Hi, I’m Matt Frazier, a father, ultrarunner, vegan, the founder

of No Meat Athlete, and a huge fan of New Year’s.

You may think it’s corny, but I believe that there’s no better
opportunity to make a big life change, set a massive goal, or
tackle a new habit than the start of a new trip around the sun.

Sure, there’s nothing magical about January 1st, but for some
reason it just feels more inspiring to take action.

This year, I hope you’ll join me.

I’ve put together this New Year’s Habit Change Kit to outline some of my secrets for
not just thinking about making a lasting diet, fitness, or mindset change, but actually
taking action.

The kit includes my 12-Step Habit Change Roadmap, along with an audio seminar of
the 5 Big Keys to Habit Change, both directly from the NMA Academy.

My hope is that you not only learn from this kit, but use it as the first step to taking
real action towards your goal this new year.

Good luck!
Let’s make 2018 about actually making a change, not just learning about it, and it’s
time to take the first step.

Actually, 12 steps. The first should be done today, and the next eleven in the days that
follow.

If you’ve never tried to “engineer” change like this, get ready: it’s not just effective, it’s
a lot of fun. Especially as you build success upon success, and over time, change the
picture of yourself as someone who struggles to create changes to someone who is
actually pretty darn good at it.

With each new success, you strengthen the belief that you are someone who follows
through on your commitments, that you are good at change. And that belief, studies
show, is one of the biggest single factors in whether or not you actually are.

Good luck!

1. Choose your habit and pick a start date.

Choose one fairly small change (you want to get some practice before taking on big
ones) but one that you’re excited about. Save the “stop doing” types of changes for
when you’ve built up your habit-change muscles.
You want to choose a start date that’s a few days from now (definitely not today) for
two reasons:

It sends your brain the message that this is important, and builds some anticipation.
You’ll use the time to do the subsequent steps before beginning.

We’ll talk about accountability in a few steps, and at that point I’ll ask you to announce
your commitment in our Facebook group!

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 Between now and your start date:

2. Determine the smallest step you could take each day as you form your
habit, and commit to doing only that.*

My favorite example also comes from Leo: if you were trying to form the habit of
running, 5 or even 2 minutes per day might be enough. You want a commitment so
small that it would be ridiculous not to follow through on it — don’t worry, you’ll
increase what you’re doing after you’ve strung together some success.

And if you were to find yourself procrastinating on even two minutes of running?

Make your action to put your shoes on, step outside, and shut the door behind you.
Chances are, you’d do a little running anyway since you were out there, but even if
not, creating small wins for a few days in a row begins to form a habit and slowly
builds the sense of belief in your ability to follow through.

*If you absolutely don’t have the patience to take such small steps, another option is
to follow a plan like what I outlined in a blog post, where you begin with massive
action (the rest of this roadmap still applies to that, too) and shift to small steps only if
that fails or if you reach the end of your trial period but realize you’re not ready to be
“all-in” indefinitely yet.

3. Set an end date.

Why an end date, even if it’s a habit you’d like to do forever?

Because it helps to get over the initial hurdles by preventing those thoughts of “I have
to do this forever?” When the inevitable day comes along that you really don’t want to
do your habit, you can fall back on more empowering thoughts like, “I don’t feel like
doing this now, but I know I can keep it up for (say) five more days.”

Then when you get to the finish line, you’ll be in a much better position to rationally
assess how you feel and decide if you want to commit to another (longer) period.

I suggest starting with just a 10-day commitment; 30 days if that feels too short.

4. Select a trigger activity.

Commit to doing your habit immediately following a certain activity that happens
automatically, every day, without fail.

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For example, if you’re trying to start a reading habit, you might choose “when I make
my coffee” as your trigger. Don’t skip the step of choosing a trigger — it helps your
brain to actually form the habit faster by teaching it, “if this, then do this.”
You’ll be able to do your habit a few times without a cue, but it’ll never be as strong as
if you consistently do it following a trigger.

5. Place a visual reminder (or several) near where you’ll be when your
trigger activity occurs.

One of my biggest obstacles to many changes I’ve attempted to make has been that I
simply forgot! The easy things to do (like two minutes of meditation, for example) are
also very easy not to do, because they’re so small that you forget about them.

So putting a visual reminder in the physical location of your trigger — near your
coffee maker in the previous step’s example — easily eliminates this possibility of
forgetting, and gives you another tiny nudge to do your habit.

6. Create accountability.

Remember in our interview with Leo when he mentioned “building the walls” around
the path of your habit? Well, accountability represents your most powerful tool in
building those walls. Don’t neglect it!

When you make a public commitment that you plan to make a change, you’re taking
the fear of failure and putting it to work for you instead of against you: once you’ve
told everyone what you’re going to do, you’re highly motivated to do it! Facebook is
one way to publicly commit, but much better is to publicly commit to family, co-
workers, friends, and others who won’t let you off the hook. One other idea: start a
blog or podcast about your change (that’s how No Meat Athlete started, for me!).

But a public commitment is just one way to create accountability; maybe instead you
just have a single training partner that you commit to do every single run with. Or a
habit-change partner who is working on their own change, with whom you’ll check in
regularly to keep each other on track.

Ideally, do both. Create as much accountability as possible; it’s your greatest ally in
keeping your change going.

Copyright © 2017 No Meat Athlete LLC

7. Engineer the habit environment.

There are two sides to this coin: First, you want to make your habit more pleasurable
— add music to running if that does it for you, or set up a nice space in your home for
writing, for example. How about a small reward for successfully completing your habit
in the early days?

The other side is probably more important, but you’ve already done it. You want to
increase the pain you feel for failing to do your habit, and if you’ve created a lot of
accountability by making a commitment to others, than you’ve done that.

8. Plan ahead for any obstacles.

The number one killer of my past attempts to change was a change in scenery and
routine, whether that meant traveling or hosting visitors in our house.

Now, I’ve gotten better at planning for those disruptions to routine. They’re going to
happen, so brainstorm a plan. Think of anything that could possibly disrupt your habit
in the next few months, and figure out how you can modify your habit (it’s certainly
okay to do less during tough periods like this) so that it stays intact and you can pick it
fully back up when things return to normal.

On your start date:

9. Start! Do your habit each day, if the particular habit allows.

A daily activity will become an automatic habit faster than a less frequent one because
the consistency and increased number of instances helps to train your brain to link
your trigger (and other cues you may not even perceive) to the subsequent action.

But if your habit isn’t one you can do every day — say, you can’t or don’t want to run
every single day — it’s not the end of the world. One idea would be to do a substitute
activity (like foam rolling) following the trigger on the days when you don’t plan on
running.

10. Each day, record your success or failure and report to your
accountability partner(s).

You want to have a scoreboard, and ideally, you want it to be visible. Simple red X’s on
a wall or desk calendar can be amazingly fulfilling.

Copyright © 2017 No Meat Athlete LLC

And as soon as you’ve marked off your own calendar or journal, let your
accountability partners know that you’ve succeeded (again) today! This itself serves as
a reward, so the sooner you can report to your accountability group after you
complete the action, the more strongly the habit will be reinforced.

11. Each week, review what’s working right, what’s not working, and what
you can do differently going forward.

The weekly check-in is another crucial step that’s easy to underestimate and ignore.
One of the reasons for small, incremental steps is learning. When something doesn’t
work (or does), you want to notice it and apply what you’ve learned to the next week’s
activity.

In the long run, how you treat day-to-day failures is the difference between success
and ultimate failure of your habit. If you view a small failure as new experience and
knowledge to apply to your change — something to learn from and improve in the
next week — that’s so much more powerful than a perfectionist mindset that treats a
small lapse as a reason to give up.

12. When you’re ready, increase the amount you do each day.

If you string together a full of week of success — seven straight days, no misses —
with your initial, tiny commitment, then you’re free to increase … by a little bit! Don’t
overdo it here; just a modest increase that’s exciting and feels doable.

After another week of success, increase again. If you have trouble with the increase,
though, consider dropping back down to the previous level.

Go forth and make change …

For as long as you’re succeeding, repeat these steps.

If you falter, don’t feel guilty about it! Observe what went wrong, learn from it, and try
extra hard not to miss your habit for a second consecutive day (since this often spells
the end for habits).

Now, let’s talk about the five big keys to making habits stick…

Copyright © 2017 No Meat Athlete LLC

When it comes to habit change, there are five keys to being successful. Keys – or rules
– that when not followed, are often the reasons why most people fail to make new
health and fitness habits work.

In the seminar below, I outline those keys to creating habits that stick, and provide
real life examples from my own successes (and failures) to help you put these rules
into action.

Note: Today’s seminar is a 35-minute clip from a larger NMA Academy module on
habit change. On the next page of this document you’ll find notes to help you work
through the seminar and begin making your new habits successful.
1. You have to really want to change.

So do whatever it will take to amplify your desire and motivation (and remember to
keep doing it) -- for me, when I wanted to go vegan but had trouble giving up cheese,
this meant watching the graphic documentary Earthlings to change how I felt about
eating cheese.

2. Put some space in between the time you decide to change a habit and
the day you actually start.

3. Focus on changing just one habit at a time.

What if you want to change lots of habits right away? Remember that just one change
per month would mean 36 changes after 36 months.

That’s an entirely different person! If you’re tempted to try to change lots of habits at
once, instead write down a year-long plan with one habit change per month, starting
with either the easiest, the most exciting, or the one that will make it easy to change
habits in the future (for example, giving up several hours of TV in the evening so that
you create space for new habits).

4. Start small, so as not to drain your willpower while you build the habit.

For example, 2 or 5 minutes of daily running for the first week or so.

5. Have a personal accountability system in place.

It could be as simple as a pocket calendar where each night before bed you write
“Yes” or “No” to indicate whether or not you did the habit that day. If you didn’t do it,
make sure you write “No” -- don’t skip the nightly check-in!

Many of these take patience, because you don’t see immediate results! But they
rebuild belief in yourself, along with helping you to win the struggle between
willpower and habit.

Copyright © 2017 No Meat Athlete LLC