31 lessons I’ve learned about behaviour change and life

Last Sunday was my 31st birthday.

Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time on personal development because learning and personal growth are some of my highest values in life. Being in business also forces you to confront certain things about yourself that you may not have even realised were there…

I think it’s super helpful to sit down and spend time periodically thinking about all the little snippets of information, tips and ideas we collect over the years.

This demonstrates progress and growth, which helps us feel more fulfilled in our lives.

The following is a collection of 31 lessons I’ve learned that stood out to me from research, books, clients, podcasts, videos, and mentors:

1. The people who make change look easy aren’t different or better…they just learnt the right skills earlier, and probably spend more time in environments that support the changes they want to make.
2. The point of setting a goal isn‘t just to reach the goal, it’s about the type of person you become along the way. Learn to appreciate the journey and you’ll always win.
3. Self-compassion is required for long-term behaviour change. You might be able to force yourself to do things in the short-term, but long-term our brains work better with positive reinforcement.
4. Making brain health your number one priority is the most effective path to overall health. Pretty much all habits that benefit your brain (sleep, nutrition, exercise) will also improve your body, but not all habits that people use to improve their bodies will benefit their brains.
5. One simple question to help you build consistent habits: “What’s better than doing nothing right now?” Doing something is always better than doing nothing. Don’t let perfectionism paralyse you.
6. The goal of building habits isn’t achieving perfect habit streaks. Habit streaks can be motivating while we are in the middle of a streak, but when we miss a day habit streaks can actually be demotivating. Real life requires us to be more flexible and adaptable, therefore looking at the frequency of a habit over time is often more effective than how many days we string together in a row.
7. When the context of your life changes, your habits will also change. There’s no way around this. We need to be aware of this so we can adjust our habits to fit our new context. When you get a new job, when the season changes, when you start a new relationship, when you get a puppy (I’m feeling this one right now!) or when you go through any other change in routine, your habits need to adjust accordingly.
8. Writing things down is an incredibly helpful habit to use when stressed or overwhelmed. Thoughts and feelings feel overwhelming when they’re stuck in our heads, but when we get them on paper they become much clearer.
9. How life works: Our thoughts create our feelings which influence our behaviours. There’s always a reason behind why we do or don’t do things. In order to change, we need to find the thought driving the behaviour.
10. Most of us spend way too much time asking $0.10 questions and ignoring $1000 questions. In the context of changing eating behaviours to lose weight, for example, this looks like asking whether one food is better for you than another food, while most of the time you still eat when you’re not physically hungry. Eating better quality food might earn you a few dollars, but if you’re still overeating you’re losing thousands. Make sure you’re prioritising the right habits.
11. Life is not black and white. When you find yourself thinking things are either good or bad, remember this. There is always a grey area, even though most ‘advice’ thrown at us is black or white. The real answers tend to be found in the grey areas.
12. Changing your mind is a strength, not a weakness. I love the Maya Angelou quote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” As we learn new things, as we have new experiences, as we are presented with new information, we must keep levelling up our opinions and views. This is true progress. If someone says “you’ve changed,” that’s a great thing. I worry more about people who do not change.
13. Health is more than just exercising and eating well. Arguably, our mindset has a greater influence on our overall health than our habits do.
14. If you’re not sleeping well, or if your stress levels are high, your self-regulation will suffer. Self-regulation is our ability to stick to healthy habits and routines, our ability to think clearly, and our ability to manage our thoughts and feelings. This is why we must solve for sleep and stress before anything else.
15. Nothing good ever comes from scrolling on social media for more than 10 mins a day.
16. Controlling your own attention is a skill. If you let yourself consume unhelpful media, or spend more time consuming content than you do taking action and living your life, you’re going to find yourself feeling confused, overwhelmed, and unhappy.
17. What works for one person won’t work for another.
18. Life is one big experiment. Rather than trying to find all the “right” answers, spend time trying and testing things. If something works for you, keep doing it. If something doesn’t feel right, try something else. There are often no right answers. Even health strategies that have an evidence base behind them don’t work for everyone.
19. We learn a lot of unhelpful stories and beliefs when we are young. Stop holding onto those old stories. Just because something has always been one way doesn’t mean that’s the best or most effective way. Times change. Your stories and beliefs need to change as well.
20. Personality isn’t a life sentence. Don’t buy into the story that you are a certain type of person and your personality can’t change. Everyone can change, most of us just don’t know how (or realise it’s even possible).
21. Our bad habits always solve a problem for us. Unless you find a better way to solve that problem, you’ll keep returning to your bad habits. Find a new, more helpful solution and you’ll be able to change the habit.
22. The answer is usually simpler than you think. Many of us tend to overcomplicate things, which only leads to overwhelm and lack of action. Master the simple habits first before worrying about details.
23. Your environment will impact your habits and your health in a big way. Are your living and working spaces setting you up for success, or are they keeping you in old unhelpful patterns? What can you adjust?
24. Asking for help is a strength.
25. Changing your life often doesn’t happen in one fell swoop. It’s the accumulation of many small changes, made one at a time, that ends up changing your life.
26. People absolutely can change. The question is whether people are willing to do the things required to change. Some of this comes down to lack of knowledge about how the change process works.
27. Commit to less. Most of us struggle to follow through simply because we try to do too much at once. Start with one thing, then build on it later.
28. Feeling unhappy, unsure, or lacking motivation sometimes is normal. It’s not necessarily a sign that something is wrong. No one is happy and motivated all the time. Rather than trying to constantly “fix” yourself, try working towards feeling peace with any type of emotion. True success is being able to feel all our feelings without needing to run away from them.
29. If you want to think more positively, use ladder thoughts. The idea is that we don’t need to jump from extremely negative to extremely positive right away. If we don’t believe the thought, it will be tough to keep it up. You can level up a negative thought by first moving to a neutral thought. And then slowly improve that thought in small ways over time until it becomes more positive. Ladder thoughts are slightly better thoughts we can still believe. They’re a step in the right direction.
30. Be aware of what you have control over. You have control over your own actions and your own thoughts, but you have zero control over the actions of thoughts of other people. Control what you can, and simply accept the rest.
31. Take all advice with a grain of salt (even from those who look or sound like ‘experts’). Nothing applies to everyone. Always consider the context of your life, needs, and goals when making decisions about the best path forward for you.

I can immediately add a “bonus” lesson to this list, which is to always take life as it comes and always be flexible with your habits.

2 days before my birthday, we brought home a beautiful 15 week old Seeing Eye puppy. I underestimated how much energy this little guy would need, and how much our daily routine would be turned upside down.

I haven’t been able to write my daily blogs this week, or really do much work at all. Not because I didn’t have time, but because when I did have time (when the puppy fell asleep) I was so overtired that I was either zonked out on the couch or in a state of immense brain fog to the point where writing anything coherent was simply not an option.

Like I mentioned in lesson 14, when sleep is out of whack or stress levels are higher, basic habits are always going to be harder.

It would be easy for me to beat myself up, tell myself how terrible it is that I’m not keeping my commitment to daily blogs. But I’ve realised the more aligned choice in times like these is to prioritise my peace of mind, mental and physical health. (A great example of lesson 4. Plus, lesson 3 reminds me of the importance and power of self-compassion.)

I will create a new routine that includes the puppy (we’re already working as a much better team after just one week!) (see lesson 7)

I will continue writing these blogs when I can, and I will simply add more days on the end to get to 100 days (this is lessons 2, 5, and 6 in action)!

Which of these lessons resonates the most with you?