Why Your Habits Are Your Identity (And the 3 Steps That Change Them)
Look at what you did in the first ten minutes after you woke up this morning. You did not decide most of it. That is the part about habits nobody tells you, and it is why willpower keeps letting you down. In this episode I break down the three moves that actually change a habit, and the last one is the only one that makes it stick.
I spent eight years as a fitness and wellness professional teaching people how to build habits, and then I spent the next chunk of my career as a chief people officer watching brilliant people stay stuck in the exact same spot for years. The difference was never intelligence and it was never motivation. It was the size of the first step, and whether they had any idea who they were trying to become.
Move one is start small, and that is not a soft suggestion, it is a math problem. Skip Starbucks four days a week and you save $20, which is $80 a month and almost a thousand dollars a year. Ten minutes of movement in the morning beats the hour of cardio you will quit by Wednesday. Your brain is hunting for a reward, and savings accounts and fitness do not pay out fast, so you have to hand it small wins it can actually feel.
Here is the permission slip. Phillippa Lally and her team at University College London followed 96 people building one new daily behavior and found it took 66 days on average before the habit became automatic, with a range running from 18 days all the way out to 254. So the 21 day rule you have been beating yourself up over is not real. You are not failing. You are on day 30 of something that takes 66.
Move two is replace, do not remove. Once your brain learns a habit it never forgets the reward, so telling yourself you cannot scroll or cannot pour the wine just makes you a woman who wants it more. Put something in front of it instead. Before I grab my phone, I fold the laundry and unload the dishwasher. Before I open the bottle, I make myself a fancy sparkling water and drink that first. Same cue, new response, zero deprivation.
Move three is the whole ballgame, and it is the becoming. Stop setting the goal and start choosing the identity. There is an audio clip of Michelle Obama saying it about as plainly as it can be said: you want to be an honest person, be an honest person. You want to be a reader, read ten pages. You want to be a saver, wait 24 hours before you buy the thing. Your habits are not something you do. They are the evidence of who you already are. So pick one this week and ask yourself the only question that matters. Is this who I want to be?
TRANSCRIPT:
Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.
Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.
Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Hey, y'all. Thank you for tuning into another stepping stone podcast. Recently, I have been putting a lot of thought into my daily habits, which ones are good ones, which ones are bad ones, what's adding to my life, what is sucking the life out of me, and I wanted to share a little bit about habits with you. So what is a habit?
Erica: According to the dictionary, it is a routine or practice performed regularly, an automatic response to a specific situation. So, basically, it's the tiny things that we do day in, day out that make a huge difference over time. Now someone who was once a fitness and wellness professional, I have talked and taught a lot about habits. And now as a chief people officer and an executive coach, I'm able to observe how the small daily actions either lead to massive positive changes over time, or I observe that amazingly intelligent person remains stuck in their own sticky floor until they get a hold of these small daily actions. Over time, I personally have developed a few key tricks that have helped me create positive change and help me eliminate the habits that no longer serve me, All of which are leading to those positive outcomes, and I wanna share with them with you so that you can test them out and hopefully make them stick.
Erica: So the first step in creating a positive habit is starting small. For example, if you're looking to save more money, don't start by throwing half your paycheck away into savings each month. It's just not attainable. It's not realistic. You know, you're gonna pave after one or two pay cycles.
Erica: Now that lofty goal of massive savings is just too much to handle at once. The same thing goes if you're trying to lose weight or make a change to your fitness lifestyle. You don't set your alarm clock to this ungodly hour and tell yourself I'm gonna do an hour of cardio, 30 of strength followed by fifteen minutes of everyday stretching. Again, chances are you're gonna make it through one day super motivated, but by day two or three, when you aren't seeing, like, a massive change, you're gonna say, f this, I'm done. Right?
Erica: But when you start small, for example, you tell yourself you're gonna save more money by not going to Starbucks on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. You're gonna save it for a Friday enjoyment treat. You'll have saved $20 that week, and that, of course, adds up to $80 a month and almost a thousand dollars a year. When it comes to fitness, instead of setting this huge monumental goal, tell yourself that you're gonna get in just ten minutes of movement in the morning, and then slowly add on as you go from there. Now why start small?
Erica: And that's because with each action that we take, our brains are looking for a reward. Right? So, like, we are biologically set to look for a reward, to find the easiest way to do something. And when it comes to things like saving money and fitness, those rewards are not instantaneous, obviously. You're not gonna be a millionaire overnight.
Erica: You're not gonna lose 50 pounds overnight. K. It's impossible. But as human beings, we really struggle with the patience required without seeing that reward. But small is attainable.
Erica: And it's much easier to say, like, I'll skip this coffee then and, you know, I have to put away all my extra money to, like, I can walk for ten minutes rather than I have to devote my entire morning to a workout. Then you start to see the positive change. You learn you have more time in the mornings when you brew your coffee at home. Right? You get those extra ten minutes to relax instead of rushing out the door.
Erica: You feel the energy shift after your walk. Those are all small rewards. K. Lean into those positive feelings and outcomes. When you lean into those, you start to crave more.
Erica: Now when it becomes time to get rid of those pesky little bad habits that are ingrained in our brains, that's gonna be challenging in a different way. So our brains actually have learned that a certain behavior sparks a certain reward. Right? Like, scrolling through social media, it entertains us. Or drinking a glass of wine, it numbs it out.
Erica: Right? Numbs out the stressors. Our brains are constantly looking for those rewards. And newsflash, once a habit is learned, the brain always remembers it. Right?
Erica: So you've gotta be really careful that once those, quote, unquote, bad habits, like constantly scrolling through social media and drinking wine every day after work, don't become a big problem because your brain remembers it. K? I personally am a big fan of the mindset of replacing a habit, not ridding yourself of a habit, and it's all mental. So let me explain. When you feel the urge to grab your phone or scroll through Instagram, whether you're trying to beat out boredom, distract yourself, you know, say to yourself, instead of immediately reaching for that phone, I am going to and then insert a different behavior there, right, before I go to my phone for Instagram.
Erica: So for example, before I grab my phone, I'm gonna make sure that I fold all my laundry and unload the dishwasher. K? Or read five pages of a book, whatever it is you wanna do, then you're free to scroll through the gram. Or instead of saying, like, I'm not gonna drink any wine, say, I'm gonna make myself a fancy sparkling water, and I'm gonna drink that first before I break open the bottle. So why?
Erica: How does this help? So over time, your brain actually starts to learn the new pathways that you are putting into place without the feeling of deprivation. You aren't restricting yourself. You're not saying I can't have this wine. I can't scroll through Instagram.
Erica: You are slowly changing the pathways of the brain to not start that immediate scroll through social media and not having this immediate pour of wine after a stressful day. And instead, you're re reaching for something new. Now over time, this does work. But the last piece of the habit puzzle, and it is the largest piece of the habit puzzle, it is all about the becoming. This is where the work begins.
Erica: You need to look past any goal that you have set for yourself, such as losing a 100 pounds. Right? And you need to decide who do I wanna be. Do I wanna be someone who struggles to get around, who is restricted by my weight, or do I wanna be a healthy person that can get up and down from the floor without any help? The person who can chase after my kids without losing my breath.
Erica: Do I wanna be someone who lives paycheck to paycheck? Or do I wanna be someone who has a safety net of savings to where I could walk away from a toxic job without something else lined up if I wanted to? To be that type of person, you must become that person. Now there's an audio clip of Michelle Obama, and she says, you wanna be an honest person? Be an honest person.
Erica: Right? It is that simple. You wanna be a fit person? You gotta start doing fit things. What do I mean by that?
Erica: Park your car at the opposite end of the parking lot to get in a few extra steps. Take the stairs instead of taking the elevator. You wanna be a financially responsible person? Be a financially responsible person. Wait to buy that outfit until it goes on sale.
Erica: Right? If something's over a $100, you're gonna wait twenty four hours before you make a decision to purchase it. Why? Because your habits are who you are. They are your identity.
Erica: You need to know who you want to be. You need to know who you want to represent. And on a deeper level, you need to know what your core values are, which is gonna drive your actions, which drive your habits, which dictate the type of person you are. It is as simple and as hard as this. Do you wanna be a saver?
Erica: Be a saver. Wanna be a runner? Go for a run. You wanna be a reader? Read.
Erica: The most effective way to establish good habits and to change the bad ones is to focus on the becoming You have to ask yourself Is this who I want to be? Is this what I want to represent? And then do the work Start small. Focus on the replacement of the habits, not the ridding of the habits. And reinforce the becoming.
Erica: Read 10 pages every day. You're a reader. If you're like me, host a podcast every week, you're a podcaster. Do something physical every day. You are a health minded individual.
Erica: Your habits are ultimately who you become. When you know who you wanna become, you can change your habits. Your identity is not stuck in stone. You do have the power to make the change. You have the ownership to be the change.
Erica: So if you're not happy and you want to make some changes, I implore you to get out there and do it right. These habits that you make every day. And then the bad habits that you break every day. Those are the habits that take you from where you are now to where you want to go next. So I wanna challenge you to think about what is one of the habits that you either wanna add to your routine every day, or what is something that you need to try to replace?
Erica: Shoot me a DM. Shoot me a message. I wanna know. I wanna hear from you. I will be your cheerleader in the corner rooting you on, but we can all do it.
Erica: Thanks, guys. Have a good one.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Ready to stop doing it alone and get into rooms of power? Join HER Collective, Erica's community for ambitious women in corporate America.
- Never miss an episode of Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors.
- Get Erica's book Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors and start clearing your own.
- Michelle Obama, whose line on becoming an honest person Erica quotes in this episode.
- The Phillippa Lally habit formation study, University College London, on the 66 day average.
- Atomic Habits by James Clear, the book behind the identity based habit framework.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
How long does it really take to build a new habit?
Not 21 days. Phillippa Lally's research at University College London followed 96 people building one new daily behavior and found the average was 66 days, with some habits locking in at 18 days and others taking 254. Erica's point is that the number matters far less than the size of the step. Start small enough that you cannot talk yourself out of it on day three.
Is it better to break a bad habit or replace it?
Replace it. Once your brain has learned that a behavior delivers a reward, it never fully forgets, so pure restriction sets you up to fail. Put a new behavior in front of the old one instead. Fold the laundry before you scroll. Pour the sparkling water before you pour the wine. You keep the cue and change the response, which means you never feel deprived.
What is a sticky floor?
A sticky floor is Erica Anderson Rooney's term for the limiting belief or toxic behavior that keeps you stuck. A glass ceiling is something the system does to you. A sticky floor is coming from inside your own head. A daily habit you stopped questioning years ago is one of the most common sticky floors there is, because it never feels like a decision.
MORE FROM ME
Follow me on Instagram @ericaandersonrooney and @joinhercollective
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Hi, I'm Erica!
In the last 15 years, I climbed to Chief People Officer, 6x'd my income, walked away from a culture that stopped matching my values, wrote two books, and built HER Collective to help thousands of women rise to power and lead in the age of AI. I've learned a thing or two about smashing ceilings and closing gaps, and Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors is where I open the playbook, the receipts, and the real stories to share it all with you.
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