I’m all about personal improvement and habits are an amazing method for transforming yourself. They are the building blocks (whether negative or positive) of your daily life, influencing who you are and what you want to achieve.

By cultivating good habits and ending bad ones, you gain control over your personal growth and lay the foundation for lasting change in your life. However, in your enthusiastic quest for a better you, you can be tempted to push yourself too far.

Many people start with the best intentions only to find that they get stuck along the way, feel frustrated with the process, and may give up on their habit-building journey. There have been times when I have been in that situation and it makes you feel dejected because the hope you initially started with gets depleted. Yet, don’t think that it’s “Game Over”. Consider what went wrong and how you can make the adjustments needed to get you back in the game.

In this post, we will examine five common mistakes people make that derail their habit-building efforts and offer solutions to help you stay on track toward your goals.

1. Starting too big

Ambition is great, but it can cause anxiety if you decide to take on more than you can handle. For example, you may want to start many new hobbies all at once without really understanding how much time commitment it will require.

The issue with starting too big is that it can lead to burnout and feelings of being overwhelmed (and the ensuing stress that creates). Through sheer mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion, you may choose to quit your habit(s). Then, the changes you envisioned for yourself and your life don’t eventuate. That’s a tragedy.

The solution is to take tiny steps via micro-habits. For example, if you want to exercise more, introduce a 5 – 10 minute workout into your day rather than a 1-hour session. You can gradually increase the frequency and intensity of the habit when you feel that the initial stage is a firm fixture in your life.

2. Relying solely on motivation

I have written about how motivation is a finicky thing that ebbs and flows. Trusting it to help you maintain a habit won’t serve you well in terms of long-term consistency. There are days when I just can’t be stuffed doing anything or I postpone daunting tasks that I need to tackle.

Having relocated to another country in which English is the second language, I was determined to learn the native tongue. My motivation was high and I knew that it would benefit me greatly if I took the time to study the language. However, there is a relative who can translate for me and the natives of the country told me how hard the language is to learn. My initial enthusiasm began to wane and now I do a smattering of study when I have the motivation (which is like an elusive will-o’-the-whisp for me). This is a glaring example of how relying on motivation to help you maintain a habit fails.

If you also are fighting against your motivation levels, the key is to put systems in place that make it easier to stick to the habit. For instance, I have a couple of apps on my tablet that help me with my language studies.

Also, don’t wait until you feel ready, because those moments are fleeting. What you have to do is focus on self-discipline. Make yourself perform the habit even when you aren’t in the mood. It’s all about consistency.

Another tip is to use environmental triggers to spur you into action. For example, if you want to go for a run after work, then have your outfit ready to change when you get home. Keep a visual cue next to them to remind you of the reason you decided to engage in the habit. Again, this is where having apps on my tablet helps. Each time I use it I am nudged into doing some study.

3. Lack of specifics

Starting a new habit or wanting to put an end to a current one all stems from some goal that you want to pursue. Basing your plan around an ambiguous statement such as “I want to eat healthier” leads to a lack of clarity and commitment. Though you may mean well, it’s a half-hearted approach that is doomed to fail from the outset.

I was stuck in a dark emotional place in my life for years. It was something that I wanted to break out of and tried a number of things that didn’t work. What I was seeking was peace and self-acceptance. Through a counseling session, I stumbled across the concept of mindfulness. That is what I needed to fix myself. Mindfulness became a habit that I decided to pursue to help me reach my goal of inner peace.

I had to be specific about what I had to do. I know I had a solution that could work for me. I had to instill mindfulness practice into my life. A vague approach of “I will do a meditation throughout the week.” wouldn’t give me the level of commitment that I knew would be required. So I got into detail: “ At night I’ll do a 10 to 15-minute meditation every second day.”

That was a resolution I made over a decade ago and now mindfulness is an integral part of my daily life.

To reiterate the point: you need to be exact about why you want to start a habit and how you will make it a daily practice.

4. Neglecting accountability

I am somewhat of an independent spirit and, because of that, there have been a lot of goals and dreams that fell to the wayside due to a lack of being accountable to someone. It’s so easy to chuck in the towel when there is no one you have to answer to. That can be a major issue when starting new habits or trying to prune out unwanted ones.

To help keep you responsible for staying on track with your habits consider using an app such as Habit Tracker or Habitify. If being self-accountable is hard for you, then ask a friend or family member to act as your support. Joining a group based on your goal is another option.

When I wanted to improve my writing and increase my social circle (two habits that I knew needed outside support), I joined a local writing group that met several times a month. That kept me accountable for churning out stories every week and I made new friends.

No matter how stubborn you are, you always need at least one person in your life that keeps you honest.

5. Focusing only on outcomes

Here is another mistake that many make when building habits. The problem is that being too focused on the outcome can cause you to ignore the process. Having clear objectives is important, but an overemphasis on the final goal can lead to frustration and discouragement. These feelings can be exacerbated when the result is taking longer than anticipated to manifest.

The issue lies with the fact that your focus is on external rewards rather than internal growth. That is what feeds impatience and your wanting to quit when progress is slow or haphazard.

What is needed is process-oriented thinking. Shift your attention to the actions that will lead you to successfully adopt a new habit. Remain motivated by celebrating the small wins and the consistency you show in pursuing your goal.

Also, tie your new routine to a part of your identity. People often say “I can’t help it, it’s just the way I am!” Their habit has coalesced with their personality so much that it used to define them.  You can use this to your advantage. For example, instead of telling yourself “I want to save money” reframe this to be “I am careful with my spending.”

Here is a personal account of how I was focused on the objective rather than the process. Over the past year, I wanted to lose weight, yet the scale kept bouncing around between me losing 6 pounds and gaining the same number. My focus had been on my goal weight which required me to shed 28 pounds, but the process of adjusting my diet wasn’t something I zeroed in on. My attention was on the outcome but the growth process was completely ignored. The fact that my weight was jumping back and forth rather than consistently dropping did have me becoming annoyed at the lack of progress.

Suffice it to say I learned from that and did what I needed to do: changing my diet and doing a little bit more exercise.  Now I am successfully losing weight. My celebration is a “cheat day” in which I indulge in forbidden foods that I shun during the week!

Through devotion to the process and embracing the small wins along the way, you’ll find that the objective will naturally flow as a byproduct of your sustained effort.

Avoid the mistakes

Beginning new habits and putting old ones to bed does take work. If you have found that it’s something you haven’t mastered, it could be due to one of the mistakes we looked at in this article. I’ll be the first to stick up my hand and confess to making a few of those boo-boos in my transformation.

Look back at your own situation and see which errors you have made. It could be an overcommitment, feeling you can do things on your own without having to answer to anyone, or maybe you don’t have a clearly defined strategy that keeps you on track.

By tweaking your system so that it is more streamlined (i.e. doesn’t have any of the mistakes I touched upon), you are increasing your efficiency and boosting your chance of success. With that, I want to wish you all the best for your future!

– Brian Simms