First, decide who you want to be. This holds at any level—as an individual, as
a team, as a community, as a nation. What do you want to stand for? What are
your principles and values? Who do you wish to become?
Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what
they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to
build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we
wish to become.
We think we need to change our
results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are
the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the results
level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need
to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix
themselves.