Tired of setting big goals on Monday and giving up by Wednesday? Have you wondered how to change your life in a way that will last? In this post, you’ll learn why goals fail—and why building tiny habits and simple systems is the key to real, lasting change. We’ll break down how to start tiny, create 1% improvements, shape your environment, and build habits that actually stick, even if you’ve tried and failed before.
Why Setting Big Goals Doesn’t Actually Change Your Life
Setting a big, new goal feels great, right?
“I’m going to get in shape.”
“I’m going to stop yelling at my kids.”
“This is the week I start to be happier.”
If you’ve ever said “I’m going to change my whole life on Monday,” and then Monday comes and you’re exhausted and your kids are melting down—you know what I’m talking about.
You give up. And that fire in your belly gets extinguished by a bowl of Captain Crunch.
But don’t pull out the cereal yet because I’m going to share the system I use to create lasting change.
It won’t fix everything by Monday, but it will actually work over the long run. And eventually you’ll be at a place in the not-too-distant future where you can feel really good about who you’ve become.
Why One Goal Is Actually Dozens of Changes
Let’s look at a goal like “I’m going to be happier.”
Seems simple enough, right? It feels like one marble. Small. Manageable. You think, “Yeah, I can carry that around. Just remember to be happy.”
But let’s look closer. Even a single goal like “I’m going to be happier” or “I’m going to stop yelling at my kids” is actually a massive change because it requires me to respond differently to hundreds of situations a day that I don’t have a new habit for. I can think of a few dozen skills, from handling disappointment, to letting go of a victim mindset, to noticing the positive, and dealing with anger.
Here’s 10 off the top of my head:
- Handling disappointment
- Replacing victim mentality (I’ll explore this one)
- Taking things personally
- Living your values
- Dealing with anger
- Play and relaxation time
- Managing work stress
- Prioritizing social time
- Managing physical health
- Noticing the positive
So now I’ve got to hang on to happiness in all these situations, and it’s starting to feel a bit desperate, but maybe I can pull it off.
Take just one of those skills — like replacing a victim mentality with a sense of personal agency. On paper, that feels like one thing. But in reality, it’s a whole handful of responses to dozens of situations like dealing with a rude customer, managing my commute, or balancing my budget. And it requires a few dozen skills from re-writing childhood trauma stories to practicing healthy boundaries.
So if your “be happier” goal includes ten areas of change, and each of those areas has ten-plus habits, suddenly you’re trying to juggle 100–150 marbles — new behaviors you don’t have yet.
And what happens when you try to hold a hundred marbles in your hands? We all lose our marbles. It can feel impossible to change.
Not because you’re lazy. Not because you’re weak. Humans simply can’t make that many changes at once. You don’t need to try harder — you need a system that can hold change over time.
Real and lasting change truly happens when you build a system to implement tiny changes each month. It’s way more effective than a resolution.
Here’s how to change your life.
Change Your Life With 1% Improvements
The key is to pick only 1-2 tiny changes to make per month. I’m serious about this.
Jim Collins said, “If you have more than 3 priorities, you have none”.
Your main priority is 1-2 new tiny habits — and your third priority is simply maintaining your real-life responsibilities like work, family, and sleep.
Here’s why tiny works:
- It feels safe → your nervous system won’t sabotage you
- It builds confidence → “Hey, I did that!”
- It gives your brain repetition — the ingredient of every lasting habit
One little repetition doesn’t change much — at first. But repeated daily? Something powerful begins to shift.
This is exactly how the British cycling team went from embarrassing to elite. This is my favorite story from Atomic Habits by James Clear. For decades, the team tried pushing harder — harder training, harder goals. Nothing changed.
Then they hired coach Dave Brailsford, who focused on 1% improvements:
- Better bike seats
- Improved handwashing,
- Optimized sleep
- White paint inside the bike van so they could spot dust or missing parts
- Better nutrition
Each change alone was almost imperceivable. But when they added up? Within a few years they dominated the Tour de France, then the Olympics.
Tiny change isn’t sexy.
But it’s what actually works.
So for example, Ryan and I have a goal to make our home happier. What are we actually doing? This month Ryan is treating his acid reflux, and I have a reminder on my phone to wrestle with the kids every night.
If you want to improve your mental health (a big complicated goal), here are some examples of tiny habits that will add up to do that:
- Do a check up with your doctor and start taking a multivitamin daily
- Do light therapy 10 minutes each morning
- Watch one video from the Emotion Processing course per day for a month it’s part of our membership
- Meditate once a day
- Go for a 2 minute walk each day
- Go to bed 20 minutes earlier
- Practice gratitude 3 minutes a day
Tiny habits create momentum. They add up over time and can truly create massive change.
How to Build a System to Achieve Your Goals
So, how do you build a system to achieve your goals? The first step is
1. Make it tiny
You need a specific concrete behavior that you’re going to do; not something you’re not going to do. Make sure it’s a positive behavior.
Here are the next 4 steps to building your system.
2. Make it easy
Environment shapes behavior far more than willpower does. Make good habits the path of least resistance and bad habits harder to access. Or to put it another way, you want to make bad habits hard and good habits easier.
So for example if you want to decrease your screen time, you could delete Instagram off your phone and use it on your computer. Or add an annoying time-blocker app to your phone. The Atomic Habits guy had his assistant change his social media passwords each week and she wouldn’t tell him the password until Friday.
Or, do you want to stop feeling like a victim? Write down the most common things you say in a victim mindset–and what you’d replace them with. Ask your therapist, partner, coworkers or friend to point it out every time you say them.
Make it hard to do the wrong thing, make it easier to do the new habit.
This isn’t about moral strength. Trying to eat better is whiteknuckling. Building a meal plan and setting up recurring grocery deliveries is a system that you don’t have to think about. Systems are about shaping an environment that nudges you toward the person you want to become.
3. Stack it
Pair your new habit with a task you already do.
I used to lose my keys like 3 times a day, it drove Ryan crazy. So he put a hook by the door for me. Now, I walk through the door and put my keys on the hook and now I only lose my keys like once a week. That’s progress!
Here are other examples of habit stacking that will change your life over time:
- After closing your laptop, stretch for 1 minute.
- Take your meds when you brush your teeth.
- Do a Duolingo lesson when you’re doing bathroom business.
In our happiness goal, one habit you could stack is when you walk through a doorway say aloud, “I am the master of my fate”. Or when you floss your teeth at night, look in the mirror and say three wins you had that day.
4. Make it visual
Put your goal in front of your eyes. If you have to remember to look up what your habit is, that’s an extra barrier. So make it visual.
- Want to play guitar more? Stick your guitar in your living room and tape your remote to it.
- Put your tracker calendar on paper, huge, somewhere you’ll see it every day.
- Put your new habit on your phone lock screen.
- Write it on your hand.
- Put a mantra on your mirror.
Use Alexa, a friend, your phone, or Post-it Notes to automate your reminders. Just don’t set so many reminders that you start ignoring them.
5. Make it rewarding
Dopamine is actually fueled by what we do after taking action. We repeat what feels rewarding. So celebrate your wins, congratulate yourself out loud. Your brain is going to respond better to something physical than something virtual. Here are some ideas:
- Make a big calendar and add a huge red check when you do your habit.
- Add a marble to a jar.
- Pair the behavior with something you look forward to.
- Write down every time you took an empowered action.
In a nutshell: tiny celebration → tiny dopamine boost → habit strengthened.
When you build a system with these 5 keys, it makes it easier and easier to become the person you want to be.
3 Mindsets to Overcome Setbacks with Resolutions
Let’s be real. Even with a great system, some days will be rough. Let’s talk about 3 mindsets that will help you stay the course.
Mindset 1: Trust the Process to Change Your Life
You’re not going to get healthy or magically feel happy by Monday. But in a few weeks you can get really good at catching yourself thinking like a victim. By the end of the month, you might even be replacing “This always happens to me” with asking “What can I do about this?”
In six weeks you’ll notice that you don’t really do the victim thing any more, and by three months the external rewards are going to show up. You might have better relationships, or a promotion and a blossoming sense of empowerment. You’re going to start feeling happier.
One to two small changes per month can lead to massive transformations over time. Stick with your system long enough to see yourself transform into someone you’re proud of.
Mindset 2: Good is Better Than Perfect when Building a New System
What do you do when you miss one day? Aim for 80%, not 100%. Here’s my example with Duolingo. Right now I’ve got a 487-day streak with about 40 missed days in there–haha! Missing once is life. Missing twice is a new pattern. So just try to bounce back and aim for 80%.
Mindset 3: Be a Scientist with Your Goals
Don’t allow yourself to think of yourself as a failure. Think of life as a grand experiment where you’re testing things until you find the system that works for you.
You can’t white knuckle lasting change. If you’ve tried something and failed to find a solution, research alternatives. Therapists tend to have a lot of skills that you haven’t tried yet. Maybe you’ve tried restrictive diets over and over. Have you tried intuitive eating? It’s a more sustainable approach that most people haven’t heard of. If something doesn’t work out don’t shame yourself. Get curious, experiment with new approaches and ask for help to build new tools.
Start Small, Build a System, Change Your Life
You don’t need more willpower, and you don’t need to be a different person by Monday. You can just make 1-2 tiny changes per month. Not a handful of marbles spilling everywhere. You’re going to use a metaphorical jar, a system that supports you gradually becoming the person you’re proud of.
Start with one tiny change. One small system. And watch how each repetition quietly, steadily transforms your life.
You’ve got this. And your future self is already cheering you on.
And speaking of systems, if you want to build a system to learn how to process your emotions, I’ve just launched a new challenge, the Emotion Processing Challenge. If you sign up for my membership, you can sign up for this challenge where every day for 31 days you’ll get an email with one skill that can powerfully change how you manage your emotions. Here’s the link to learn more.
How to Process Emotions 31-day Challenge
