James Clear

speaker

1,852 appearances 7 recordings 7 series first heard Dec 2024 last heard 12 May

James Clear’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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The Mel Robbins Podcast · The Science of Making & Breaking Habits: How to Change Your Life in 1 Month · 8 Jan 2026 podcast

I need to go to the gym four days a week and eat on this diet or whatever.

And the implicit assumption is if I do those things and get that result, then I'll be who I want to be.

I'll be happy with who I am.

I'll be more like the person that I hope to be.

But the innermost layer of the ending, the core, is who you are, your identity, who you become.

And so it's like what, how, and who.

And instead of starting with what you want and figuring out how to do it and assuming that I will then be the person I want to be, I think it is better to invert that process and start by saying, who do I wish to become?

Or in this example, who is the type of person that could lose 40 pounds?

Well, maybe it's the type of person who doesn't miss workouts.

And then you're focused on that, not on the weight.

And so what it does is by focusing on the identity, it kind of inverts how you think about the habit.

Rather than it being about hitting a certain number on the scale, it becomes about becoming a certain type of person, being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts in this example.

Your habits are how you embody a particular identity.

So every day that you make your bed, you embody the identity of someone who's clean and organized.

If you study biology for 20 minutes on Tuesday night, you embody the identity of someone who is studious.

Your habits provide evidence of who you are.

This is the real reason, the deeper reason that habits matter.

We often talk about habits as mattering because of the external results that they get you.

Hey, habits will help you be more productive or make more money or reduce stress.

And like, look, habits can do all that stuff and that's great.

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