Why Won't My Habits Stick?

Written by Liv

It’s the start of a new week and you’re ready to kick off with a fresh list of habits. Enthusiastic and determined, you know you’ll be on a habit streak within days. Woohoo - you’ve got this!

Until… something happens. Those habits aren’t sticking, and it’s hard to pick your motivation and self-encouragement back up. 

Sound familiar? As you’re about to discover, you’re not alone!

In part two of our Habit Series, we're exploring why our best intentions don’t always translate into lasting change. Here we look at 6 common barriers, the reasons behind these challenges, and the simple strategies you need to set yourself up for habit success. Ready to put your habits back on a pedestal? Let’s dive in.

6 Reasons Your Habits Don't Stick

1. Why are you doing this habit in the first place?
2. Are you jumping ahead to your end goal?
3. Is your habit specific enough?
4. Do you need to chunk your habit down?
5. Are you attempting too many habits at once?
6. Has life gotten in the way?

1. Why are you doing this habit in the first place?

When it comes to choosing your habits, you might be like me. It’s a new month and you’re in the self-improvement zone - all guns blazing and you're ready to get started with a fresh list of ‘good’ habits.

So, you start jotting them down: ‘Journal for 10 minutes a day’, ‘Wake up at 6am’, ‘Do 4 x 15 minute workouts each week’. And it feels soooo good to have your list to tick off each day. Before long though, your initial excitement begins to dwindle, and you lose the motivation to keep up with these daily routines.

Why? Most often it’s because you’ve committed to habits without knowing why you’ve chosen them.

So, how do you fix this? As we discussed in part one of this Habit Series, rather than jumping into your habits straightaway - start by zooming out.

💡 ACTION STEP

Ask yourself:

• Why am I doing this habit?
• Is it aligned with an area of life that’s most important to me right now?
• Am I clear on my bigger picture goals of who I’m wanting to become or what I’m wanting to achieve?

 📚 If you have an Intrinsic Diary Planner, take time to workshop the ‘Create Your Fate’ section, which will help you answer these questions.

2. Are you jumping ahead to your end goal?

We love dreaming big and setting goals here at Intrinsic. Goals and dreams give you purpose, and inspire you to move towards what makes your soul feel most alive.

The thing about goals though, is that we can sometimes focus too tightly on the end result. We can easily get caught up and want to jump past the incremental habits and routines that will get us there.

💡 ACTION STEP

While it’s important to zoom out and understand your ‘why’, it’s just as integral to zoom in. To focus on simply showing up and consistently doing the habit you can do now.

If you find yourself continually breaking a habit aligned to a goal of yours, ask yourself:

• Am I focusing too intently on the end destination?

If so, now’s the time to consciously tweak your mindset. Keep the goal, but switch your attention to forming and building upon the small, positive habits that will help make the long-lasting change.

💭 To give you a personal example...

After having my first child I experienced pelvic floor problems. As someone who has always been quite active, I found my sudden inability to run (or slow jog, even) pretty disheartening. I started to routinely take up pelvic floor strengthening programs, which I would stick to for a month or so, but then I’d fall out of swing with the habit. I’d pick it back up again a few months later, but then falter again.

Why? I was frustrated that I wasn't reaching my end goal - of being able to run like I used to - quickly enough.

I’ve since made a conscious effort to focus on the small daily habits I can make over the long run (excuse the pun!). My goal still exists, but it’s the consistency of carrying out my strengthening habit that now houses my focus. And since having this mindset, I’ve carried out a longer habit streak!

3. Is your habit specific enough?

If your habits are too general, we end up creating mental blocks to getting them done. To help make habits stick, we need to make them specific - so it's clear and easy to know when we have done them. 

When I flick back through the Habit Tracker in my Intrinsic Diary, I notice that the weeks where I haven’t consistently ticked off my habits are the weeks when I’ve been too vague.

When I just wrote the word ‘Exercise’ for several weeks in a row, I had very few tick boxes checked. This rookie error just increased my mental load (and mental blockers) each day: But how long should I exercise for? What kind of exercise? Is this daily exercise, or 3x per week? I exercised for 20 minutes on Day 1 but only 5 minutes on Day 2, so have I already failed in my habit? Now I make sure I'm specific!

While you may have goals to ‘be healthier’, ‘save more money’ or ‘spend more time doing what brings you joy’, you’ll want to make sure the habits you put in place to support those goals are super specific.

For example:

• Instead of ‘Drink more water’ →  Switch this to ‘Drink 2 litres of water every day’.
• Instead of ‘Exercise every day’ →  Switch this to ‘2, 10, or 30 minutes of exercise every Monday, Wednesday and Friday’.
• Instead of ‘Spend less money’ →  Switch this to ‘Put 10% of each pay into a savings account’.
• Instead of ‘Have more me-time’ →  Switch to ‘Read for 10 minutes each evening’. 

💡 ACTION STEP

Look at your current habits and ask yourself:

• Are my habits too vague? If so, rewrite them to be precise and specific.

4. Do you need to chunk your habit down?

Your habits don’t need to be big, challenging or demanding. In fact, they should be the very opposite!

Breaking your habit into one small and easy action provides the best platform from which you can motivate yourself to show up each day. And when I say small, I mean… tiny.

For example, let’s come back to my goal of strengthening my pelvic floor and being able to run like I used to. As part of achieving this goal, I was given a breathing exercise to repeat three times throughout the day. The exercise only goes for three minutes total – theoretically, this should have been simple for me to achieve, right? It only takes up a measly nine minutes of my entire day!

Well, to be completely transparent, I struggled to stick with it!

I’ve since decided to start smaller, setting myself the habit of completing just one breathing exercise each day. It’s easy and achievable. And that’s ok. Once I feel like it’s part of my habitual routine, I’ll build up by implementing a second exercise and eventually a third.

We love to dream big. But in the case of habits? Think small, and then think even smaller.

💡 ACTION STEP

Take a moment to consider a new habit you’re looking to implement.

• Is it a significant change from your current routine?
• Even if this habit seems small, are you able to start even smaller with it, knowing that you have the power to build upon it over time? 
• What does chunking this habit down further look like?

Remember that any habit can always be built and improved upon… but only if the base habit is part of your routine to start with.

5. Are you attempting too many habits at once?

Ok, so you’ve worked out the areas of your life that are most important to you right now, and are clear on your goals. You’ve chosen empowering habits and actions that align with these higher aspirations.

Surely it makes sense then, that you should have no trouble sticking to all these new habits?

Not so fast! Every new habit you bring into your routine takes patience and time to make it stick.

I know all too well how tempting it is to want to create a ‘fresh start’ with a whole bunch of big and motivating new habits. However, to best set yourself up for success, narrow your focus to just one to two habit changes at a time. This limits the amount of resistance you might feel, and gives your mind and body the time to make each individual habit an automatic part of your life.

💡 ACTION STEP

Are there a bunch of new habits that you’re determined to implement in your life? Which one or two can you introduce this week or this month?

6. Has life gotten in the way, through sickness, work, events & other commitments?

This is a big one.

I’m currently writing this at the tail-end of having Covid, and also with my second child due in a few short months. Life has certainly got in the way of some of my habits the last couple of weeks while recovery has taken a priority, and I know only too well that life will again take a new hold on how my daily patterns look in just a few months time.

Let’s unpack this into a few different areas.

If you’re sick, then now is the time to be compassionate with yourself.

Your health is a priority, so if some habits need to be put on hold or adjusted while you recover, then allow yourself that space. That’s not to say that all of your habits need pausing.

💡 ACTION STEP

• Are there any daily actions which you can still commit to?
• Are there any that can be temporarily adjusted to reduce their intensity, time, or effort?
• If you can’t perform a habit, can you instead journal about it each day: write down what you’re most looking forward to about re-starting that habit, how it’s going to make you feel, and how do you see yourself performing the habit?

Moving now to work commitments and busy days.

The kind that just seem to leave no time at all for carrying out your habit. If you’re nodding your head, and know exactly the kind of days I’m talking about, give yourself space to get curious.

💡 ACTION STEP

Ask yourself:

• Are the habits that I’m trying to stick to in misalignment with my current life priorities?
• Do I need to adjust when or how I’m trying to do this habit, or do I need to pare it back?

On the flip side, are ‘busy days’ becoming your new habit by accident? If so, take some time to go deep and reflect:

• Why has the busy-ness of work, jobs and chores taken priority in my life right now?
• Could it be that I am procrastinating from taking action in the areas that bring me closer to my higher self?

There's a whole range of reasons why we can’t stick to our habits. By looking within and asking yourself some of the questions above, you will hopefully begin to uncover your own insights as to what is holding you back and how you can propel yourself forward again.

Remember, habits aren’t a race to the finish line.

Slowly and over time, they are repeated over and over until they become our everyday actions which in turn, lead us to becoming the best version of ourselves.

Embrace the journey: the adjustments, the reflection and the sweet satisfaction of habit streaks.

Liv xx

And p.s. remember...

Every great story begins with showing up on the page - Adèle Basheer

Our yearly Diary, Planner + Guided Journal is filled with pages of life-enhancing tools and strategies to help you on your quest for habit success. Throughout the Diary, you’ll discover what areas of life are most important to you right now, have space to record your goals, and celebrate your habit streaks with a Habit Tracker built into each weekly spread. Sign up to our VIP Waitlist, and be first to know when our 2025 Diary Collection is released!