“Action is character,” was the mantra drilled into me in film school and studying screenwriting. Like the beginning of the film Rocky when we see him go about his evening routine. We learn about Rocky by his habits. We also learn that he is unhappy with his life. When Rocky decides that he wants to change who he is, he changes his routine. He changes his habits. His actions begin to align with the person that he wants to be.

When we want to change something about ourselves, we need to change what we do. Simple, right? I kid. Obviously that’s the hardest part, or we’d have all achieved our New Year’s Resolutions. But what I’ve found is that there are three main ways to help pull off this magic trick. The first is to craft your identity to fit who, what or how you want to be. We also need to learn to craft our habits. And finally, we need to practice. I realize how terrifying all of those sound, but I promise there are ways to make your journey more relaxed, natural and gentle.

When thinking about what we want to change, whether that is to heal a hurt, eat less processed foods, exercise, play an instrument or control our anxiety, we have to do a bit of character development. We are essentially asking ourselves to be something other than what we currently identify ourselves as. We are taking on a new identity. Maybe even a secret, super identity. Change we create is a superhero worthy power. So, flesh out who this new you is. Heck, give yourself a special name, like Jessdalf the Mostly Calm or Figwit the Generally Healthy. It doesn’t matter. Have fun with it. Play at trying on this new aspect of yourself.

Of course, in order to take on this new identity we need to believe it and live it. I believe that I am a person who practices yoga. This is a part of my identity. I get a special feeling whenever I mention that I am almost always wearing some type of yoga pants and someone asks, “But do you actually do yoga?” Then I get to answer, “Yes. Daily.” Really busts their gotcha bubble. But both things are true. I wear some type of yoga pants almost all the time, and I do practice yoga almost daily. And the one leads into the other. Wearing yoga pants means that I am always ready to practice yoga. Yoga is a part of my life. I have a space for it, a mat and music I play. I’ve made it easy for myself to practice by bending my life a little to meet the person I want to be: a person who practices yoga.

Most of the decisions we make in our daily lives are unconscious. They are habits. And while we can consciously form habits, most of our habits form themselves. Once we decide we want to make a change in our habits to be the person we want to be, we begin to see little ways to make that habit fit into our life and even carve out a little time and space for it. There are three key elements to developing a habit: Make it easy. Make it achievable. Make it fun.

So, starting a yoga habit easy can look like: I wear yoga pants all the time, my mat is always ready. Make it achievable is making it small. Tiny. Five minutes a day. No one starts a running practice by doing a marathon. You work up to that in tiny, incremental steps. Same for changing eating habits. “I will eat one green vegetable a day” is a lot less intimidating than “I’m cutting out all sugar and carbs.” Maybe you get there, if there is where you want to be, but you start with the easiest possible steps. And you set yourself up for that by tweaking your life so that becomes easier to do. So you keep your running shoes by the door or where you’ll trip over them to remind you to run. Or, buy frozen, microwave steamable green vegetables when you shop. Making it fun can be anything from listening to your favorite music or podcast to celebrating by watching your favorite TV show, dancing, giving yourself a hug or pat on the back afterwards, or maybe have a cookie. For real. Eat the cookie, you life altering force of nature, you.

In yoga, you’ll hear the phrase “showing up on your mat.” All that means is that you are practicing. You showed up. You are doing the thing. The hardest part is over, you came to your mat to practice. Writers write. Yogis yoga. Carpenters carpen? This is the practice part, and this is where you truly become that identity you chose for yourself. Even if your identity is “person who is healing from hurt” or “person who is calm,” you will still need small, daily practices to truly embody that, to be that. A person who is healing may spend a little time each day writing reflections on how they are feeling. A person who is calm might do a breathing practice every day. A person who does yoga can do a Sun Salute. And a person who is recovering from Depression might get out of bed or step outside for five minutes.

The point is to keep repeating the habits that align with your identity until they truly become a part of your life. You’ll know when that is because you’ll automatically reach for your yoga mat at 4pm because you always do. And that is the type of change that sticks. That is also the type of true transformation that can weather changes, shocks and stress because when everything else is chaos, our habits become our comfort. They can also help us push on and continue through our troubles.

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself,” observed Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Change is a creative process that requires our imagination and participation. And the more we learn about how to enlist the parts of our life and selves to help us, the easier we make that process.

In real life, change doesn’t happen over the course of a montage set to inspirational music. Although, raising our hands over our heads and jumping up and down on the top of the Art Museum steps is a fine way to celebrate the progress we are taking towards transformation, that’s just a part of the journey. So, whatever it is you are seeking in your life right now — be it concrete, like movement and exercise, or abstract like being calm or healing — it begins with thinking of ourselves differently and then making our life and our daily practice and habits line up with our intentions.

So, lace up your Converses and chug some raw eggs, we’re going the distance and proving to ourselves (and Adriene) that we’re not bums. We’re champs.

Namasté, you transformational legends!

-J. Lakis

✌🏼💚🥊🏆🖖🏼

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