I just finished reading my 86th book of the year. Trust me: it even sounds crazy when I say it, and I’m the one who did it! This is a new record for me, and it’s only October 23rd today, leaving me with another couple months to finish up my goal of 100 for the year.

I’ve been reflecting on this goal a lot lately. It’s the kind of thing that sounds really impressive to others, but doesn’t really feel like much when I’m doing it. Reading is my favourite thing to do, so I’d be doing it voraciously whether I’d set a goal to or not. I enjoy reading. It’s super fun to me. It feels like a treat to settle in with a good book and get lost in a story. It’s not like I’m force-feeding myself books! So why set a goal?

Well, it’s very telling that the year I set the highest reading goal for myself is the year I’ve read the most books. This sounds very obvious, but it’s an important reminder for me that it’s all relative. If I set my sights higher, my results will naturally be higher. When my benchmark for success changes, I subconsciously recalibrate my behaviour and beliefs to match.

We’ve all heard that quote: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” A little cheesy maybe, but I think it’s telling us something important on a practical level. It’s useful to set your sights as high as possible. Even if you come woefully short, you’ll still probably have made more progress than you would have if your goals had been smaller.

In general I’m a fan of the baby steps approach, but I’ve also experienced how setting gigantic goals shifts your internal compass. It catapults you through a bunch of the limiting beliefs & resistance because you don’t have as much time to get stuck in it. It’s like doing a work sprint: when you raise the stakes and compress the time, suddenly you’re more decisive and efficient. 

We’re still several weeks away from New Year’s Resolutions time, but I’ll be keeping this in mind when I plan out 2020. As of now, the idea of reading more than 100 books seems out of reach, but maybe that’s the point.

As I mentioned, last weekend I read James Clear’s Atomic Habits. In it, he expands on his concept of “identity-based habits”, which I love and have talked about on the podcast here. The idea is that the easiest & most effective way to form a good habit or ditch a bad one is to form a new identity around that habit. Each time you perform the habit, you are casting a vote for the person you want to be. 

I love this message and have seen shifts in my own life since understanding this particular path to change. And I think it’s important to not gloss over the central point he’s making, that so many others have made before him: identities can change. WE can change. Our personalities, our beliefs, and our skills are all mutable. They are not permanent aspects of who we are as human beings. 

Sometimes we may understand the concept of a “growth mindset” intellectually. We might think “yeah, yeah, I believe I can grow and change.” We might know cognitively that people who have a growth mindset tend to have better outcomes than those with a fixed mindset. All of this may be true, and yet most of us are still holding tightly to ideas about ourselves that actually could change, if we were willing to confront them.

We have a tendency to think of most aspects of ourselves as fixed. Some examples:

• I’m bad at math
• I’m a terrible singer
• I hate exercise
• I’m shy around new people

And while all of these things might even be objectively true in this particular moment, and while you might be able to find me MOUNTAINS of evidence for why you’re absolutely right about each and every one of those beliefs/”facts” about yourself, I think you’re missing the point completely. That might be your identity now, but identities change. 

I know this because I have seen it in my own life many a time. I never used to be “someone who” flossed, meditated, went for near-daily walks, wrote frequent blog posts, had a podcast, had consulting clients, worked from Inbox Zero. But now I am! All those identities and more have changed for me, which is helpful proof when I feel stuck in an old pattern that seems permanent. Nothing is permanent & identities can change. You change them by casting new votes with your habits every single day.

Today I am employing a writing tip I heard long ago, from a variety of sources: If you want to write, don’t give yourself other options. Tell yourself that you can sit at your computer or pad of paper for as long as you want, and you don’t have to write, but you don’t get to do anything else either during your “writing time”. You can’t throw in a load of laundry or check your email or text your friends. Your choices are: stare at a blank screen/page, or write.

Eventually, you’ll start writing, because of course it’s way more boring to just sit there than it is to entertain yourself through sentences you create and thoughts you put into words. In fact, this morning I was procrastinating like crazy. I kept checking my Google Calendar and staring off into space, twiddling my thumbs and trying to make excuses to get out of it.

When I remembered this advice, I immediately closed my other browser tabs and put my phone across the room and said to myself: “you’re sitting here until it’s done or you run out of time, one way or another.” And wouldn’t you know it that within seconds I had started typing?

Our tolerance for boredom is very low. And while that’s probably maladaptive in general, it’s quite a helpful tool when you’re trying to make yourself stick to your good habits and get things done. When we think we have options, we’ll take them. Any excuse suddenly becomes a good one.

When we have fewer options, we’ll always choose the lesser of the evils. Just make it so the lesser of the evils is the behaviour you actually want to do, and you’ll find yourself doing it far more often than not.

Maybe you need to hear this too: you are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to pause, re-assess, and choose a new direction. You don’t have to stick to something that’s not working, and you don’t have to beat yourself up for trying something new.

Gretchen Rubin talks about Upholders experiencing the phenomenon of “tightening”, which is the idea that once an expectation is established, people of this tendency find it very difficult to loosen their standards or change course. And while I’m not an Upholder (I’m a Questioner to my core!), I definitely experience this same phenomenon.

Like I shared yesterday, I have a tendency to be a little bit all-or-nothing in  my thinking and behaviour. It’s hard for me to not feel like a failure if I don’t meet my habits and goals perfectly. And if I decide something isn’t working so well for me anymore, it’s hard to not just chalk that up as me “giving up” or “being lazy”. I question my motives and worry that I’m just caving in to resistance. 

So today my message to myself is: it’s okay to change your mind. Not every habit or behaviour is going to work for you! If it’s not working, you can pivot. If it’s not bringing you joy or better results, you can stop. That’s not you failing. It’s you making an informed choice with the information you have available to you. The end.

PS. This might mean that I stop trying to blog on weekends and go back to journaling those days instead. It also might mean that I take “zero-in time” out of my Super Seven, since it doesn’t seem to be doing much for me. Experimentation is good! Having a light touch is even better. :)