How to actually change your habits | Kim Foster | TEDxSurrey

[00:00:10]Why is it so hard to change?

[00:00:15]Honestly, I've spent the last 20 years asking that question as a doctor, as a coach, and as a human being who once believed I just wasn't the kind of person who could change.

[00:00:28]You probably know the feeling. Maybe it was a New Year's resolution or a milestone birthday. Something that made you say, "That's it. Time to turn things around." So, you downloaded a habit tracker, bought a blender, a yoga mat, and enough kale to alarm your family.

[00:00:48]And then two weeks later, there you were, side eyeing the blender like it betrayed you and pretending the habit tracker never existed.

[00:00:58]Back to the same patterns and the same routines.

[00:01:02]I've been there too, many times with my health, my career, and my money. For a while, my credit card lived in the freezer, literally in a block of ice beside the frozen peas.

[00:01:16]A solid plan until the night I wanted a pair of boots badly enough to melt the ice around it with a haird dryer.

[00:01:26]I tried every budgeting trick.

[00:01:29]Spreadsheets, envelopes, you name it.

[00:01:32]But nothing lasted. And I kept thinking, I'm doing all the right things. Why can't I stick with this?

[00:01:41]That cycle of hope, effort, and defeat can leave you wondering, "What's wrong with me?"

[00:01:49]But what if nothing is wrong with you?

[00:01:53]What if the reason change doesn't last isn't because you're doing it wrong, but because you're asking the wrong question.

[00:02:03]We all want to change something. Lose weight, start a business, be more confident, get more sleep.

[00:02:11]And there's no shortage of strategies. 5 a.m. routines, cold plunges, vision boards, bio hacks.

[00:02:19]But if knowing what to do were enough, we'd all be thriving by now. So why is it still so hard?

[00:02:28]As a family doctor, I watched patients struggle, not with understanding what to do, but with actually doing it and staying consistent.

[00:02:40]So I started asking different questions.

[00:02:43]Not how do we build better habits, but something deeper.

[00:02:48]What makes change stick? Why do some people succeed and others don't even when they're trying just as hard?

[00:02:57]And the more I looked, the more I started to see a pattern.

[00:03:02]And then I found a study that offered a fascinating clue.

[00:03:07]In 2011, ahead of an election, a team of researchers from Stanford and Harvard asked one group, "How important is it to you to vote in the upcoming election?"

[00:03:18]They asked another group, "How important is it to you to be a voter in the upcoming election?"

[00:03:25]And in that study, that one tiny shift from doing to being made people significantly more likely to show up at the polls.

[00:03:36]Why? Because one focused on action, the other focused on self-concept.

[00:03:45]Once I saw that, I started seeing it everywhere. People who called themselves runners, they were still out there in February, long after the resolution crowd disappeared.

[00:03:55]People who'd said, "I'm trying to run more." Most of them were already back on the couch.

[00:04:02]So, I began to wonder, what if the real obstacle isn't your habits or your willpower?

[00:04:10]What if it's your identity?

[00:04:14]Not just what you do, but who you believe yourself to be?

[00:04:20]When I look back, that's exactly what was happening with my credit card in the freezer. I wasn't just fighting a spending habit. I was defending an identity.

[00:04:31]I still saw myself as someone who's bad with money. And every time I said that, I wasn't describing the problem. I was reinforcing it. I had unknowingly written an instruction manual for myself. Here's who you are. Here's what you do. Because when we believe the story, we live the story. That's what identity does. It tells your brain how to behave even when you're desperate to change the script.

[00:05:03]But when you change the who, you change the what.

[00:05:09]Picture it this way. You download a fancy new app on your phone, but it keeps crashing, won't load, glitches out. Turns out your phone's operating system hasn't been updated in years.

[00:05:24]That's what it's like when we try to fix our lives from the outside. New habits, new hacks, new goals. But underneath the identity you're running on, it's still the old version. It sounds like I'm not good at this.

[00:05:42]I never follow through.

[00:05:44]I always put others first.

[00:05:48]That's the outdated OS. And those shiny new habits crash, not because they were wrong, but because they weren't supported by the system underneath.

[00:05:59]Real change doesn't last until you update the system. Until you upgrade who you believe you are.

[00:06:08]Because here's what I've seen again and again.

[00:06:12]Identity always wins.

[00:06:17]And the research backs this up. For example, studies show that people who define themselves as non-smokers are consistently more successful at quitting than those who say, "I'm trying to quit."

[00:06:31]Why? Because when a behavior aligns with your identity, your actions naturally follow.

[00:06:39]But when it doesn't align, when it challenges the person you've always believed yourself to be, that's when change gets hard.

[00:06:48]Because we're not just afraid of failing, we're afraid of losing who we've always been.

[00:06:57]And that's the part that fascinates me.

[00:06:59]Even when a new habit is something that you genuinely want, if it's not aligned with your current identity, your subconscious mind will resist it. It's like your subconscious is one of those nasty shopladies in Pretty Woman.

[00:07:14]new habit walks in and your mind looks it up and down and goes, "You obviously are in the wrong place. Please leave."

[00:07:22]Your mind prioritizes what's familiar, not what's better.

[00:07:29]And here's what I've come to believe.

[00:07:32]Identity isn't just the missing link to small daily behavior change like going to the gym. It's also what shapes your entire trajectory.

[00:07:42]Because once I started seeing this pattern in my patients, I started seeing it in myself.

[00:07:49]Two decades into practicing medicine, I felt increasingly misaligned, not burned out, misaligned.

[00:07:58]I wanted to reach people before they got sick, not just treat them after.

[00:08:04]I wanted to teach, to create, to help people change their lives in a deeper way. But I couldn't seem to walk away.

[00:08:14]It wasn't the work itself. It was the identity that I had built around it.

[00:08:20]I had lived that story for so long. I couldn't imagine another way. I kept telling myself, "This is who I am. This is what I do.

[00:08:31]This is what people expect of me."

[00:08:34]But the truth is that story was outdated and it was keeping me small.

[00:08:41]And maybe you've been there, too.

[00:08:44]You're not stuck. You're just loyal to an old story.

[00:08:50]William Faulner said, "You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore."

[00:08:59]For me, losing sight of the shore meant letting go of who I'd been and giving myself permission to become someone new.

[00:09:09]A creator, an educator, a YouTuber.

[00:09:14]Roles that didn't come with a title or prestige or any kind of safety net.

[00:09:19]A new identity that made no sense on paper, but made complete sense inside.

[00:09:29]Once I stopped clinging to doctor as my core identity, then the bold decisions became possible.

[00:09:37]I remember handing in my resignation.

[00:09:41]I thought it would feel terrifying.

[00:09:44]It didn't. It felt true.

[00:09:48]And on my last day after my last patient, I walked out of the clinic, got into my car, and ugly cried for a solid 15 minutes.

[00:09:59]I cried for my 17-year-old self who had dreamed of becoming a doctor. And now it was over.

[00:10:08]But then, as I drove home, music up, windows down, I started to feel something else.

[00:10:17]I could finally breathe.

[00:10:21]And that's the power of identity. It doesn't just help you change, it sets you free.

[00:10:29]If your current identity is misaligned with the change that you want to make, whether that's a small change or a big one, the answer isn't to push harder.

[00:10:40]It's to pause and look within.

[00:10:44]You begin by recognizing the story that you've been living inside and then asking yourself a simple but seismic question.

[00:10:54]What if that story isn't true anymore?

[00:10:59]Right now, I'm learning to golf. And when I say learning, I mean humbling myself weekly in front of retired men named Roger.

[00:11:08]But the more that I identify as a golfer, the more I start showing up like one, I book lessons, watch swing breakdowns, even bought the shoes. And I don't say I'm dabbling anymore. I say I'm a golfer, not because I've mastered it, but because that's who I'm becoming.

[00:11:29]So when you're trying to change, the real question isn't what should I do?

[00:11:34]It's who do I need to become?

[00:11:37]Because when that internal shift happens, everything else starts to follow. Not because it suddenly becomes easy, but because it finally makes sense.

[00:11:49]So, let me leave you with this. Whatever change you want to make, you're no longer approaching it as the person that you've been, but as the person that you're becoming.

[00:12:01]That old credit card does not live in my freezer anymore because I stopped needing to protect myself from my own story.

[00:12:10]And this is what true reinvention looks like. Because when you redesign your identity from the inside out, your whole life begins to shift.

[00:12:20]You parent differently, lead differently, create differently, serve differently, and that ripples outward because people who know who they are are the ones who change the world. Thank you.