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How To Change Your Life Permanently With

Small steps have no competition in personal developmenttheir un inching

effectivenessembarrasses every other strategy.
Using small steps, I got in great shape, wrote a book (about them, using them), and read 10x as many
books as I used to all at the same time. I made more progress in a year with small steps than ve years
using other strategies (a literal comparison).

Are You Moving 8

Forward Every Day?
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If youre not currently moving forward in your happiness, nances, relationships, or career, then sorry,

but what the heck are you doing? Your vigor for life will drain out slowly like honey from a broken jar if
you arent making daily progress in some way. You dont have to set records, but you owe it to yourself
to live the best life you can. So how can you do it?

The determining factors of your success or failure to make progress are simply:

1. What strategies are you using to move forward?

2. Are you succeeding consistently with these strategies?

If you dont say yes to the second question, youll underperform your potential. Youll be a confused
mess of ups and downs. I know because Ive been there. I dont mean ups and downs as in the general
nature of lifes unpredictability, I mean ups and downs in doing 100% achievable things. Youll have
downs when its possible to have 100% ups in an area. For example, if you want to read every day,
there is no reason to ever fail that goal. The same goes for writing, exercising, your diet, and anything
else you can control.

Some say this type of failure is due to having low standards, and that you need to raise your standards
to succeed, but that sets off my motivational BS detector. You know why? You have to earn a higher
standard.Successful people (in any area) have high standards because theyre successful. Theyve
proven to themselves that they can perform at a high level. Im not talking about having to become a
millionaire or get on Oprah to raise your standards. Im saying you need to experience some personal
success to achieve permanently higher standards.

Our living standards are based on our history (and habits). Thats where the word standard comes
fromits your standard way of living. A motivational speaker will tell you to raise your standard to do
more and be more, but isnt that what we generally try to do anyway? Who isnt trying to improve
themselves in ways that matter to them? Is a speech encouraging us to be great enough to change us?
No. No. NO!

This is why strategy matters. Yourlife strategy is your chosen method for leveraging your current
skills and habits into something greater.Spoiler (highlight to see): if your life strategy isnt small steps,
youre doing it wrong.
And The Best Strategy For Life Is?
Lets use the example of reading to browse the principles of different life strategies for doing more:

You aim to read. (vague all around)

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You aim to read a 250 page book every day. (big aim, speci c amount, exible with a deadline)

You aim to read one page in a book every day. (small aim, speci c amount, exible with a
deadline)

You aim to read one book per week. (vague because book sizes vary signi cantly, exible with

a deadline)

You aim to read 20 pages in a book at 3:30 PM every day. (moderate aim, speci c amount,

in exible with a rigid schedule)

Each of these is a possible strategy, and they can be combined in different ways. This number of

options can cause choice paralysis, and very often, it will cause you to do the easy thing and adopt a
common goal that youve heard elsewhere. The danger in this is that most peoplefail to reach their
targets, so you might be copying a failing strategy.

Existing habits are usually stronger than peopleswillpower strength to override them with their new
goals over the long term. Thats why taking small steps stands apart as most effective among these
strategies listedthey dont require hardly any willpower, theyre speci c targets by nature, and
anyone can start with them. I stressanyone because there are some people out there who are
completely controlled by their subconscious mind right now (and more than youd think). So a strategy
that works at all levels is essential, as it allows you to scale up from wherever you are.

So for the above example, reading one or two pages in a book per day (or at a speci c time) is the best
strategy for success, for more reasons than currently covered.

Can You Win The Willpower Battle?

Every attempt to change a behavior or start a new one is a battle of willpower vs. resistance (though it
is a factor, I wont even mention motivation here since it is completely unreliableas a starting strategy)
Small steps require little to no willpower, and having a strategy that requires little to no willpower
means that you should be able to win the resistance battleevery time. Can you imagine winningevery
time?You wont have to imagine if you learn to harness the power of small steps (goread Mini Habitsif
you havent yet).
Despite having sub-par willpower strength (probably due to my years of video game indulgence), I
dont fail to exercise, read, or write anymore. Not during Christmas or vacations. Never. Its not
impressive, it just works. Trust me, Id rather not boast about writing at least 50 words every day. It
doesnt draw many oooh and ahhh reactions.

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I have said that mini habits apply to good habits only, and thats true. But the core idea of Mini Habits
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small stepscan also help uproot bad habits.

Do You Know Lifes Law Of Motion?

Theres a concept Ive noticed which is very consistent in life. If I were tasked to name it, Id choose
Lifes Law Of Motion. This name is based on Isaac Newtons laws of motion because its the same

concept, but applies to all of life instead of just the physics of motion. Heres the gist of Newtons rst
law of motion (from wikipedia):

An object that is at rest will stay at rest unless an external force acts upon it.

An object that is in motion will not change its velocity unless an external force acts upon it.

Life is largely determined by whatdirection we move. If we can move in the ideal direction most of the
time, then well have a great chance of continuing to do ideal things most of the time. If we move in the
wrong direction frequently, well constantly need to put on the brakes andthentry to move in a
positive direction. If the latter sounds like you, its because your subconscious mind habitually starts
you off in the wrong direction, and then you have to ght to redirect yourself all the time. Its tough.

When thinking in terms of normal goals, it sounds like trite informationof course when you move
forward good things happen, but the problem is that people have trouble moving forward!When you think in
smaller steps, however, it becomes a profound insight. When you take one small step forward, and do
it repeatedly, you gain the incredible bene ts of Lifes Law Of Motion without requiring much effort
or wasting your important willpower reserves.There is nothing trite about that!

How To Combat Bad Habits With Lifes Law Of Motion

To use the law of motion principle against your bad habits, employ a rerouting strategy:quickly take one
small step in a different direction than your undesired behavior(s) when tempted.

A multitude of studies nd that simple one-on-one resistance against bad habits works poorly, as the
temptation will wear down and outlast peoples willpower. And when you resist something directly,
you actually pay more attention to it and wind up continuallyretriggering your temptation! I can tell you
not to think about a red elephant,but that will make you far more likely to think of a red elephant.
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Do NOT look at the red elephant one more time after reading this sentence.

I wont smoke. *temptation to smoke*I wont smoke. *temptation to smoke*I wont smoke.*temptation to
smoke* Ehanyone have a light?

If you try really hard not to think about doing something, youll think about it even more. Do you know
the scienti c reason why this is a problem? Human willpower is limited. Your willpower energy to resist
the temptation decreases with each iteration.

From this, we can see that momentum works both ways. When a bad habit temptation hits you, the ball
has already started rolling down the bad habit track and youre at a disadvantage. You must stop this
momentum FAST and reroute it before it picks up speed and youre forced to light up a Virginia Slim.

The Two Action Requirements For Rerouting A Bad Habit Are Fast
Speed & Small Size
We know habits form by conscious decisions moving to the subconscious part of the brain, where
theyre made automatic.To remove a habit, then, we mustreversethis process by making the automatic
behavior a conscious decision again. The best way to do this is by introducing a competing behavior (i.e
creating an alternative neural pathway to reroute to when triggered).

Note: research suggests that you cant completely remove a strong habit from the brain, but you can
severely weaken its power by not doing it.
To succeed, you must be aware of bad habit temptations as they rst appear. This is done with
mindfulness, which is being aware of what youre doing and thinking (and why). The mindfulness habit
can be developed directly with practice (set an alarm for random times and when it goes off, analyze
what youre doing and why), or your can develop it naturally by building other (mini) habits. Its even

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possible to develop mindfulness in concert with your bad habit reversal plan. The reason you need
mindfulness is to be ableShares
tonotice a bad habit before its too late to stop it.

Then, once you notice a bad habit surfacing, act swiftly and act small. Abrupt, small actions work
because they set you in motion in anotherdirectionwith speed and ease, which gives you a great

opportunity to escape your bad habit. Your actions need to be small because you cant afford to ght
TWO sources of resistance (resisting a bad habit + forcing another action) when time is of the essence.

Like Newtons law says, An object that is in motion will not change its velocity unless an external force
acts upon it. This small step is the external force that acts upon your bad habit process and begins a

new path of momentum toward something else. And then you have a small amount of momentum in
theright direction.

Alternate Behavior
How To Choose An
Your alternative route should be something completely unrelated to the bad habit (because of the red
elephant concept). You want to move your mind and/or body away from your temptation. Here are
some examples:

The urge to smoke hits you, so you call a friend to talk about Chinese manufacturing or the NFL

The urge to waste time on Facebook hits you, so you leave your phone/computer behind and
read one page in a book

The urge to eat ice cream hits you, so you eat ice cream (sorry, Ilike ice cream)

Pick something that will engage your mind enough to compete with your bad habit (deciding to clap
your hands isnt enough to take your mind off of smoking, but talking to a friend might be); youll want
to have it decided in advance. You may also want to select several backup plans (A,B,C,D,E) in case the
temptation appears a second and third time and you dont want to annoy your friend.

The more you repeat this alternate behavior, the easier it will be to choose it in the future. Amazingly, it
may becomeharder to choose your bad habit. Sometimes I struggle to watch movies because my brain
prefers to do something more meaningful. I havent gured out if I like this or not.
A bad habit is the like a main trail running through your
brains woods. Many people get on the trail and try to turn
around, but their brains have other plans. Instead of
resisting in this way, veer off into your uncharted alternate

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behavior territory early in the process. Do it the next time
too. Over time, another Shares
trail will form from repeated usage.
And then youll be walking in your brains woods, nd

yourself on this alluring bad habit trail, and see the fork.
Take the now-familiar fork to reroute yourself to a better
Going into this scary path is similar to

your own brain!

place.Making and breaking habits is being a trailblazer in
veering off from a bad habit. Its scary and
uncomfortable, but you can do it one small

This process is still dif culteven with small stepsbecause
bad habits offer a (usually signi cant, short term) reward to
step at a time. Watch out for snakes.

the brain. This means youre going to have willpower
depletion no matter what strategy you use. A good way to compensate for this is to divert to the small,
abrupt behavior and immediately reward yourself for it. You can see some reward ideas on
minihabits.com.
It Works For Positive Behaviors Too!
Mini Habits is about using consistent small steps to develop healthy new habits, so I wont get into too
much detail here. But Ill mention how you can change a bland, boring, or depressing moment into
something positive.

If you feel stuck, tired, or depressed, make an abrupt decision to do something very small but positive
(something you cant say no to). Again, itd be good to have some ideas in advance: my go-to idea is
crazy, wild dancing, as youll see in the example below. Hey, dancing makes you smarter! Youll be
amazed at how quickly this technique can pull you out of a funk. Ill reiterate that the keys to success
here are the same as with bad habit diversionspeed and small size.

Live Update Example:After a big lunch, and as I was typing this in my bed, I felt very tired (writing in
bed isnt the best idea?). Even though I didnt want to sleep, I began to concede that sleep was
inevitable; it was as if I was watching something happening, rather than being in control. Thats when I
jumped out of bed and did some illegally fresh dance moves. That woke me up, and I went back to
typing in bed. The sleepiness returned. I jumped up again, and ended up wrestling with my cat in the
hallway. I wrestle cats, by the way. Now Im back at my (stand up) desk with some energy. Before you
concede to a feeling that isnt ideal, force yourself to do something small but positive/energizing and
youll be amazed at how well it works.This too, works by Lifes Law Of Motion.
Small Steps Offer The Highest Reward-To-Effort Ratio Of Any
Strategy
A behaviors reward-to-effort ratio stands for how big the payoff is relative to the preceding action.
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Drinking mud for 50 cents has a very low reward-to-effort ratio, while drinking a milkshake for a
million dollars has a veryShares
high reward-to-effort ratio.

Bad Habits generally high reward-to-effort ratios are why they are so easy to develop. The brain
thinks,I can just drink alcohol all the time and feel good? Ill do it!But that oversimpli ed thought is how

some people become alcoholics, which can ruin their health, their relationships, and their lives. And the
fact that some people ruin their lives with alcoholismand still drink alcohol shows the impact that high

reward-to-effort behaviors have on the brain as well as the power of habits.

If you havent read Mini Habits, this post might seem incomplete. Thats because it is incomplete. A

33,000 word book can say a lot more (and include more research) than this long blog post can. If you
think I want you to buy and read Mini Habits, you are correct. Trust meif you enjoy what youre

reading here, you will love Mini Habits. Some people will read every post on this blog, but wont read
the best work Ive ever produced. Thats weird to me. Im unrealistic enough to think that everyone
should read Mini Habits. I think they should require it in schools. The tagline of smaller habits, bigger
results isnt a marketing gimmick, its TRUE. If you have read Mini Habits, thank you so much for
supporting my mission to change peoples lives by sharing strategies that work and exposing the ones
that dont.

Before we cover the reward-to-effort ratio of small steps, lets consider the reward-to-effort ratios of
big goals.

Big Goals (lose 100 pounds):The effort involved in losing 100 pounds is huge, but so is the end reward.
This would seem like an even reward-to-effort ratio, but theres more to it. The problem with big goals
is that there is ONE reward, it only comes at the end, and you only get it if you reach the goal. Your
brain spits at this scenario like a llama. You can lose 90 pounds and still feela little bit like a failure
because you missed your mark.You might be pretty happy to lose 90 pounds, but you wont feel
completely satis ed if your goal was 100 pounds.

Anything less than feeling like a hero after so much hard work is absolutely unacceptable. And in the
context of reaching your big goal, those individual workouts or daily dietary choices that fuel success
wont feel like successtheyll just feel small. In short, the reward-to-effort ratio of big goals looks even,
but is actually very low, and thats why 92% of people fail their big resolutions (Univ. Stanford).
Small Goals (one push-up every day): Smaller, frequent goals give you smaller rewards in greater
quantity and frequency. This is what the brain responds well tosuccessful feelings paired with the
individual actions that bring long term success. The human brain is a bit insecure in that it needs
constant nurturing and reassurance. Unlike big goals, your efforts will feel like BIG successes in

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comparison to yourstupid small goals. It feels far better to aim for 50 words and overachieve with
3,000 than it does to aimShares
for 5,000 words and only write 3,000. This explains how small goals can
offer such a high reward-to-effort ratio, and why theyre so effective.

Stop Wanting The Big Win

It would be nice to win the lottery, write a bestselling book, lose a huge amount of weight, travel to
every country in the world, or [ ll in the blank]. But wanting these big wins is detrimental to achieving

them. Change your desire to small winssaving an extra $5 a day, writing 100 words a day, exercising a
little bit every day, or planning a single trip. When you pursue small, consistent victories, they become

bigger victories. Heres what small, consistent victories have done for me

One push-up a day = best shape of my life

Writing 50 words a day = writing 4x as much, which resulted inan Amazon bestselling book
and rapidly growing Deep Existence traf c & subscribers

Reading 2 pages per day = reading 10x as much as before (I didnt read much before, haha)

Each of those small goals gets me started. Theyre recurring sparks that allow me to take advantage of
momentum (i.e. Lifes Law Of Motion), and Ill most often continue in the right direction. These small
requirements also prevent me from entering into ruts, which were commonplace before. Over time,
the momentum effect from individual small actions accumulates into a larger wave of momentum even
greater than the sum of its parts. And when these begin to form into habits, thats when you become
unstoppable. A good habit automatically starts you out on the right path. Its ideal.

If youve been reading Deep Existence very long, you may have noticed a few months ago that I began
posting more frequently and with greater depth (such as myultimate guides). While doing this on Deep
Existence, I was writing a book, writing lengthy Tuesday messages, and guest posting on another blog
at least once a week. All of these changes happened at once, which is where the 4x gure comes in.
Between reading and writing, mini habits have easily quintupled my productivity and progress in life.

Small Steps Are Precise, Not Weak

This idea that we should have impressive goals is widespread.The stigma with small goals is that
theyre a sign of weaknessits a hard notion to shake even when you know the truth. The (incorrect)
assumption that causes this stigma is that a person sets goals at or near his or her maximum ability. If
you believe this, youll set big goals because you want to be able to reach them.

When you aim to do one push-up a day, you might feel inadequate against someone who tells you they
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are going to do 100 push-ups per day. But when it comes to actually doing the work, who do you think
is more likely to feel inadequate
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their target every time?

It doesnt matter what your intention sounds likeit only matters how your intention affects your
results.

The information is out there. Consistency trumps all because habits are formed by it, and they are the

most important facet of every persons life (habits are an estimated 45% of all human behavior). So a
strategy that empowers you to act consistently no matter how you feel is going to work well.

As the subhead of this section is titled, small steps are precise. People who use small steps understand

resistance, limited willpower, and know that all big accomplishments have a rst step. The guy who
does 100 push-ups has to start with one push-up.When you take away the burden of action that
comes from lofty goals, you can move ahead easily. I hesitate to say its easy, but Id be lying if I said it
wasnt easy for me. Writing 50 words a dayis easy, and the impact its had on me is absolutely massive.

Youll see people who aim to write 2,000 words per day and hit that target every time. Thats great.
Theyve built the discipline and willpower to do it. But if youre just starting out at something, dont try
to copy successful people who have been doing it longer than you. Their brain is wired to succeed at what
they do, and yours will need to be trained to reach that level of consistency and production.

Small steps arent a fad. They arent a gimmick. They can work for every person and theyre the key to
changing your life.

If you want to go deeper into the world of small steps and how they can enable you to develop
powerful habits to last a lifetime (again, this is not hypemine have been going strong for months,
which is unprecedented for me), make the best investment of your life and read Mini Habits. It has the
science to make everything in this article even more profound (and it currently has all 5 star reviews!).

Whether you use neuroscience, logic, or experience as your basis, all signs point to small steps being
the most effective strategy for taking action, and doing it consistently.

photos bymikebaird,andrew.napier,goldberg
 Click Here to Read the First Chapter of Mini Habits (FREE)

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About the Author
I'm lazy, but you can call me Stephen. When you're as lazy as I am, you need

superior strategies to live well. My strategies are so effective that I'm productive
every single day. As the world tries to gure out how to always stay motivated, I

create strategies that don't require it.

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Copyright 2017 Stephen Guise, Selective Entertainment LLC