NICO MCGOWAN

It seemed like this was the life I was destined to live — escaping my problems by indulging in sugar, nicotine and entertainment, only for them to pile up to a point that could no longer be ignored. Then I'd commit to a big change, go strong on days one and two, and on day three find myself in bed at 2am with a Pringles can and my computer on my chest.

I felt hopeless. I was treading water — spending all of my energy just to stay afloat.

After years of failing to change, I was losing hope I ever would.

In my early twenties I jumped head first into the unknown and started a company — I didn't know much about it, but I was determined to figure it out and learn as I went along.

Building a business gave me a purpose. Creating something myself that would help someone else, and living off of that, felt like the most meaningful thing I could do with my life.

But as the years went by, I still couldn't kick the bad habits. Even though I knew what I wanted, I still spent hours wasting time repeating the same old habits.

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." — Einstein (allegedly)

By that definition I'd been insane for years.

My business was standing still, my mental health was gradually declining, and I'd trained for years with nothing to show for it.

I realized I had to do something different.

One day, sitting in my car, I made a commitment to myself.

I was going to dedicate my life to finding the answer to this one problem — why I couldn’t change.

At that point I defined it as "finding the key to transformation." It motivated me.

I didn’t just want this key, I needed it, desperately. If I didn’t change, my life wouldn’t — that was clear.

I gave myself ninety days to figure it out.

I'd build a system in Notion to track every area of my life — log it as it happened, then review the week every Sunday. I was going to use my body as a way to measure my progress, so I had physical proof of the transformation.

Every night I logged my day. When I fell into a bad habit I'd note what happened, what led up to it, what I could do differently. Then I'd reflect on my day and write it down. Every Sunday I reflected on what I wrote throughout the week. I looked for the patterns — I drew diagrams, reflected for hours and improved my systems. I thought that if my awareness of the problem grew, I would eventually find the solution to it.

But ninety days later I hadn't changed. My body had, but I hadn't. I was the exact same person, with abs. I still watched YouTube till late at night, ate terribly and numbed my mind with nicotine pouches. The only difference was that I'd showed up almost every day, for some type of exercise.

That was it.

It took me another four months to realize that was it — not exercise, but showing up. Consistency was the key I'd been looking for.

You might think, "well duh, everyone knows consistency is key." And I had heard it before too, but I'd never actually realized it before that day. It became obvious to me at that point that the problem I'd been dealing with all of this time was inconsistency. My problem wasn't bad sleep, sugar, lack of exercise or nicotine. The reason I never changed was because I was inconsistent — I didn't stick things out. I always quit before my actions could accumulate into results.

I started looking into consistency — how to create it.

And this, in short, is what I found:

To be consistently doing something you need to make it a habit. You can run on willpower for a little while, but if it doesn't become a habit you'll run out and revert back to your old ways.

To create a habit you put a clear cue in your environment, and practice doing the behavior you want that cue to trigger for long enough that it starts happening automatically.

Then you want that behavior coupled to your identity, so it becomes a natural expression of who you believe yourself to be. So the habit is supported by your psychological need to have coherence between your self-concept and your actions.

It was in looking into the mechanisms behind habit change that I saw something interesting.

You can't create a habit if you don't stick to the actions long enough for it to become one.

You need the capacity to stick things out — and that was the exact thing I'd been struggling with all along.

This made me realize that the many broken promises I'd made over the years had given me a self-belief of "I don't follow through" — and that belief was manifesting itself in my constant struggle to change my life.

I had created a habit of quitting when discomfort arose, and my identity was reinforcing that habit — a habit that made creating any other good habit impossible.