Why Your Habits Aren’t Sticking (And What To Do About It) | Grow With Kepo Ep. 5

In this episode, Kepo tackles one of the most frustrating cycles for high achievers: why your habits just won’t stick. You know what you should be doing. You’ve read all the books, made the plans, and set the goals. And yet, you keep breaking the promises you make to yourself.

In this raw and real solo episode, Kepo breaks down the truth behind habit failure, and it has nothing to do with willpower. From identity misalignment to self-sabotage and judgment, you’ll learn what’s actually stopping you from becoming the version of yourself you keep envisioning.

This one will hit home. Because the truth is, you’re not lazy. You’re just misaligned.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Habits don’t fail because of poor planning. They fail because your identity hasn’t caught up yet.
• Every time you break a promise to yourself, you erode your self-trust.
• To build sustainable habits, you have to first believe that you are the type of person who does that thing.
• Your identity is like a thermostat. Until you raise it, you’ll keep defaulting to old behaviors.
• Stop judging the people who are living the life you say you want. You can’t become what you secretly resent.
• Ask yourself: Do I really want this? Or am I trying to be someone I’m not?
• Either raise your standards, or let it go.

BEST MOMENTS

00:01. “Every time you make a promise to yourself and you don’t keep it, you break your own self-confidence.”
00:34. “You’re not lazy. You’re just misaligned.”
05:24. “Until you start to see yourself as that future person, you will not break past your own cycles.”
08:09. “Your identity is kind of like a thermostat. No matter your effort, you’ll return to your set point.”
11:18. “You make a promise to yourself, and then you don’t do it. Can you even count on you?”
19:33. “Either raise your standards or let it go.”
21:36. “You are that important. Because of the lives attached to you. Because their lives are better for it when you show up for yourself.”
22:42. “Before you get technical about habits, get real about who you really are.”

🎧 New episodes of Grow With Kepo drop every Monday at 9AM GMT-7.
Don’t miss a moment of clarity, confidence and aligned action.

🔗 Book your limited FREE High-Performance Strategy Session with Kepo here:
https://bit.ly/Highperformancestrategysession

📱 Follow Kepo on Instagram for more insights and behind the scenes:
https://www.instagram.com/growwithkepo/

❤️ If this episode spoke to you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it.

This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek. https://www.apodcastgeek.com

Transcript

0:00

Every time you make a promise to yourself and you don't keep it. You break your own self-confidence and then you start asking yourself, can I even count on you? Do you have your own back? I'm going to say this with love because I say this to myself as well. Either raise your standards or let it go. Maybe you're not that person that you think you are. How do you want people to describe you in a way that represents your best self? Here is something you need to hear. You're not lazy. You're just misaligned. I'm careful. I help high performers get unstuck by taking bold aligned action. And this is grow with Keppel, where we speak with influential trailblazers who've made their mark and found the clarity that changed their lives. This is where we get clear, realign, and move toward a life that actually feels like yours. Welcome to the show. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Today I'm going to be tackling a very important topic. Well, every topic I tackle I would like to think is important on this show for you and for me as well. And it's about why your habits are not sticking. Are you someone who has read so many books on how to create good habits? Atomic habits? Power habits. You know you've read all those books. You listen to those podcasts. You make your to do list. You make your promises to yourself, and then three weeks into it's 11 days into it. You stop and you go right back to where you were before. You're wondering, why can I get this thing right? Do you see other people that just seem to have developed their habits? Like how are they doing it? Like, seriously, what is the secret sauce? Like, someone needs to give us the silver bullets to this thing. I have good news and bad news for you. The outside with the bad news was. The bad news is there is no silver bullets. And there is no magic potion. And there is no magic lifehack or trick or any of those, any of those adjectives or nouns that you want to give it. The good news, however, is that you can also be one of those people that people look and say, how is he doing it? How is she doing it? So think about an area of your life or habits that you have been working on, off and on for years. And I want you to hold that in mind while I told you the story. So Kelly came to me way back when, when I was a weight loss coach, that she wanted to lose weight. Now she had quite a bit of weight to lose. Right? Let's say about for how to get to ideal, which was going to have to lose. I don't know about 70 pounds. Right. 70 pounds of weight. That's about that is something kilograms. So as part of my weight loss coaching I always started with mindset coaching first, right mindset, identity, all of that good stuff. And we did all those exercises and it seemed like she was getting and she was so pumped. She was so hyped for this thing and she was following all her protocols so well. She was doing really great. And then like two weeks into it. Life started to happen. But actually life wasn't happening. She was happening to herself because when we looked at her routine or maybe what else was surrounding her life, like work and all of these things, they were all actually the same. It's not like she had to travel for work. Her work hours didn't change. Nothing changed. But then for whatever reason, she just couldn't continue at the pace that she was continuing on. Granted, she's not a robot, but let me tell you what came out of that conversation. We found out that Kelly thinks of herself as a plus size person. That's how she sees herself. That's how she talks about herself. And that's certainly how she thinks about herself. So if Kelly continues to hold strong this identity of I'm plus size, I'm think this I'm that how, pray tell, is she ever, ever going to be the person who actually is one of us size that she was trying to be? So let me put it in context for you. Kelly was a size 16, US 16, and she was trying to just give back to the healthy eight. But she sees herself, talks about herself as a size 16. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to tell you something. I don't care what kind of habits you're trying to build. I don't care what life hack you have to build the habits until you start to see yourself as that future person. In that future identity. You will not break past your own cycles. You will continue to hold those old habits and you continue to fall back to them. Let me use myself as an example. Guys, most of so than when I'm talking on this show, I'm also talking to myself. I'm also a work in progress, right? Well, all just further along than each other in different areas of life. So please never, ever think that I'm preaching to you from this. From the top of the mountain, right? Like I've reached the top and I cannot improve more. No, it's not like that. Okay. So even for me, for a long time, I had this image, you know, that I fantasized about, like, oh, you know this person that is running A78 figure business? You know, has this type of body composition or muscle composition, you know, is this type of way to people. She's kind, she's empathetic. She's so generous. She's loving. Well, then I would hear myself in conversations and how I'm talking about myself. And I'm saying things like, Carl, please, you know, like, please, I don't have patience for people. I'm not a people person. I may be you identify as somebody who is not a people person. You're not patient yet. You want to be that person who speaks to other people into other people's lives and build a whole business around it. Really? No wonder. That is why a lot of times, you know, when I try to start this kind of thing, this kind of business is kind of, coaching or whatever. I start, I stop, I start, I stop because I have sets some kind of standard for myself that is based on my identity, of how I see myself. So remember the habit I said, you've been trying to break or you've been trying to keep for a long time, and you keep breaking it off and on, off and on. Now I want you to think about the kind of person that actually has that kind of habits, that that is just how they are. You probably, you probably know of somebody or know someone personally who is already living out their habits. How would you describe them? What words would you use to describe them? Confident. Bold. Discerning. Like what word is that? You need to start seeing yourself being described as that word. You identify is kind of like a thermostat. Right. That's that's a great analogy for it. When you set the thermostat of your house to a certain temperature, how does the thermostat work? Let's say my own right now is 17°C, right? So if so, that means I'm trying to keep it warm because it's warmer than it is outside. Right? So outside, let's say it's 12°C. This thing is going to heat up. And then when the room gets to 17°C is going to just calm down and just be there. If if it tries to go above that 18 degrees or whatever, it comes down again, brings it down to 17. That right there is what identity is. That is why have you ever noticed? Why sometimes maybe. Let's use your bank account for example. You know, you get to a certain level. Yeah. And then and then before you know it again, it's come back down to this level saying, what is going on? I was doing so well. Right. Or you start a walk out program and you go in and it's great. Or like Kelly, she's following all her protocols and then all of a sudden it's like, what is wrong with me? Hey. First of all, there's nothing wrong with you. You're just not aligned to the kind of person that needs to know that you need to be in order to live that kind of life, right? You're calling yourself something else, or you're trying to be something else. No wonder it feels frustrating to try to build a new habit. Hey, quick break! I want to invite you to something powerful. If you're a high achieving professional who feels burnt out, stuck, or like you've checked all the boxes but still feel unfulfilled. I've been there. That's why I offer free strategy sessions to help you reconnect with purpose and get clear on your next bold move. I'd love to support you. Just hit the link in the description to book your call. Now back to the episode. So before you go, sets in a bunch of to do's and a bunch of, you know, they call it habit stacking, right? Go back and think to yourself like, who is the kind of person who has this kind of habit? What kind of person do I need to be so that I can actually have and sustain this habit? This is not an easy exercise to do, because when you do that exercise, you will you will come to determine to within yourself, do I even really want this? Why do I want this? Why do I want to be this kind of person so that, you know, you don't find yourself going from one type of habit to another trying to build something here, then you're driving yourself crazy because every time you do that, you start, stop, start, stop eroding your own self-confidence. You make a promise to yourself, and then you don't do it. Oh, for the next, for the next one month, I'm going to eat more veggies every day. Day four. You know, I was so tired of this because when you hear yourself talking, I hear so thinking. You know, thinking because I'm not I'm not a vegetable person. I'm not a broccoli type of person. Well, how do you plan to sustain a habit of eating broccoli every day or eating greens every day? If you think of yourself as these are all the time for that, I'm not. I'm not that kind of person. Hopefully you're making that connection, but I want to quickly expand on something that I mentioned earlier, which is eroding on your self-confidence. Every time you make a promise to yourself. In fact, I just went live on, talking about this on Instagram not too long ago. But every time you make a promise to yourself and you don't keep it, you break your own self-confidence. And then you need to start asking yourself, self, can I even count on you? Do you have your own back? You cannot answer that question until you solve the identity problem. And when you get to the identity program and you start asking yourself, why do I want this? When you come up with your reason why that is your opportunity to raise your standard. Let's go back to the thermostat example. We said it. I said -17. But I actually really wanted to be 20. So maybe it's time for me to raise my standards and and increase that temperature to 20. Because no matter what I do, no matter, you know, how many windows I open or close, I set the thermostat to 17. It's going to bring back the room temperature to 17. No matter your efforts, no matter how much you set out your clothes in front of you as a cue your workout clothes because you want to get to the gym. You want to make it a routine. If you don't see yourself as maybe a gym rat, for example. Honey, you're not going to make it a habit. And here's another thing I want to quickly tackle while I'm on this. If you are judging people who are actually living out this kind of habits very well, how do you expect to be like them or to get their own results? If you are judging that guy like, oh, he's always like, what's in his muscles? Is is it because someone was going to get to the gym? I broke my pizza. Let me have it and then I'll tell you, don't rubbing your belly and you wake up feeling awful. The next thing you sign up for yet another, challenge gym membership to work with some kind of trainer. And you want to lose weight. But then you are here judging the person who is doing who is doing exactly that. You're irritated when you see somebody put in a post about, oh, you guys, I just landed in new clients, blah blah blah blah. But then deep down, you also want to start your own side hustle and land your own first client rather than what you feel judging them. Of course, you will never strive to be like them because you don't like them. We'll go into this is in fact, this whole judging what you actually want to be is a completely different conversation. We'll come back to it later, but I have to just quickly touch on it because sometimes that is what is stopping you or stopping us, I should say, from building the habits. There is no point impressions of myself. I'm preaching to you guys. If we don't actually come out with ways we can action this advice right? Remember I told you to think about people in your lives or people you know of that are displaying that those habits that you really want to build in your life and think about the words that you use to describe them. Well, those are the words that you want people to describe you by as well. Or another way is, let me ask you this. How do you want people to describe you in a way that represents your best self? If someone were watching your life as a movie and they're just watching that, you know, it's popcorn like, oh, interesting. Oh, look at him. Oh no. He said he was going to go talk to that new prospect of client. But why? Why is he doing that? How are you going to describe you? They might describe you as unserious. They might describe you as flighty. They might describe you as unreliable. Right. But then if they are watching you and they say, oh, wow, look at wow. Such a go getter. She said she was going to set up that meeting with, with that company as she did it. Oh, wow. She's confident. So what are those words for you? You need to write it down. Put it somewhere you can see it, where you remind you on a daily basis. Say, hey, this is who you are trying to be. So that you might see that visual cue at the moment, or you are trying to talk yourself out of not doing that thing, and then voila, you remember, you make the connection like we the kind of person that I want to be. This is what that person actually do in this situation. This is the habits that they will form and they will don't procrastinate on it. You're welcome. Another very effective way that I have used for myself is to walk from the end back to the present, right? Or walk with the end in mind. Now what does that mean? Fast forward many years from now. Where? At your funeral. What do you want people to say about you? How do you want your coworkers to describe you? How do you want strangers that you met on the road? Describe your loved one via your funeral. But you get what I need. How do you want your family and your friends? Your former business partners? How do you want them to describe you? How do you want your children to describe you? That's right. There forms the basis of how you identify yourself. It forms the basis for any kind of habits that you want to build. It's not about building habits. It's not about like the little mechanics such as, oh, you know, it's tiny habits. Just get 1% better every day. No, there is there is room for that. Yes, but not before you fix your identity. Not before you reset your thermostat. But here's another thing. You. I'm going to say this with love because I say this to myself as well. When you have been working on something or something that's been stagnant for a long time, and you know deep down you could do more about it. You could you could be better in building that habit. Either raise your standards or let it go. Yeah, for some things is just time to let it go. Maybe you're not that person that you think you are. And I know this is so contrary to what most other speakers out there would say, but I'm going to tell you, listen. If you have been trying to build a habit of waking up early in the morning and spending the first hour of your day, or two hours of your day working on your own dreams or something, before you go to your 9 to 5 and you're just not doing it, either raise your standards or let it go. Let it go because it's not that important to you. Let it go because you're just not that person who does that until you start to identify with that type of person and just let it go for yourself. Who are we fooling? Go work on something else. Maybe there's another name that the deeper habits that you need to work on before that. And that's where there is that block, that block out there. Or. Or you could raise your standards. You could redefine who you are. You could redefine how you think of yourself, how you talk about yourself. Why? Because you are that important. Because you are worth all that effort. Why? Because of the lives that are attached to you as a result of showing up for yourself. Why? Because of the lies that attach to those lives, that attach to you. And their lives are better for it because you showed up for yourself. But if that's not important, please let it go. Let it go. Be at peace. Stop tormenting yourself. I need to do that. Oh my goodness. Do it! I'll stop talking about it already. Please. I know most people don't want to hear this. It's not. It's not friendly. But this is the Grow with Careful podcast. We get real and we laugh about it too. Because don't take our souls too damn seriously. So. Which one are you going to do? Are you going to raise your thermostat temperature, or are you going to just turn it off? Let's keep it simple. But then let's stick to the basics. Before you start getting technical about habits, get real about who you really are. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you at the next episode. Have a wonderful day. Thanks for tuning in to grow with Keppel. If this episode sparked something for you. Subscribe. Share it with a friend and keep growing.