Reading Atomic Habits again after five years was bizarre. I first listened to it over the summer of my Junior year of high school. Back then, all my worries were focused on getting into a good college, pursuing self-improvement, and maybe just maybe not making a fool of myself in front of a cute girl.

Atomic Habits was the first non-fiction book I read after rediscovering books altogether. I treated it like scripture. It was the first book summary I wrote on my blog. I thought it was the crown jewel of internet writing. I read it again. It epically sucks. But it epically mattered.

Now, I was listening to it on the car ride to Banff National Park, where I would spend three days hiking through the backcountry with my parents to celebrate graduating from Cornell University and entering the adult world. As the car hummed along pine-stitched roads and James Clear’s voice filled the cabin, it was like my seventeen-year-old self materialized in the passenger seat. As I re-learned the four parts of habits, and the keys of behavior change, it felt like that little boy was holding out his hand in the form of old thoughts, feelings, and vulnerabilities toward life.

I smiled at him. Then looked out the window toward the towering mountains. There was a time I’d seen them as something to conquer. Now I’d realized half the time going up meant coming down. How different a person I was now, looking up at my old self like a valley towards a mountain, realizing the problems of relentless self-improvement while still appreciating its value.

So much had changed. My priorities. My posture. My inner weather. But perhaps most deeply—my habits. As I finished the book, and began my three day backpacking trek into Banff, I felt a profound desire to write another article about habit change. One which honored the self I was now and explored habits from an angle I feel is more profound, honest, and spiritual.

We pulled into the parking lot, gravel crunching beneath tires. I took a deep breath. This would be a walk into the unknown in more ways than one.

Habits Are The Water We Swim In

Getting out of the car, the sun shown over the top of a mountain, letting light spill over the side like melted butter. We hoisted our packs, laced our boots, and began the 9-mile hike to B14 (or 14.5 kilometers, if you’re one of the lucky souls whose country had the collective wisdom not to count things in units based on a dead king’s foot).

As we walked, birds chirped their morning songs. The air smelled of pine and wet stone. I found myself thinking of that hilarious comic of two fish. One fish says “nice water today.” And the other says, “what’s water?”

Funny. But also—uncomfortably accurate.

Because if habits are anything, they’re water. And most of us are fish who’ve never noticed we’re wet.

James Clear defines a habit as a repeatable, mostly subconscious, routine we engage in. My Junior self used to think of habits as things we do, but I’ve come to think of them more as channels through which we become. Every day we go through our lives repeating these mostly subconscious routines, not realizing every habit loop we do, is a vote for the identity we want to hold.

So the question isn’t just what habits you have, it’s who are these habits making you.

As we continued walking through the forest, I reflected on some of my own habits through this lens. My habit of regular writing: casting a vote for the critical thinking, articulate, interesting person I hope to be. My habit of going to the gym: casting a vote for the healthy, adventurous, dependable person I want to become. My habit of regular hair pulling: well, let’s say I haven’t fully mastered navigating my restlessness.

A lichen called Old Man's Beard hung from the trees. And just like that, I was back in Glacier National Park, a year ago, seeing the same plant dangling from different trees. Different forest. Different country. Same beard. It hit me: the only reason it reminded me of Glacier, is because I framed the plant that way. Which brought me to another insight from Atomic Habits.

Habits impact our identities by forming the frames through which we see ourselves, others, and the world

It’s easier to understand this when you separate habits between external and internal. External habits are habits cued and taken outside one’s own mind (not that I think the separation is rigid). In contrast, internal habits take place inside one’s mind.

As we kept walking to B14, I found myself getting hungry and craving the tofu and broccoli we would have for dinner. I laughed—the external habits of consistent healthy eating I’d built from a childhood home of healthy foods stuck with me.

Every external and internal habit we do solidifies our frames for the world. Build an external habit of needing coffee every morning, and before long, your story might become: I’m not a morning person. Build an internal habit of always framing yourself as the victim in conflict, and soon, even your own reflection starts to feel like it’s scolding you.

These aren't traditionally thought of as habits. But they are. Without awareness, we can form many patterns of thought and feeling which realize themselves in our behavior and environments. Much of spiritual practice is about bringing awareness to these subconscious tendencies so we can have more agency over the frames we see the world through.

Once we got to B14 and set up camp, I walked out to the open valley by our site. I sat with my feet in it next to an open field, mountains shimmering in the sun, moon yawning its half full shape in greeting. The river ebbed against my feet like flowing kittens.

For forty-five minutes I sat in utter tranquility. Not planning. Just being. At home, all my productive habits would be screaming at me to do something. Not here. It was like I was a different person, reminding me of something else James Clear said.

Our relationships and environments also has a huge impact our habits and thus our identity

The people we surround ourselves with—and the places we let saturate our senses—shape our habits, and thus our identities, in ways more profound than we realize.

The more I reflect on my years at Cornell, the clearer it becomes: the true value of that experience wasn’t the lectures, or the late-night problem sets, or even the fancy piece of paper I got at the end. It was the people. The ecosystem. The culture of curiosity and caffeine and questions that never had clean answers. I became someone different not because I studied well, but because I swam in a sea of thinkers.

It’s why, when I return to my hometown of Hamilton, I feel an older version of myself stretching its legs. Suddenly I’m the high school kid again—overthinking texts, sleeping too late, re-downloading old games I swore I’d deleted.

These habits can be self or many oriented. Habits of self are, wait for it, self-oriented. Internally it could mean asking myself what I’m grateful for every morning. Externally, it could be doing language flashcards right after lunch.

This isn’t to say habits of self don’t impact the many, of course they do, but they stem more concretely from yourself as an individual than someone who swims in a sea of other people.

Habits of the many are, wait for it, many oriented. Internally it could look like The Fundamental Attribution Error—our tendency to attribute others mistakes and bad behavior to their personalities but our own to bad luck or circumstances. Externally it could mean our shared lack of connection because of the unhealthy use of social media and phones.

I dragged my hands through the water, thinking what it would be like to hike alongside my parents for three days. I hadn’t spent this much alone time with them since before college. Then I giggled at the obvious answer. Simply ask, what habits do they hold, in their selves and in the many at Hamilton? How do these habits track back toward fundamental values and identities?

America as a culture tends to value free speech, individualism, libertarianism, and capitalism, which you can see embodied in the habits of self and many. Japan on the other hand, values collectivism, incessant hard work, and indirect feedback. Of course these are gross generalizations but useful distinctions none the less. The question is how seemingly small habits can cause such drastic differences in identity.

On the second day of our camping trip, I woke up before everyone. 6:15 a.m. I know I'm crazy. I sat by the valley again for a bit. But then found myself wanting to listen to an audible book. Once I opened Audible, I felt an urge to look through all the books I'd read the last four years, just for fun. 453.

I laughed out loud. I never would have expected it to be so much. I read every day sure, but not that much. As I learned from Atomic Habits, it doesn't have to be a lot to change you a ton.

Atomic Habits, Atomic Identity

The quintessential insight James Clear makes is deceptively simple: small habits, repeated often, create extraordinary change.

If you improve by just 1% each day, you won’t be twice as good by the end of the year—you’ll be 37 times better. Thirty-seven. And this doesn’t just apply to skills our outcomes.

Atomic habits are atomic identity builders as well.

Each habit loop we complete, even if it’s only a two minute routine, is another drop of water in the sea of identity we swim in. Brushing your teeth. Reminding yourself to be grounded in awareness every door you open. Smiling at a stranger as you pass them by.

When framed this way, every moment of every day becomes an opportunity to grow yourself towards the person you want to become.

The early morning was turning late and we set out to hike Assiniboine pass. Some campers before had told us it was utterly gorgeous, but for hours we hiked through shrouded trees without even a glimpse of a mountain or a lake. I was okay. I admired the way the shadows from the light shining through the trees played together. There's a Japanese word for this phenomenon: Komorebi. Literally, sunlight leaking through tree.

I was fine for another reason as well: I was re-thinking how habits work, and if perhaps, even five years after reading the book, there were still some habits I could build and some I should break.

How Habits Work

When you strip it down, habits are remarkably simple. Elegant, even. If you combine the insights of James Clear with those of Nir Eyal, you get a five-part loop:

1. Cue
2. Craving
3. Response
4. Reward
5. Investment

1. Every habit begins with a cue, whether external or internal.

An external cue might be the sight of your gaming setup blinking seductively at you from across the room. (Not that I’d know anything about that.)

An internal cue could be the quiet ache of boredom.

2. Then there’s a craving.

As Anne Lembke explores in her book Dopamine Nation, this craving is particularly strong for habits with variable rewards. Variable rewards aren’t guaranteed and often differ depending on the input. A craving might be the scratching of a lottery card, or the sense of wholeness and peace from meditation.

3. Next comes the response.

Again, this can be external or internal. Externally it might mean turning the key in your car's ignition. Internally, it could mean thinking about your ex when you see the car they used to drive.

4. Then there’s the reward.

It could be as simple as the warm sugar hit of a donut dissolving on your tongue. Or the sweet ping of validation when your partner replies with “thinking of you too ❤️.” Or the post-workout high that makes you believe in God for twenty minutes.

5. Finally, habits end with investment.

Investment can be any combination of time, energy, money, or other resources put into a habit. Investment makes it more likely you’ll engage in the habit again in the future. For example, you watch videos on YouTube at night, and YouTube incorporates your preferences into its algorithm tailoring what it shows you more and more so you continue coming back to the app.

These five steps form every single habit. Every. Single. One. I hope you’re able to see why I saw this book as my atheist version of The Bible when I first read it.

As I was thinking about how habits work, we finally came out of the sea of trees to Lake Magog. It shone like liquid diamonds because of all the minerals which had melted into it from a glacier long ago. Even as I stared at the lake I found myself thinking of the book.

I laughed. There were still some habits I could learn to build. Like a habit of being able to relax without making it productive.

How To Build Good Habits

Once you know the five aspects that build every single habit, building better habits becomes as simple (but not easy) as making all five aspects as positive as possible.

Considering my problem with relaxation, I decided I’d walk through how to build a habit of learning to relax without being productive, ironically, while staring at Lake Magog.

Cue: externally, my cue for productiveless relaxation can begin after my work day is completely over, around 5:00 p.m. Internally, the cue can be a feeling of restlessness which occurs anytime after that 5:00 p.m. ending.

Craving: the craving from this productiveless relaxation can be for a variety of activities. I’ll keep a list of options: reading fiction, climbing, calling a friend, wandering the neighborhood with a podcast and no plan. Having a variety of potential relaxers makes it feel less like a “task” and more like a smorgasbord of variable delight.

Response: the response is to do one of those things above. I could make it as easy as possible to engage in by pre-setting out physical books, getting my climbing clothes out the previous night, having a video game already downloaded, etc.

Reward: the reward is to engage in the positive feelings of those relaxers without feeling guilty if they aren't as productive as they could possibly be. This doesn’t mean they can't be productive in some sense like aiding my health, building my relationships, or learning something new for my job. It means I don't go into the activity thinking of them as ways to be productive. I go into them thinking I'm doing them for the sake of the thing in itself. If I feel any restlessness which doens't seem warranted, I can go through a meditation exercise where I let the feeling wash away on a leaf down a river.

Investment: to invest in these activities so I continue to do them, I could choose books my friends love, buy better climbing gear for the gym, get a new video game, etc.

This habit is strange because it's more of a meta-habit of being less restless, but that's exactly the point we’ve been exploring. Habits aren't just actions we take, they can support identities we want to have.

As I thought about building this good habit looking over Lake Magog, I began to pull at my hair. It's a habit I've had for over 15 years anytime I get bored, or restless. It was so bad when I was younger I pulled an entire spot of hair out on the back of my head. Thankfully it grew back.

But doing it while thinking so much of habit change made me wonder, what if I finally broke it? It was time to give it a try.

How To Break Bad Habits

Breaking bad habits works exactly like building good ones. You just invert everything from before. So, for my habit of hair pulling I can...

Cue: make the cue invisible by trying to become more at ease with restlessness and boredom. Instead of feeling the need to get rid of them right away (often through hair pulling), I can sit with the feelings as they are. They're neither good nor bad; they just exist. This might make me more willing to just be with them later on stopping the need for hair pulling.

Craving: instead of craving the pleasant feeling of my hair between my fingers, I can imagine myself without a full head of hair, with the looks of a Monk but none of the good qualities.

Response: I can make the hair pulling as difficult as possible by wearing a hat when I'm alone, preferably something super silly so I want to break the habit as fast as possible. Unfortunately, I still haven't learned how to phase through physical matter, so my hands wouldn't be able to make it through.

Reward: as a “reward” for pulling my hair, I can pinch myself. Not too hard, but hard enough where I'm like, dang it, that wasn't fun. Do this enough times and I'll begin to associate hair pulling with pain instead of pleasantry.

Investment: If I make it through an entire day without pulling my hair, I can add a paperclip to a jar, slowly accruing a streak of not pulling my hair which breaks as soon as I do it. This will keep me invested in staying with the experience.

I pulled at my hair one more time while thinking through all the ways I could stop the habit. Ye know, as a sending off measure. All this thinking about habits was making me thirsty so as we started walking down Assiniboine again, I drank some water.

The walk back was quiet, and lovely. Instead of forest, the path flowed through pastures of red, blue, and yellow flowers which danced in the wind.

Even with all the power I'd gotten from reading Atomic Habits again, there was one thing which bugged me. As I kept walking, I realized what it was.

I was idolizing habits again.

The same way I had on my first reading. Habits are great. But they have their limits.

The Limits Of Habits

If you’re not careful, habits can program away your life.

They’re subconscious routines by design. That’s what makes them powerful—but also what makes them dangerous. Not everything in life is meant to be seen through the lens of what “improves you,” even if it’s framed through identity.

When you become dominated by habits, your life becomes one habit, like one long loop running on the treadmill of days, weeks, months, years—until one day you wake up, eighty-seven years old, wondering where it all went.

As I made it back to camp B14, and sat down alongside my parents to cook dinner, I allowed myself to relax. This trip was a testament of the power of breaking routines. It was time to stop thinking about habits, for a while at least.

I turned on the gas stove and began boiling some water for our fried rice. The leaves rustled quietly in the wind. The sun began to set behind the mountains in the distance.

You don’t get days like these through automation.