The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)

[Days 21-30] Phase Three: Unstoppable
When  you  enter  the  final  10  days—the  home  stretch—the  few
people  that  make  it  this  far  almost  always  make  a  detrimental
mistake: adhering to the popular advice from the many experts who
claim it only takes 21 days to form a new habit.
Those  experts  are  partly  correct.  It  does  take  21  days—the  first
two phases—to form a new habit. But the third 10-day phase is crucial
to  sustaining  your  new  habit,  long  term.  The  final  10  days  is  where
you  positively  reinforce  and  associate  pleasure  with  your  new  habit.
You’ve been primarily associating pain and discomfort with it during
the first 20 days. Instead of hating and resisting your new habit, you
start feeling proud of yourself for making it this far.
Phase  Three  is  also  where  the  actual transformation  occurs,  as
your new habit becomes part of your identity. It transcends the space
between something you’re trying  and who you’re becoming. You start
to see yourself as someone who lives the habit.
Back to our example of waking up early: you go from having an
identity  that  says  I  am not  a  “morning  person”  to I  am  a  morning

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person! Instead  of  dreading  your  alarm  clock  in  the  morning,  now
when  the  alarm  goes  off  you  are  excited  to  wake  up  and  get  going
because you’ve done it for over 20 days in a row. You’re starting to
see and feel the benefits.
Too  many  people  get  overly  confident,  pat  themselves  on  the
back  and  think: I’ve  done  it  for  20  days  so  I’m  just  going  to  take  a
few days off. The problem is that those first twenty days are the most
challenging part of the process. Taking a few days off before you’ve
invested  the  necessary  time  into  positively  reinforcing  the  habit
makes  it  difficult  to  get  back  on.  It’s  days  21-30  where  you  really
start  enjoying  the  habit,  which  is  what  will  make  you  continue  it  in
the future.