I’ve found identity to be a very useful tool for habit forming. For example, when I wanted to start running regularly, I decided to adopt “runner” as part of my identity. This made it much easier for me to actually get up and run every morning. Similarly, when I quit drinking, I decided that “I’m not the kind of person who drinks.” I’ve done the same thing with waking up early, and a few other habits. This does result in adding a lot of things to my identity, but I don’t expect them to be any harder to remove than they were to adopt, if that becomes necessary.
That sounds like an effective approach, though for negative identities I would expect a lot of cognitive dissonance at the beginning. If I started telling myself right now that I am an early bird, then while that might become a self-fulfilling prophecy, at first I would have a voice in my head saying “no you’re not, look at the evidence”. It might be useful to “try on” the identity for a while, e.g. “can I be an early bird for two weeks?”. I tried that with vegetarianism, and ended up being a vegetarian for years.
I’ve found identity to be a very useful tool for habit forming. For example, when I wanted to start running regularly, I decided to adopt “runner” as part of my identity. This made it much easier for me to actually get up and run every morning. Similarly, when I quit drinking, I decided that “I’m not the kind of person who drinks.” I’ve done the same thing with waking up early, and a few other habits. This does result in adding a lot of things to my identity, but I don’t expect them to be any harder to remove than they were to adopt, if that becomes necessary.
That sounds like an effective approach, though for negative identities I would expect a lot of cognitive dissonance at the beginning. If I started telling myself right now that I am an early bird, then while that might become a self-fulfilling prophecy, at first I would have a voice in my head saying “no you’re not, look at the evidence”. It might be useful to “try on” the identity for a while, e.g. “can I be an early bird for two weeks?”. I tried that with vegetarianism, and ended up being a vegetarian for years.