Your Heartfelt Why · Anti-Burnout Labs · Part 2 of the C.H.A.N.G.E. series
Most behaviour change advice focuses heavily on action: the right plan, the right routine, the right level of discipline.
I’ve been chasing those trends too, and I kept trying to change the habits everyone else was changing. The habits I thought should matter … because of what I learned in my health degrees … because I needed to be seen as a responsible, health-conscious and productive person.
But I was missing asking Why. Why that change mattered for my life? What kind of life was I trying to build?
Underneath behaviour, there is usually something deeper shaping whether change feels sustainable and meaningful or exhausting and forced. We need to answer the why question to be able to break those subconscious patterns of resistance to change.
Once you’ve chosen where to start, you need to know why.
The H in the C.H.A.N.G.E. method stands for Heartfelt Why: the deeper reason your change matters to you, the direction you want your life to move toward, and the kind of relationship you want to have with yourself while getting there. Your motivation for change.
This matters more than people often realise because behaviour is rarely driven by one single type of motivation. Most of us are moved by a combination of push and pull.
Understanding that changes how we approach change itself.
Push motivation: the role of discomfort
A lot of behaviour change begins with push motivation.
Something feels unsustainable. The constant exhaustion. Cognitive overload. Frustration. Shame induced by media messages, wellness marketing, mainstream health discourse. Emotional discomfort. Physical discomfort. A sense that your life becomes narrower but harder to manage.
Push motivation says “I can’t keep doing this,” “Something needs to change,” “I don’t want to feel this way anymore.” It relies on willpower, shame and hype. And honestly, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Pain and novelty get our attention for a reason.
Many meaningful life changes begin because something becomes difficult enough that we can no longer ignore it. We pay attention to what’s new, just in case we miss out on something our safety will depend on. Willpower can also sustain behaviour for long periods of time. Humans are capable of maintaining difficult routines, obligations, and high standards through discipline alone.
But a question more important than “Do I have enough willpower to sustain this change?” might be “At what psychological cost?”
Does the way I approach this change create more wellbeing or more internal conflict? Does it feel self-directed or driven mainly by fear and pressure? Is it sustainable within the context of my actual life. Because when change remains entirely push-driven for too long, behaviour often becomes associated with tension, self-criticism, vigilance, or wanting to prove something about yourself.
And eventually, many people burn out from trying to escape a deeply internalised self-constructed identity.
Why a heartfelt why matters
This is where a heartfelt why comes into action.
A heartfelt why creates pull. Perfect consistency and willpower are not required. The why that is personally meaningful gives you direction. A reason to keep returning to the behaviour that might seem hard but you know why that matters to you. An why that goes beyond fear, guilt, pressure, or external expectations.
Push motivation may sound like: “I hate how exhausted I feel,” “I’m scared of what will happen if I don’t change,” “I’m tired of failing at this.”
A heartfelt why sounds more like a pull: “I want enough energy to participate fully in my life,” “I want my habits to support me instead of sabotaging me,” “I want to trust myself more,” “I want to feel calmer in my own mind,” “I want to build a life that feels sustainable.”
The difference here is that one is mostly trying to escape pain, while the other creates movement toward a broaden and enriched life.
And in practice, most people need both. Push often initiates change and pull helps sustain it.
The role of identity in behaviour change
One of the reasons behaviour change becomes difficult under stress is that people do not operate entirely from conscious intention.
When cognitive resources are low, the brain relies on familiar patterns: familiar behaviours, familiar emotional responses, familiar coping strategies, and familiar identity narratives.
This is because familiar patterns require less cognitive effort than change and the human brain is very efficient in conserving energy.
Which means that when people become overwhelmed, stressed, emotionally exhausted, or overloaded with decisions, they often revert to behaviours that align with their internalised scripts and patterns.
The way Angela Duckworth puts it, people behave consistent with how they see themselves. In most situations, people act the way a person like their constructed self would act.
For example, “I’m just not a disciplined person,” “I never follow through,”“Trying to change habits doesn’t work for me.”
And repeated behaviour and repeated self-talk reinforce each other over time.
Awareness before change
We need awareness of those self-enforcing loops if we want to brake them and allow change to happen. Awareness of our unhelpful habits, but also awareness of the stories attached to those habits and how we attach them to our identity.
One of the problems with some identity-based habit advice is that it can unintentionally encourage people to fabricate an identity that feels completely unrealistic. Affirmations such as “I am now a disciplined person” or “I am completely different now” will not make you believe it. It will just create more internal conflict.
A more useful approach is to notice … Notice how you currently see yourself … How those beliefs influence your behaviour … And how certain patterns keep reinforcing themselves over time. Without attaching the patterns to your identity.
For example, based on observation, “I never follow through,” may be reframed as “I tend to abandon routines when I overload myself with unrealistic expectations” .
Behaviour is changeable, even the patterns that feel familiar.
Separating identity from behaviour
A heartfelt why isn’t a goal dressed up in emotional language. It’s a values statement about who you want to be and how you want to feel in your own life.
It often emerges through a particular kind of reflection: not “what do I want to achieve?” but “what does a good day feel like for me? What does it feel like to be well in my body? What kind of person do I want to be — not for others, but for myself?”
The answers to those questions tend to be more durable than any outcome-based goal, because they’re not contingent on specific results. You don’t need to have lost the weight to feel energetic. You don’t need to have run a 5K to feel like someone who respects their body. The feeling (the identity) is accessible in moments when you are tired, when you doubt your ability to make it, before the big outcomes materialise.
This is also why the workbook asks you to imagine a great day in your life before it asks you anything about your specific change. The vivid, embodied sense of how you want to feel is often a better compass than any abstract goal and it’s far more motivating when things get hard.
A note on keeping your why compassionate
This might sound like a cheesy cliche but it’s helpful to keep in mind: your why should support you, not prosecute you.
If you write out your heartfelt why and it contains words like “finally,” “stop being,” “fix,” or “I’ve had enough”, it’s worth reading it back slowly and asking whose voice that is. Often it’s not yours. It’s an internalised critic, a comparison to someone else, a standard that was never really about your wellbeing in the first place.
A why rooted in self-compassion is not softer or less motivating than one rooted in criticism. Self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff has shown repeatedly that people who treat themselves with kindness after setbacks are more likely to try again. The compassionate why keeps the door open. The critical why closes it, bit by bit, over time.
Your why doesn’t need to be grand (it can be though). But also can be simple: I want to feel well in my body. I want to have energy for the things I love. I want to stop surviving and start feeling like myself again.
If you want to work through your own heartfelt why and a step-by-step guide on setting up your first (or next) behaviour change experiment aligned with your desired identity, but not required to suddenly make you that, this is my new Change Method (based on the old CHANGE Formula but more aligned with my philosophy).
Next in the series: A (Action), where we get into the science of habit design and why the size of your goal matters far more than the strength of your intention.
References & further reading:
- Ryan, R.M. & Deci, E.L. (2000), “Self-determination theory,” American Psychologist.
- Brown, B. (2010), The Gifts of Imperfection.
- Clear, J. (2018), Atomic Habits.
- Neff, K. (2015), Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.
- Oyserman, D. et al. (2006), “Identity-based motivation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.