Feeling bad about your habits? Here’s how you can fix it
The first time I met Ana she arrived with a list of promises she’d already broken. “I’ll train six times a week,” she said, eyes full of determination I’d seen many times before. A few weeks later she stopped replying to my messages. A month later she told me she felt worse than before - guilty, tired, and convinced that she simply didn’t have enough willpower.
That story is familiar because it’s true for so many people. We launch into overhaul-mode like astronauts preparing for launch: big plans and a launch day pushed by strong motivation. Then gravity - life, fatigue, meetings, small inconveniences - takes us back down.
What does science say?
What we’ve learned from science and what I teach in the Ragukai system is that habit creation is less like rocket science and more like geology: slow layers, step by step. On average it takes around 66 days for a new behavior to start feeling automatic, but that number hides an important truth - the range is wide, from as little as 18 days to as many as 254. Complexity and consistency matter more than numbers. A simple, repeated action in the same context is what crystallizes into habit, not dramatic bursts of effort.
When I sat down with Ana again, I didn’t ask her to be perfect. I didn’t hand her a six-day-a-week schedule. Instead I asked her to choose one tiny, non-negotiable action she could do without debating. “Two times a week,” I said, “make that the absolute minimum. Put it in your calendar as if it were a client.” She laughed at first, then agreed. The point is: a small action repeated reliably is the seed from which identity grows.
One of the hardest lies we tell ourselves is that motivation is the engine of behavior change. We worship it, chase it, wait for it like a bus that appears only when we’re late. But motivation is fragile. The biggest factor in making something stick is not sheer desire; it’s repetition in the same context until the behavior becomes automatic. That is, you do the thing in the same place, after the same cue, and slowly your brain stops asking whether to do it. It just happens.
So we anchored Ana’s habit to something she already did daily: her morning coffee. Right after she finished her cup, she put on sneakers and walked for ten minutes. That was it. Ten minutes. No pressure to “work out,” no guilt about intensity or results. Just the walk. We tracked it in a simple way - a check on her phone and a two-line entry in the notebook that read: “Walk after coffee - done.” Tracking matters more than people expect. Journaling and short check-ins aren’t useless; they increase adherence because they make the behavior concrete and visible. When you can see the pattern building, you’re less likely to sabotage it with a story about why today is different.
Environment plays a big role in habit formation
We also focused on environment, because environment is stronger than motivation. If willpower were a battery, environment would be the wiring that makes sure the power gets to the motor. You can set an alarm and repeat an affirmation until you’re blue in the face, but if your running shoes are buried in the closet, your post-workout clothes are missing, and your headphones are always in the living room, that tiny series of frictions adds up and becomes an excuse. So Ana put her gym clothes beside her bed the night before. She left a pair of walking shoes by the door. She prepped a small, healthy snack in a container and kept it in the fridge at eye level.
Small environmental cues, perfectly timed, feel like helpers - not obstacles.
Identity work is where most programs fall short. Telling someone to “go to the gym” or “eat better” treats behavior as an isolated event. When change becomes identity, the same actions feel different. Instead of saying “I’ll try to go to the gym,” you begin to say “I’m someone who trains.” That shift - subtle but strong - changes how you interpret choices. If you’re the kind of person who trains, missing a session isn’t simply a failure; it’s an error that you want to correct. Identity beats willpower because it reframes behavior as part of who you are, not something you do when the mood strikes.
We didn’t tell Ana to aim for perfection. On the contrary, I told her the single rule to keep front and center: don’t skip your new habit for two consecutive days. That rule saved her more than once. When life crowded out her schedule and she missed a morning walk, the rule made the next day’s walk sacred. Missing once is not a moral failing; missing twice is where momentum starts to erode. The two-day rule is a simple, practical guardrail that prevents small setbacks from snowballing into abandonment.
Philosophy of Ragukai system
This is where the Ragukai philosophy becomes practical. Habits aren’t sprints; they’re layers you build. At first, the aim is not to sculpt a perfect body or achieve a miracle transformation in a month. The aim is consistency and willingness to repeat tiny actions until they become part of your identity. The Ragukai system is intentionally structured to reward repetition, to make small wins visible, and to create environments that support sustained change. We map out the anchors in your day, like morning rituals or after-meal habits, and attach the behaviors we want to cement to those anchors.
We eliminate friction with practical tools: gym clothing placement, meal prep, habit trackers, quick check-ins. We keep the bar low at first and raise it slowly, letting confidence grow with competence.
One of the most powerful things I watch happen with clients is the moment they stop chasing motivation. It starts with a tiny action done again and again until it no longer feels like an effortful choice. Suddenly, the action is part of the fabric of the day. Ana’s ten-minute post-coffee walk turned into a habit, then into a piece of identity. She began to think of herself as someone who moves daily. That phrase opened a door. Within months she added two short bodyweight sessions a week, simply because her environmental setup made them easy and because missing them felt out of character.
Transformation, in this framework, isn’t just about muscles or the scale. Those external measures are pleasant side effects, but the real change is cognitive: a new way of thinking where actions become automatic and support the life you want. When your morning choices line up with your self-image, you conserve willpower for real hardship and let your environment and identity do the heavy lifting for daily actions. This is why the design of your life - the placement of your shoes, the timing of your cues, the framing of your identity matters more than raw determination.
Key takeaways
You don’t need a dramatic overhaul to create lasting change. Radical changes can work for a season, but they’re hard to sustain because they demand high levels of energy and novelty that most of us can’t produce indefinitely. Small, sustainable steps, on the other hand, are stealthy and stubborn. They bury themselves under your daily habits and eventually push you in a new direction without a dramatic rupture.
To be clear: the science doesn’t hand us a single, neat number that applies to everyone. The 66-day average is helpful because it counters the expectation that habit change is instantaneous, but the 18-to-254-day range is the reality check. Habit formation depends on complexity, context, and, above all, repetition. A ten-minute walk after coffee is simpler and faster to automate than a six-day-a-week weight program, so expect different timelines and be patient with both.
If you want to change or upgrade your habits, there are practical first steps that don’t require heroism.
Choose one tiny non-negotiable action.
Anchor it to something you already do.
Prepare your environment to remove friction.
Track the action in a way that’s visible and simple.
Protect the sequence by never skipping it for two consecutive days.
Speak in identity-first language: “I’m a person who…,” not “I’ll try.”
Over time, layer additional behaviors on top of what’s already settled into your life. That layering is how real transformations occur - quietly, patiently, without headline-grabbing drama.
