This used to really infuriate me with my clients when trying to form habits

My clients have always been people with a lot of responsibility — CxOs, Partners, Doctors, Judges, Entrepreneurs.

Back in my personal training days, I would be pulling my hair out trying to get them to create the habits necessary to achieve what they were paying me for.

Their lives were just so unpredictable.

They would get incredible results in 21, 30, even 60-day programmes. But eventually, they would regress back to the mean — back to the shape they were previously in.

That’s when I started exploring neuroscience and quickly discovered where I was going wrong.

Here’s the thing: a habit is formed when a behaviour is adopted by the basal ganglia in the brain — not by simply forcing enough repetitions.

In fact, willpower is the enemy of habit.

The basal ganglia is on the lookout for two things:

• Effectiveness – did this get me more of what I want with relatively little effort compared to the reward?

• Social safety – am I safe while doing it? Am I gaining connection or hierarchy, not losing it?

These might not seem important to you, but they are absolutely crucial to the brain. If you want to form a habit, they must be primary considerations when designing your approach.

From then on, I put these factors front and centre. I looked for micro changes that would have the greatest impact with the least investment — and I made them fit around people’s existing lives.

When each new habit creates real change in the brain, we actually become different people. Which makes us more ready, willing and able to adopt the next habit.

Have you been trying to make huge leaps forward only to slide back to square one?

Maybe this approach is worth a try.