Struggling to stick with new habits? The problem isn’t your willpower—it’s that you’re focused on doing instead of being. In Badass Habits, self-help expert Jen Sincero argues that lasting change comes from shifting your identity first, then letting your habits naturally follow from who you’ve become.
Sincero, a life coach and bestselling author of the You Are a Badass series, offers a refreshingly irreverent take on habit formation that flips traditional advice on its head. This guide explores her identity-first approach to building better habits, walks through practical strategies for reshaping your environment and routines, and examines the psychological tools you’ll need to reinvent yourself.
Overview of Badass Habits
If you’re like most of us, you’ve probably tried to change your habits before and failed. You also probably believe those failures happened because you lack willpower. However, self-help expert Jen Sincero says the real problem is that you’re too focused on what you’re doing, rather than who you’re being. In Badass Habits (2020), Sincero argues that building better habits starts by changing how you perceive yourself. She then teaches you how to create the identity—and, in turn, the lifestyle—that you really want.
Sincero is a life coach, motivational speaker, and best-selling author who has spent decades helping people change their lives for the better. She’s best known for her You Are a Badass series (including You Are a Badass at Making Money), which has reached millions of readers worldwide. Her signature approach to self-improvement uses a change in mindset as the foundation for practical habit-forming strategies. Sincero is also known for her accessible and sometimes irreverent writing style, which often resonates with people who find traditional self-help books boring or overwhelming.
We’ll begin this guide by explaining how habits form and play out in your daily life, with emphasis on Sincero’s principle that your identity gives rise to your habits. Next, we’ll explore some practical strategies to change your identity, and therefore your habits. We’ll conclude with some psychological methods to reinvent yourself and build your ideal life.
Our commentary will compare Sincero’s ideas with those of other influential habit and lifestyle books, such as Atomic Habits. We’ll also provide evidence and supporting details from the field of psychology to help explain why Sincero’s principles are effective. Finally, we’ll suggest some actionable ideas to help you start changing your identity, your habits, and your life.
What Are Habits?
Before you start the work of changing your habits, it will be helpful to have a clear definition of what a habit actually is. Sincero defines a habit as a routine, action, or behavior you engage in repeatedly and more or less automatically. These repeated behaviors can be helpful or harmful: For instance, many people have the good habit of checking for their keys, wallet, and phone before leaving the house. On the other hand, some people have the bad habit of setting those things down wherever happens to be convenient, then forgetting where they are.
We’ll start this section with a brief description of what actually happens in your brain when you form and carry out a habit. Next, we’ll explain how your self-image and your habits reinforce one another. Finally, we’ll discuss how you can set healthy boundaries that protect your self-image and support your good habits.
How Habits Work
Sincero explains that habits, whether good or bad, always follow the same sequence: A trigger signals your brain, which then executes a learned response that leads to some kind of reward. This process is mostly subconscious, which is why habitual behaviors happen so readily and are so hard to intentionally change.
To give an example, suppose you’re in the habit of eating ice cream after dinner. You finish dinner (trigger), which signals to your brain that it’s time for something sweet. You walk to the freezer and get yourself a bowl of ice cream (response) without really thinking about it—that’s just what happens after dinner. The ice cream tastes good, and the sugar gives you a quick energy boost (reward). That reward reinforces the pattern, so your brain repeats it the next day.
Furthermore, the more often you carry out the same pattern, the more deeply it gets engraved in your brain—which makes it even easier to keep doing and harder to replace with a different behavior. However, this also works to your advantage: At first, it might take tremendous effort to stick to a new habit, such as having an apple for dessert instead of ice cream. But the more often you do so, the easier it will become.
Your Self-Image Informs Your Habits
Sincero says that habits are expressions of your identity, not simply behaviors. From this perspective, a habit is more than just a behavioral pattern, it’s a reflection of how you see yourself. In other words, you do what you do because of who you are. Therefore, when you try to adopt a new habit that goes against your idea of who you are, you’re fighting a losing battle against yourself.
For example, a student who believes they’re bad at a particular subject will struggle to build good study habits and improve their grades. They may think they’re not a good student, and therefore won’t believe they’re capable of studying and succeeding like a good student would. Conversely, someone who sees themself as a capable student will recognize that they can still do well in that subject—they just need to devote more time to studying.
Sincero adds that you actively created your current identity, though you probably didn’t realize you were doing so. From childhood onward you’ve absorbed beliefs and behaviors from the people around you and either integrated them into your character or rejected them. Recognizing this fact gives you tremendous power: If you subconsciously built your identity in the past, you can consciously rebuild it now.
Discover and Express Your True Self
Sincero emphasizes that your goal in building better habits should be to express your authentic self more fully. In other words, adopt good habits so you can enjoy what you love and achieve what you really want—not so you can become “perfect” or turn yourself into what others want you to be.
For example, many people want to develop the habit of exercising regularly, but fail because they haven’t really thought about why they want to do it. Someone who wants to exercise in order to feel better and have more energy—which in turn will let them more fully enjoy activities they enjoy with people they love—is likely to succeed because their motivation is rooted in their authentic self. On the other hand, someone who only wants to exercise because society has told them to lose weight is unlikely to build that habit because it doesn’t reflect their real goals and passions.
Sincero adds that the process of building better habits can be just as important as the results, because it will help you learn about your authentic self. As you choose and practice new habits, you’ll discover your strengths, confront your fears, and expand your sense of what you can achieve. The self-awareness and empowerment you cultivate can be more valuable than any individual habit.
Boundaries Protect Your Self-Image and Habits
Sincero’s identity-based method for creating habits can only work if you’re in control of yourself. Your new identity will be fragile at first—if you allow outside forces to influence your behavior, you’ll compromise that self-image and fail to build the habits you want. For that reason, she says it’s essential to establish boundaries that protect your time, energy, and emotions.
To protect your new identity, you have to consciously decide how to interact with the world around you. Consider what you’re willing to do to reach your goals, and conversely, what would sabotage your new habits or go against your self-image. Also, think about what kinds of treatment you will and won’t accept from others, and how you’ll respond if someone crosses one of those lines. Finally, remember that you can only control your own actions, and be ready to protect your identity and stick to your new habits when people or events outside of your control tempt you to relapse.
Sincero adds that many people struggle with boundaries because they’ve been raised to believe that prioritizing their own needs is selfish. As a result, they do whatever they can to keep other people comfortable and happy, even at great cost to themselves. For such people to set boundaries, they have to overcome that conditioning and work through the discomfort of finally standing up for themselves.
If you struggle with people-pleasing tendencies, the author suggests that you practice asserting yourself in small, low-stakes ways. For example, immediately and firmly turn down pushy salespeople instead of hearing them out, or cut an unwanted conversation short and simply walk away. You’ll probably find that advocating for yourself like this is easy, satisfying, and less likely to cause backlash than you expect.
Practical Strategies to Change Your Habits
Sincero recognizes that the idea of changing your self-image and habits probably seems overwhelming. To help you stay motivated and focused, she presents a 21 day plan—each day introduces one new practice to reinforce your new identity and behavior. She urges you to take things one day at a time, and by the end of three weeks, you’ll have a new habit firmly entrenched in your life.
Let’s dive deeper into the unifying themes behind the practices in Sincero’s plan. In this section, we’ll explore four practical strategies you can use to support good habits and work toward becoming your ideal self:
- Create the right environment for yourself.
- Preemptively solve problems that might derail you.
- Track your progress.
- Reward yourself for your hard work.
Practical Strategy #1: Create Your Ideal Self’s Environment
Sincero suggests designing your environment so that it mirrors the person you want to become. This includes making practical changes like setting up spaces to practice your new habits—an exercise room, an office or a desk that’s just for writing, or whatever is suitable for the life you’re building. You can also hang up pictures that remind you of your goals, shop for the kinds of clothes that the “new you” will wear, or add anything else to your surroundings that helps you stay connected with your ideal self.
Sincero also urges you to reorganize your emotional, social, and spiritual surroundings in the same way as your physical environment. Surround yourself with people who support and reinforce your new identity, rather than people who make you want to relapse into bad habits. Consume media that uplifts you and motivates you to stick to your goals. Finally, take at least five minutes each day to sit quietly and connect with your inner thoughts through meditation, yoga, prayer, or a similar spiritual practice.
Practical Strategy #2: Solve Problems Before They Happen
Sincero’s next suggestion is to make good habits as easy as possible and bad habits as inconvenient as possible. For instance, if you’re trying to eat healthier, keep healthy snacks in easy reach and get rid of any unhealthy snacks in your house—force yourself to go all the way to the store for candy or chips.
Sincero also urges you to anticipate the ways you’ll sabotage your own efforts and figure out how to avoid those pitfalls. You know your patterns of self-sabotage intimately: the ways you distract yourself from what you know you should do, the ways you rationalize your bad behaviors, and so on. Think carefully about how you get in your own way, and determine how you’ll stay on track in spite of yourself.
Practical Strategy #3: Track Your Progress
Next, Sincero says that you should find ways to measure and record your progress. This makes your progress clearly visible, which provides the immediate gratification that long-term habit change often lacks. Some examples include keeping a tally of how many days you’ve been sober, or using an app to track some relevant metric such as weight. This visible progress quickly begins to reinforce itself—as you build a streak, you become increasingly motivated to maintain it.
Practical Strategy #4: Reward Yourself
Sincero adds that tracking your progress is a good way to stay motivated, but sticking to a habit is much easier when you reward yourself for every small success—remember that reward is the final step of habit formation, and the reason why you keep doing that habit.
So, every time you successfully perform your new habit (or avoid an old, bad habit), treat yourself to something you enjoy. Just make sure the reward doesn’t counteract the habit. For example, if your goal is to get to bed sooner, don’t reward yourself by staying up late the following night; instead, maybe treat yourself to a nice breakfast in the morning.
Psychological Strategies to Change Your Habits
We’ve discussed practical strategies for changing your life, but successfully making big changes is just as much of a psychological challenge as it is a practical one. Therefore, we’ll now discuss four strategies you can use to cultivate the mindset and thought patterns you’ll need to become your best self:
- Give yourself an empowering mantra.
- Refuse to negotiate or compromise on your new habits.
- Be compassionate with yourself.
- Let the changes happen naturally; don’t rush the process.
Psychological Strategy #1: Create a Mantra
One of Sincero’s psychologically-based strategies is to create a mantra: a short, simple statement that you repeat over and over until it becomes part of your typical thought patterns.
To use this strategy effectively, she says you should identify specific ideas or beliefs that are holding you back, then craft a statement to directly counter those self-imposed roadblocks. It must also evoke genuine emotion—a mantra is most effective when it resonates powerfully enough to override your habitual thoughts about yourself. For example, if you’re trying to become less shy and more outgoing, your mantra might be “I’m friendly, I’m funny, and people like me.”
Psychological Strategy #2: Adopt a “Non-Negotiable” Attitude
Sincero’s next strategy is to refuse to negotiate or compromise with yourself on your new habits. Instead, recognize when you’re trying to talk yourself out of a good practice or into a bad one, and shut down those thoughts immediately. Remember that you’re changing your identity, and the new you wouldn’t even consider that kind of self-sabotage.
Think about how a recovering alcoholic can’t have even one drink, under any circumstances, since doing so means risking a total relapse. Similarly, there must be no situation that can force you to relapse into bad habits, and no bargain you can make that will convince you to betray your new self-image.
Psychological Strategy #3: Practice Self-Compassion
The previous strategy was about being stern with yourself in order to stay on track. This strategy is the opposite: Be kind, patient, and forgiving with yourself in order to stay happy and motivated. Sincero says this is necessary because there will be times when you want to give up or feel like you’ll never become the person you want to be; those are the times when you must be the most compassionate toward yourself.
Whenever you’re struggling with a new habit, look at your trackers and remember how much progress you’ve made already. If you slip up, don’t berate yourself or give in to hopelessness, because that will only waste your mental energy. Instead, acknowledge the mistake, forgive yourself for making it, and get back on track right away.
Psychological Strategy #4: Let Change Happen—Don’t Rush It
Finally, Sincero urges you to keep working toward your ideal life while, at the same time, letting go of your anxieties about how long it’s taking for that ideal to become reality. Much like getting upset at yourself when you make a mistake, obsessing over your results and trying to force big changes to happen faster will only waste your energy. That, in turn, will impede your progress rather than accelerate it.
Instead, Sincero says the key is to trust yourself and the process: Keep working on becoming just a little bit better every day, and let the changes happen in their own time.
