Personal Growth
Why Starting a Good Habit Beats Fighting a Bad One
Coach Marvin Mikle explains why putting your energy into one new habit works better than trying to quit an old one through willpower alone.
Why Is It So Hard to Break a Bad Habit?
Video from Chaos Development.
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Why is it so hard to break a bad habit?
Breaking a bad habit is hard because the habit is an outlet for energy, and removing it without a replacement leaves that energy looking for somewhere else to go. Marvin Mikle advises starting one good habit first and committing to it fully, so the new outlet gradually crowds out the old behaviour instead of fighting it head on.
Most people try to break a bad habit by attacking it head on, and many end up right back where they started. Marvin Mikle, a high performance and resilience coach and the founder of Chaos Development, argues that the fight itself is the mistake. On his Chaos Development podcast he walks through what his clients asked him for most over the previous 30 days.
Three requests topped the list: how to become the best version of themselves, how to manage stress, and how to build positive habits or unlearn bad ones. His answers share one thread. Every habit, stressor and relationship draws on the same supply of energy, and real change starts with deciding where that energy goes next.
That idea sits at the heart of his coaching philosophy, which rests on three words: chaos, energy and flow state. His show opens with the line that chaos is inevitable, but flow is a choice. The goal is not a life without pressure. It is becoming someone who can move through pressure without being thrown off course by every new problem.
Key takeaways
- Start the good habit first, because a strong new outlet for your energy will crowd out the habit you want to lose.
- Stress is not simply bad. Manage it by understanding where it comes from rather than trying to erase it.
- Find where your energy leaks, such as the daily news, and detach from whatever leaves you anxious.
- Boundaries and the five people closest to you shape who you become as much as effort does.
1. Start the good habit instead of fighting the bad one
Marvin's starting point is that every habit, good or bad, is somewhere you have been putting energy. Remove a habit without giving that energy a new home and it goes looking for one, often somewhere worse. He ties this to his faith, recalling the warning that driving out one spirit the wrong way can let seven more back in. The first question is always what the new outlet will be.
So when a client says they want to stop smoking and start going to the gym, he asks them to choose. Doing both at once splits their focus and their energy across two separate projects. His usual advice is to start the workouts and leave the cigarettes alone for now, because a good habit pursued seriously will begin to overcome the negative one on its own.
He speaks from experience. By the time he began training for special forces he smoked and drank, habits picked up in high school. He never set out to quit. He was running five to ten miles a day, and his body and lungs reached a point where he no longer had the capacity or the will to smoke. He shares it as what worked for him, not a rule for everyone.
2. Treat stress as something to understand
The second most common request was help with stress. Marvin wants clients to drop the idea that stress is simply bad. Building muscle means stressing the body at the gym, and becoming a better swimmer means stressing the lungs. Growth in anything involves stress. The real question is what kind of stress someone faces and who they need to become to handle it.
Everyday stress, such as work deadlines, children, bills and health, piles up until it feels like life itself. His answer is to focus on one thing at a time and to understand the stress before trying to beat it. Often the real problem is energy pulled in too many directions. As he puts it, where your attention goes, energy flows, so the first job is finding where the energy is leaking.
The biggest leak he sees is the news. Many clients watch it every day and finish anxious about the times we live in. His advice is blunt: if something you engage with leaves you anxious or panicked, detach from it. That applies to music, sports and screens as much as to headlines. If it is not raising your energy, it is worth switching off.
3. Boundaries, environment and flow
Becoming the best version of yourself, Marvin says, can feel scary because it means leaving the old version behind. For one client the work was mostly about boundaries: not letting people who are moving in a different direction into your space. That can mean stepping back from people who have long mattered, even family, when time with them brings anxiety, headaches or a racing heart.
Environment matters just as much. He grew up in Chicago and never expected to leave, but joining the military showed him how differently he was developing in each place. He reminds clients that they become an amalgamation of the five people closest to them. If those people always drink, smoke or party, that is the group you join. Surround yourself with people building real skills and you rise with them.
All of this feeds his definition of flow state: accepting that you cannot control every variable in life and becoming comfortable in the chaos. To release excess energy productively he recommends grounding, time in nature, journaling, a run or a simple walk. The common thread is movement, because in his view energy that stays still turns stale, and flow is the way back to balance.
