The Hardest Part of Breaking Habits

For athletes who pursue their sport to compete at the highest levels, their eventual retirement from competition often leaves them facing a void.

Part of that void is in their schedules: after years of dedicated training, they don’t know what to do to fill the calendar.

The other part of the void is internal. It’s a matter of identity: athletes often don’t know who they are outside of that identity.

When a career athlete stops competing, they have to ask the most difficult question:

Who am I now?

This pattern is not unique to competitive athletes.

All of us experience this on some level with something in our lives.

I’ve seen it in clients who are retiring from work and looking toward their next chapter, in clients who are pivoting from one industry to another, in full-time moms after their kids go off to college, in clients who leave the work-force or scale back to care for their kids full-time. For many women, even the transition of perimenopause can bring up this void of identity.

Actions Shape Identity

The things we do consistently and persistently — especially over a long period of time — it becomes a part of who we are.

It becomes a core piece of our identity.

You can hear it in how you speak about yourself.

• If you run every day, you may call yourself a “runner.”
• If you write every day, you call yourself a “writer.”
• If you spend a lot of time taking care of your kids, you call yourself a “mom” or “dad.”
• If you’re a competitive athlete, you find your identity in that.

This principle is one of the “hacks” to creating new rituals and habits.

If there’s something you want to be doing regularly but you’re not doing it, consider the identity you need to adopt that will help you shift your rituals and habits.

The flip side of this is that when the time comes to release that part of your life — to step away from competition, to change that ritual, to break the habit — it’s not just about stopping the activity.

In fact, stopping the activity is often the easiest part.

The hardest part is letting go of that piece of your identity, and in answering the question:

Who am I now?