fall. And a couple of centuries before her, Marcus Aurelius said something similar:

When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better group of harmony if you keep on going back to it.

In other words, when you mess up, come back to the habits you’ve been working on. Come back to the ideas here in this post. Don’t quit just because you’re not perfect.

No one is saying you have to magically transform yourself in 2020, but if you’re not making progress toward the person you want to be, what are you doing? And, more important, when are you planning to do it?

I’ll leave you with Epictetus once more, who wrote so eloquently about feeding the right habit bonfire. It’s the perfect passage to recite as we set out to begin a new year, hopefully, as better people.

From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer…

The modern practice of this Thanksgiving holiday here in America is that we are supposed to take the time to think about what we’re grateful for. And the candidates are usually pretty obvious: We should be grateful for our families, for our health, that we live in a time of peace, for the good laid out in front of us. All the usual suspects.

I agree, these are important things to recognize and appreciate. It’s also a good to have a specific day dedicated to that occasion. So by all means, celebrate.

But over the last year, I have come to practice a different form of gratitude. It’s one that is a little harder to do, that goes beyond the cliche and perfunctory acknowledgment of the good things in our lives, but as a result creates a deeper and more profound benefit.

I forget how I came up with exactly, but I remember feeling particularly upset—rageful if I am being perfectly honest—about someone in my life. This was someone who had betrayed me and wronged me, and shown themselves to be quite different from the person that I had once so respected and admired. Even though our relationship had soured a few years before and they had been punished by subsequent events, I was still angry, regularly so, and I was disappointed with how much space they took up in my head.

So one morning, as I sat down early with my journal as I do every morning, I started to write about it. Not about the anger that I felt—I had done that too many times—but instead about all the things I was grateful for about this person. I wrote about my gratitude for all sorts of things about them, big and small. It was just a sentence or two at first. Then a few days later, I did it again and then again and again whenever I thought about it, and watched as my anger partly gave way to appreciation. As I said, sometimes it was little things, sometimes big things: Opportunities they had given me. What I had learned. A gift they had given me. What weaknesses they had provided vivid warnings of with their behavior. I had to be creative to come up with stuff, but if I looked, it was there.

A few months later, I came across a viral article about a designer who had gone through a painful divorce. Prompted by his work computer to change his password every 30 days, he decided to use this medium as a chance to change his life. The password he chose: [email protected] And at least once per day for the next month, often multiple times a day, he found himself typing in that phrase over and over. Each time he got to work, each day when he got back from lunch, when his computer would go to sleep while he was in a meeting or on the phone: Forgive her. Forgive her. Forgive her.

It struck me that that there was something similar about my gratitude exercise and the small success I had. It was easy to think negative thoughts and to get stuck into a pattern with them. But forcing myself to take the time not only to think about something good, but write that thought down longhand was a kind of re-wiring of my own opinions. It became easier to see that while there certainly was plenty to be upset about, the balance of the situation had still overwhelmingly in my favor. Epictetus has said that every situation has two handles: Which was I going to decide to hold onto? The anger or the appreciation?

Now in the mornings, when I journal, I try to do this as often as I can. I try to find ways to express gratitude not for the things that are easy to be grateful for, but for what is hard. Gratitude for that nagging pain in my leg, gratitude for that troublesome client, gratitude for that delayed flight, gratitude for that damage from the storm. Because it’s making me take things slow, because it’s helping me develop better boundaries, because some flights are going to be delayed and I’m glad it wasn’t a more important flight, because the damage could have been worse, because the damage exposed a more serious problem that now we’re solving. And on and on.

Donald Trump once tweeted “Happy Thanksgiving to all–even the haters and losers!” I’m not a fan, but I must admit that he has a point. We should be giving thanks, even to the “haters and losers.” Actually, that’s who we should be thanking in particular. It’s the “haters and losers” who point out our flaws, keeping us humble if we have the sense to listen. It’s the “haters and losers” whose examples we heed, even if only as guides for what not to do. The point is: There is something to be thankful for in everything and everyone. Even the life of Donald Trump, itself filled with a lot of hating and losing, offers lessons to us all.

This is part and parcel of living a life of amor fati. Where instead of fighting and resisting what happens to you, you accept it, you love it all. It’s easy to be thankful for family, for health, for life, even if we regularly take these things for granted. It’s easy to express gratitude for someone who has done something kind for you, or whose work you admire. We might not do it often enough, but in a sense, we are obligated to be grateful for such things. It is far harder to be grateful for things we didn’t want to happen or to people who have hurt us. But there were benefits hidden in these situations and these interactions too. And if there wasn’t, even if the situations were unconscionably and irredeemably bad there is always some bit of us that knows that we can be grateful that at least it wasn’t even worse.

“Let us accept it,” Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself in his own journal some two thousand years ago, “as we accept what the doctor prescribes. It may not always be pleasant, but we embrace it —because we want to get well.” The Stoics saw gratitude as a kind of medicine, that saying “Thank you” for every experience was the key to mental health. “Convince yourself that everything is the gift of the gods,” Marcus said, “that things are good and always will be.” This isn’t always easy to do, obviously, we should try to do it because the doctor asked us to try this experimental procedure—and because the old way isn’t working well either.

I’m not saying it will be magic but it will help.

So as you gather around your family and friends this Thanksgiving or Christmas or any other celebration you might partake in, of course, appreciate it and give thanks for all the obvious and bountiful gifts that moment presents. Just make sure that when the moment passes, as you go back to your everyday, ordinary life that you make gratitude a regular part of it. Again—not simply for what is easy and immediately pleasing.

That comes naturally enough, and may even go without saying. What is in more desperate need of appreciation and perspective are the things you never asked for, the things you worked hard to prevent from happening in the first place. Because that’s where gratitude will make the biggest difference and where we need the most healing.

Whatever it is. However poorly it went.

Be grateful for it. Give thanks for it. There was good within it.

Write it down. Over and over again. Until you believe it.

Before we get to the article, just a reminder that my new book Stillness Is The Key releases on October 1! I put together a bunch of bonuses I’m offering to everyone who preorders. And there are 3,000 limited edition signed and numbered copies from Barnes and Noble.

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Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble. (Quidvisrecte factum quamvis humile praeclarum.) — Sir Henry Royce

Whatever you’re doing right now, chances are you’d probably rather not be doing it. Even if you’ve got your dream job, it’s very likely that right now you could still be on a conference call you’d rather skip, scheduling some meeting you’re doing as a favor to someone else, or dealing with some administrative detail you wish someone else would handle.

Or maybe you’re home from work and you’re picking up around the house. Maybe you’ve got some writing to do and the resistance is setting in. Or you’ve got homework, an application to fill out, someone to fire, or you need to have a difficult conversation with your significant other.

It’s easy to blow these things off. It’s tempting to phone them in. But you can’t.

Because how you do anything, is how you do everything.

Long past his humble beginnings, President Andrew Johnson would speak proudly of his career as a tailor before he entered politics. “My garments never ripped or gave way,” he would say.

On the campaign trail, a heckler once tried to embarrass him by shouting about his working-class credentials. Johnson replied without breaking stride: “That does not disconcert me in the least; for when I used to be a tailor I had the reputation of being a good one, and making close fits, always punctual with my customers, and always did good work.”

Another president, James Garfield, paid his way through college in 1851 by persuading his school, the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, to let him be the janitor in exchange for tuition. He did the job every day smiling and without a hint of shame. Each morning, he’d ring the university’s bell tower to start the classes — his day already having long begun — and stomp to class with cheer and eagerness.

Within just one year of starting at the school, he was a professor — teaching a full course load in addition to his studies. By his twenty-sixth birthday, he was the dean.

This is what happens when you do your job — whatever it is — and you do it well.

These men went from humble poverty to power by always doing what they were asked to do — and doing it right and with real pride. And doing it better than anyone else. In fact, doing it, well, because no one else wanted to do it.

Sometimes, on the road to where we are going or where we want to be, we have to do things that we’d rather not do. Often when we are just starting out, our first jobs “introduce us to the broom,” as Andrew Carnegie famously put it. There’s nothing shameful about sweeping. It’s just another opportunity to excel — and to learn.

But we are always so busy thinking about the future, we don’t take enough pride in the tasks we are given right now. Too often we phone it in, cash our check, and dream of some higher station in life. Or we think, This is just a job, it isn’t who I am, it doesn’t matter.

This is foolishness.

Everything we do matters — whether it’s making smoothies to save up money or studying for the bar — even after we’ve already achieved the success we sought. Everything is a chance to do and be our best. Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires.

Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well. That’s our primary duty. And our obligation. When action is our priority, vanity falls away.

An artist is given many different canvases and commissions in their lifetime, and what matters is that they treat each one as a priority. Whether it’s the most glamorous or highest paying is irrelevant. Each project matters, and the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving.

Same goes for us. We will be and do many things in our lives. Some are prestigious, some are onerous, but none are beneath us. To whatever we face, our job is to respond with:

• hard work
• honesty
• helping others as best we can

We should never have to ask ourselves, But what am I supposed to do now? Because we know the answer: our job.

Whether anyone notices, whether we’re paid for it, whether the project turns out successfully — it doesn’t matter. We can and always should act with those three traits — no matter the obstacle.

There will never be any obstacles that can ever truly prevent us from carrying out our obligation — harder or easier challenges, sure, but never impossible. Each and every task requires our best. Whether we’re facing down bankruptcy and angry customers, or raking in money and deciding how to grow from here, if we do our best we can be proud of our choices and confident they’re the right ones. Because we did our job — whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. “Obligations” sound stuffy and oppressive. You want to be able to do whatever you want.

But duty is beautiful and inspiring and empowering.

Steve Jobs cared even about the inside of his products, making sure they were beautifully designed even though the users would never see them. Taught by his father — who finished even the back of his cabinets though they would be hidden against the wall — to think like a craftsman. In every design predicament, Jobs knew his marching orders: Respect the craft and make something beautiful.

Every situation is different, obviously. We’re probably not inventing the next iPad or iPhone, but we are making something for someone — even if it’s just our own resume. Every part — especially the work that nobody sees, the tough things we wanted to avoid or could have skated away from — we can treat same way Jobs did: with pride and dedication.

The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell us. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it’s our job to answer with our actions.

In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. Our job is simply to answer well.

Right action — unselfish, dedicated, masterful, creative — that is the answer to that question. That’s one way to find the meaning of life. And how to turn every obstacle into an opportunity.

If you see any of this as a burden, you’re looking at it the wrong way.

Because all we need to do is those three little duties — to try hard, to be honest, and to help others and ourselves. That’s all that’s been asked of us. No more and no less.

Sure, the goal is important. But never forget that each individual instance matters, too — each is a snapshot of the whole. The whole isn’t certain, only the instances

How you do anything is how you can do everything. We can always act right.