How long does it take to form a habit? The best-known study puts the median at 66 days, but the range ran from 18 to 254 days, so there’s no magic number. Stephen Guise, author of Mini Habits, says that’s exactly why you shouldn’t build your plan around a deadline. Make the habit so small you can do it on your worst day, keep the streak going and let consistency do the work.

I personally purchased Mini Habits, and I’ve got to say it’s a very well-written book and it’s well-researched, too. If you’ve been following our work on Addicted2Success, you know habits are the crucial key elements to success. You really need to focus on creating successful habits. Stephen guides you in the right direction when it comes to creating successful habits.

Is it really 66 days?

Consistency is key. When I tell people I coach how to build a new habit, I tell them to make sure it’s not a boring habit. You’ve got to make it exciting too, because you’re not going to stick to it if it’s boring day in and day out. Then I asked Stephen: is the research correct when they say it takes 66 days to solidify a new habit?

“On average,” he said, but there’s really just one study on how long it takes to form a habit. That’s the University College London study led by Phillippa Lally, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology. Volunteers picked an eating, drinking or exercise behavior to do daily, and the median time to reach their peak of automaticity was 66 days. The range was 18 to 254 days.

“The range was pretty crazy,” Stephen said. “So personally, I don’t like aiming for that magical number of days.”

Where the 21-day myth came from

Stephen also took apart the 21-day idea. He traced it to a surgeon’s observation that got “blown up” until people ran off with it. The UCL behavioral science team tracked it to the preface of Psycho-Cybernetics by plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz. Maltz wrote that it usually takes “a minimum of about 21 days” for an old mental image to change, using examples like patients getting used to a new face or the feeling of a phantom limb after an amputation.

That’s about getting used to a change, not building a habit. And notice the word “minimum.” Somewhere along the way, a floor turned into a deadline.

Here’s why it matters. If you expect a habit to lock in by day 21 and it doesn’t, it’s easy to decide you’ve failed and quit. If you know it could take two months or more, a slow day 30 is just day 30.

Why so much of your life runs on habit

When I asked Stephen what excites him about habits, he pointed to research from Duke University. Psychologists there, summarizing diary studies where people logged what they were doing through the day, found that about 45% of everyday behaviors were repeated in the same place almost every day. “If you don’t have very good habits, you’re not going to have a very good life,” Stephen said. “If you do have good habits, then life is just so much easier and more enjoyable.”

I think one of the biggest issues you have as an entrepreneur is that you’re running on autopilot most of the time. When your life is overcomplicated, you become unaware of what’s really going on inside your own mind. So I asked Stephen how to become more aware of your habits.

His answer was simple. Working on any new habit builds the habit of mindfulness: being aware of what you’re doing and why. “A bad habit a lot of people have is not questioning why they’re doing something in any given moment,” he said. Exercise and meditation are his picks for a first habit to stack others on. Meditation quiets your conscious thoughts. That’s really what you want to do. You want to quiet that overanalytical side of your mind.

Make it too small to fail

Willpower plays a huge part in solidifying your habits, so I asked Stephen about it. He called willpower the key component in habit formation. “The whole idea behind mini habits is to create behaviors that you always have enough willpower to meet,” he said.

His example was one push-up a day. It came out of frustration. On his bad days, he couldn’t face a 20- or 30-minute workout, so he’d feel lazy and guilty, and that spiral weakened his willpower even more. One push-up is so small you can always force yourself to get down and do it.

“When I first did my first one push-up, at that time I thought I was crazy for even thinking about it,” he said. But once he was down there, he kept going. He used something like 20 to 30 micro goals that added up to the same 30-minute workout he couldn’t do when he aimed for it as one big chunk. He calls the extra work bonus reps.

You’ve got to take baby steps. Just one little step, then the next step, then the next. And it compounds. Stephen told me his push-up habit eventually turned into going to the gym five or six days a week. From one push-up to six days a week in the gym, that’s a pretty good result.

Stop training yourself to fail

I asked Stephen about something he calls success cycling. A lot of people set a goal, fall short, and repeat that until they expect to fall short. That expectation then makes the next goal harder. “Success cycling is just the idea of not failing anymore,” he said. “Because if you’re always succeeding, you’re going to start expecting success.”

That’s why a tiny daily target is so powerful. Every day you hit it is one of the small wins that rewires what you expect from yourself.

It always seems like successful people have it on their mind. It becomes them. Instead of “Oh, I need to do that,” it’s “I am this. I am going to do this. I must do this.” Stephen agreed. “It’s identity-based. Exactly.”

When I asked what really separates successful people from those just floating through life with their habits, he said strategy first, then knowing how to act when you don’t feel like it. Picture an Olympic athlete telling their coach, “Sorry, coach, I don’t really feel like training today.” It doesn’t happen. They’re consistent.

And what should you remove from your life to stick to your habits? Self-doubt, Stephen said. It has a habitual component too, and turning it into self-confidence is exactly what small, winnable habits are built to do.

How to form a habit while you wait for it to stick

I asked Stephen how he maps out his habits. Write them down? Visualize them? He used a giant desk calendar on the wall and drew a big check mark every day he did his mini habits, sometimes with an encouraging phrase. “Over time you see the streak of checks,” he said. “Don’t break the streak.”

There’s good news in that 66-day study too. Missing one opportunity didn’t materially affect habit formation. Stephen’s rule is simple: if you miss a day, it’s not a huge deal, but you definitely don’t want to miss two days in a row.

Tracking apps can help as well. They’re great for procrastination, because it’s good to track your progress and know you’re sticking to what you originally planned. A little accountability is what everyone needs.

But be careful how you use an accountability partner. Stephen pointed to research suggesting that announcing your goals and celebrating early can demotivate you. Don’t just tell someone, “I’m going to lose 100 pounds.” Tell them, “Keep me accountable.” It’s all in the way you use your words. You’ve got to use your words correctly.

The two mistakes that stall a new habit

When I asked about common mistakes, Stephen named two.

The first is having too many at once. One guy tried 10 mini habits. Even small tasks get overwhelming at that number. He recommends one to four, and he does best with three.

The second is not taking it seriously. One push-up a day can look meaningless. “Really it is,” he said, “because you’re changing your brain’s neural pathways. Even if you’re only doing one push-up a day, you will still develop a mini-sized habit.”

His biggest discovery from all his research? Consistency over quantity. He used to run hot for a couple of weeks, then stop for a couple of weeks. Once he got consistent with smaller behaviors, it kept building until he was doing more than he ever did on his motivation cycles.

A reading habit I’m building

We got talking about books, and I shared one of the habits I’m trying to create. If I find a book I really love on my Kindle, I’ll order the paperback as well so I can go back through it and highlight it. With every book I find interesting, I try to highlight it or write a little essay about what I learned from each chapter. I’ve found it’s really working, in the sense that I remember a lot more of what I read.

Here’s the method. Read the whole chapter. Turn your Kindle off. An hour later, sit down and try to remember as much as you can, and write it out like an essay. It’s not going to be word for word. It’s your perception of it, your understanding of it, and it solidifies that much stronger in your mind. They say that if you can dig into your memory and pull it out, it’s going to stick. Stephen liked it so much he said he needed to start doing it with a notepad.

When I asked for his last 30-second speech to the world, he brought it home. “Consistency is king and habits are king. So drop the big goals of trying to lose 100 pounds and focus more on the daily processes that will lead you to your goals.” His last line is the one to keep: “Tomorrow’s version of you is going to be more like today’s version of you than you realize.” It’s the reason showing up every day beats any number of days on a calendar.

How long does it take to form a habit? A quick plan

1. Expect about two months or more, and don’t panic if it takes longer.
2. Shrink the habit until you could do it on your worst day.
3. Do bonus reps when you feel good, but count the minimum as a win.
4. Track it with a wall calendar or app and protect the streak.
5. If you miss a day, get back on the next day. Never miss two in a row.
6. Keep it to one to four habits at a time.
7. Ask a partner to keep you accountable instead of announcing big goals.

FAQ

How long does it take to form a habit?

In the most cited study, from University College London, the median was 66 days to reach peak automaticity, with a range of 18 to 254 days. It depends on the person and the behavior.

Is the 21-day habit rule true?

No. It traces back to plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz, who wrote that people take a minimum of about 21 days to adjust to a change like a new face. He wasn’t measuring habit formation.

Does missing one day ruin a habit?

No. The 66-day study found missing one opportunity didn’t materially affect habit formation. Stephen Guise’s rule is to never miss two days in a row.

What is a mini habit?

It’s a positive behavior so small you can do it every day, even on your worst day, like one push-up. Stephen Guise says the point is to always have enough willpower to meet it.

How many habits should you build at once?

Stephen Guise recommends one to four at a time. He does best with three. More than that gets overwhelming, even when each habit is small.

Some of the most useful business lessons right now are coming from the car industry. Carmakers have realized that shipping a product is no longer the finish line. The winners are building vehicles that keep observing, learning and improving long after they leave the factory, and the dealer lot, for that matter. Entrepreneurs can learn from that and put it to work in their own companies.

The shift is being driven by the vehicle AI platform – software that enables manufacturers to collect the right data from their vehicles, work out why problems happen and act on what they learn at every stage of a vehicle’s life, from testing to service. According to automotive software company Sonatus, software-defined vehicles were never the destination. They are the foundation for something bigger: vehicles that take part in a continuous cycle of observation, analysis, action and improvement.

That cycle is just as useful for a founder with a five-person team as it is for an automaker with millions of cars on the road.

The Problem: Reactive and labor-intensive

Sonatus points out that, despite advances in connectivity and software, vehicle development, validation and service remain largely reactive and labor-intensive. Engineers spend significant time gathering data, investigating issues and deploying fixes after problems occur.

If that sounds familiar, it should. Many small businesses run the same way. A customer complains, so someone digs through emails to find out what happened. A product fails, so the team scrambles to patch it. Cash runs short, so the founder starts pulling reports. Every fire gets put out, but little is learned, and the same fires keep returning.

The stakes are real. Sonatus notes that warranty and recall costs run into the billions of dollars each year for automakers, and that poor service experiences damage loyalty and retention. Your numbers are smaller, but the principle holds: problems caught late cost far more than problems caught early.

Step One: Observe the right things

The first part of the cycle is collecting the right data at the right time. In the automotive world, that means capturing the signals and context that explain what happened and what led up to it, rather than hoarding everything. Sonatus says this precision cuts transmission, storage and processing costs while improving diagnostic accuracy. The company reports that its data collection technology has been in production since 2020 and now supports more than 8 million vehicles across several global manufacturers.

For a business owner, the takeaway is to resist the urge to track everything. Pick a short list of signals that genuinely predict trouble or growth, such as refund rates, response times, repeat purchase rates and customer effort scores. A dashboard with five meaningful numbers beats one with 50 that no one reads.

Step Two: Analyze across silos

Raw data is only useful when someone connects the dots. The automotive approach combines vehicle data with engineering knowledge and details like service history, then looks across domains to find root causes that traditional analysis often misses.

Businesses have the same blind spot. Sales data sits in one system, support tickets in another and product usage in a third. Each team sees just one part of the picture. Try putting them side by side. When refunds spike, what do support tickets say? Which customers were affected, and what did they have in common? Asking “why” across departments is where the real insight lives.

Step Three: Act where the action is

The third stage is acting on what you learn, and this is where edge AI comes in. By running intelligence in the vehicle itself, where the data is generated, cars can respond in real time. Sonatus says this reduces latency and cloud dependency while protecting data privacy.

The business parallel is decision rights. If every small issue has to travel up to the founder before anything happens, your response time is limited by your inbox. Give frontline employees clear guidelines and the authority to fix problems on the spot, whether that is issuing a refund, expediting a shipment or flagging a defect. Decisions made close to the customer are faster and usually better.

Step Four: Close the loop

The final piece is what turns a process into a system. In the automotive model, learning from the entire fleet is fed back into the vehicles, so each one improves over time. Insights gathered on a test track or through everyday driving can flow into future models and higher quality.

For your business, closing the loop means making sure lessons stick. After every incident or major win, write down what happened, what you changed and what you will do differently. Update your playbooks, checklists and onboarding materials. Otherwise, the knowledge walks out the door with the person who learned it.

Where to start this week

You don’t need an AI budget to begin. Try this:

• Choose five signals that tell you early when something is going wrong.
• Review them weekly with one person from each team.
• Trace one recurring problem back to its root cause across departments.
• Empower your team to resolve a defined category of issues without approval.
• Document one lesson each week and update a playbook with it.

The bottom line

The cars of the future will keep getting better because their makers built a loop: observe, analyze, act, improve. Your business can do the same, with spreadsheets and weekly meetings if that’s what you have today. The goal is to stop reacting to problems and start building a business that learns from each one.

As a social media influencer, nothing feels more natural than constantly putting yourself out there. Audiences can tell when someone is genuine, and your personality is why they’ll follow you in the first place. Sharing tends to happen without a second thought, and the more you do it, the more unique your personal brand becomes.

That said, visibility also comes with security risks and responsibilities toward yourself and your community. Here’s why data security is important not just for keeping some information private as a public person, but also for protecting the reputation of what you’ve painstakingly built.

It Prevents Account Takeovers

Your socials are your bread and butter, so losing access to them is definitely the worst-case scenario. You’re effectively cut off from the channels you do business through, but the reputation damage you might suffer is even more damning. Even getting your accounts back and explaining what happened may not be enough to fix the damage if your account and name were misused to push scams onto or trick your followers.

Securing account access is thankfully a straightforward top priority. Each of your social channels, your business email account, your SMM, etc., needs a strong, unique password. A password manager will help streamline this. And if you’re weighing your options, user sentiment like you’ll find in this NordPass review can help you decide.

Also, protect your passwords all with multi-factor authentication and be suspicious of unknown login attempts. After you’ve secured your accounts, end unfamiliar sessions on key accounts to kick out attackers who might be biding their time.

You’re Reducing the Likelihood of Doxxing and Unwanted Interactions

Sharing what you’re up to and what you’re into is a natural way of keeping followers engaged. A detail here and there doesn’t look like much, but it can add up and expose far more than you’re comfortable with. Fans might use such tidbits to figure out your home address or phone number and give you their unwanted attention. Haters and stalkers may not be as harmless.

Take control of what information you share. Be mindful of publishing your real-time location or posts that could reveal personal info about yourself. You’ll also want to set up business contacts separate from personal ones and use those for professional interactions.

Since you’re a public persona, plenty of information is already out there that you don’t know about or consent to. Incogni data removal tool, for example, will let you request that such information be removed from data broker and people-search sites. This will reduce your unwanted digital footprint and give you greater peace of mind.

You’re Strengthening Business Relationships

Working with agencies and negotiating with sponsors is vital to growing your brand. It also inevitably involves exchanges that contain sensitive information like briefs for campaigns that are about to launch, not to mention contracts and payment details. If this information leaks, you risk being seen as unprofessional and may get fewer collaboration opportunities in the future.

Always have a separate email address for professional correspondence and make sure it has a unique password and MFA. Send confidential documents only through secure channels. Even then, make sure to use individual links that expire after your business is done.

You’re Protecting Followers’ Personal Info and Trust

Don’t forget that you also likely manage followers’ data alongside your own. Every survey, newsletter signup, community membership, or giveaway encourages people to provide info that can be misused if not handled carefully. You don’t want to be responsible for followers’ brimming spam folders, and you definitely don’t want to experience the backlash.

The best approach is to collect as little information as possible to still allow a promotion or event to go smoothly. Restrict access to the information you do collect and delete followers’ personal information once there’s no more need to keep it.

Conclusion

It takes time and effort to build up a personal brand, while a single misstep is enough to undermine it. You have to be visible to thrive, yet that doesn’t mean that you can’t take control of your online presence. Securing the accounts you depend on, as well as being mindful of what you expose and who you trust, goes a long way.

How to turn pain into purpose starts with a decision you make before you feel ready: whatever this is, it’s going to be used for something. Coach Nash Mackey, who lost his eldest brother and then his younger sister to suicide within months of each other, calls it turning the mess in your life into the mission. You still grieve. You talk it out, focus on what you can control and link the loss to something bigger than yourself.

This article talks about suicide and grief. If you’re struggling, please reach out now. In the US, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. In Australia, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Nash and I have worked together for many years and coached hundreds of people together. I initially started out coaching him, and then I’ve seen him become somebody who coaches others. Every time I brought Nash in to coach the coaches I was training and certifying, they loved him. He doesn’t just theoretically understand things. He lives it and applies it. And if you really want to grow in personal development, that’s the point: you must implement.

Where his question came from

Nash trained as a combat medic at 17 and worked in emergency departments and operating theatres. He saw how real the consequences are of the decisions we make, the habits we form and the beliefs we hold. That work got heavy, and for a while he turned to alcohol and what he calls low-grade habits.

Out of that came the question that still drives him: what makes humans come alive? That question really becomes your compass. When I asked what coming alive looks like day to day, he said he measures it by two things, fulfillment and purpose. “Purpose for me is, it has to have an impact on other people’s lives,” he said. “If it’s just for myself, I know it won’t sustain.”

Decide to use it before you know how it ends

When Nash got the call from his dad that his brother might have ended his life, he made a decision in the car on the way there. “I made an internal commitment that I was already going to use this for impact,” he said. “Regardless of how this goes… I am going to use this.”

He calls finding his brother the most intense situation he’s ever been in. A few months later, his younger sister ended her life too. “Burying my brother and then a few months later burying my sister,” he said. “It felt like we were in a movie.”

The commitment didn’t stop the grief. It gave the grief somewhere to go. “I could be crushed by this because it felt big,” he said. “So I was like, how can I use this? What can I do with this?”

Don’t carry it alone

I asked Nash what tools he’d suggest for anyone going through grief, loss or a heavy season that’s challenged their identity. This is the nerdy coach stuff we love.

He started with a military saying: two is one, one is none. You don’t go it alone. Nash called me during that time, and I jumped on a call with him. “I want to talk it out,” he said of why he picked up the phone. “I can’t hold this in.” He says he processes by talking in real time.

He also did something most people won’t try. The first thing he did when he got home was get into an ice bath, because for him it “brings everything to the surface.” He’s clear that’s his experience, not a rule for everyone. His bigger point is about stress. When you’re in a heightened state, he finds people often try to calm down too soon. Sometimes he’ll meet that energy with a bit of deliberate stress, then breathe and bring himself back down. That’s the heart of nervous system regulation: you don’t skip the stress, you learn to come back from it. If you’re thinking about cold exposure, check with your doctor first.

Breathwork is a big part of Nash’s work, and it’s something he helped me go through when I was feeling overloaded. I had an unexplainable symptom. I was overloading my system with supplements and had other stresses compounding. He gave me access to an audio, and the breathwork really helped.

Focus on the controllables and see life beyond it

Nash has a young family. “You’ve got little mouths to feed,” he said. “I’m like, okay, my primary role here is to be here for my family.” “What are the controllables here? I’ve got to focus on those because it is pointless spiraling.”

He also pointed to Viktor Frankl, who held on to a vision of life beyond the concentration camps. “It’s not about not feeling through what needs to be felt through,” Nash said. “It’s like, what’s on the other side of this that I’m going to hold on to?” When his sister died, he went back to the same practices that got him through his brother’s death, even though he didn’t want to.

I said to Nash that personal development sometimes teaches us we control every single aspect of our life, and that’s not always the case. What we can control is our perceptions, our decisions and our actions. Sometimes things just catch us on the blind side. He couldn’t control what happened to his brother or his sister. Accepting that is close to the Stoic idea of amor fati: say yes to what already happened, then get to work on what you can still shape.

Turn the mess into the mission

Three days after his brother’s death, Nash kept a promise to a client who was attempting a Guinness World Record for a cause. Watching her carry a message through a physical challenge planted an idea. He had a deep value on health and fitness. Could he do something like that?

He did. He set the Guinness World Record for the most T-rotation push-ups in 24 hours, with 6,181. He says they weren’t doing it for money. The point was the message: check in with yourself, be courageous if you’re struggling, reach out to someone who can genuinely support you, then make a change.

“Whatever the biggest mess is, that becomes the mission,” he said. “The mess needs to be cleaned up by someone. Who’s going to grab the mop and start mopping?”

I told Nash he’s a living, breathing, walking example of diving into life and coming alive. He’s since carried the same message into more endurance challenges. “There’s power in knowing your values, linking your values and committing to causes bigger than yourself,” he said. “We can sit around, we can be crushed or we can say, how am I going to use this?”

Grief comes in waves

My heart goes out to Nash. I know the feeling of loss. There’s a lot of grief that comes with losing a brother and a sister so close together, and grief comes in waves. Sometimes you feel like you’re drowning in it. I told him I’d imagine he learned a lot about capacity, and that I applaud him for moving through it and coming out even stronger.

Loss like that also makes us face our own mortality. How long am I going to be here? What do I want to do with my life while I’m here? Nash said he’s always felt the fragility of life. His youngest daughter needed major heart surgery right after she was born. Those experiences, he said, gave him empathy. “When I have a client who shows up and they’ve been through an extreme thing, while it’s different, I know what it’s like to have been in huge adversity.”

Someone who mentored both of us used to say that when you continue to live in a fantasy, it slowly and surely becomes a nightmare. Exploring both sides, the grief of life and the joy of life, keeps you balanced in the center.

Check what’s driving you

I’ve had a lot of guests on Addicted2Success. Sometimes it’s great to hear the motivational pump-up, but it’s also good to hear the technical side: what’s actually happening in my body and my brain, and what can I do about it? So I asked Nash what he does with high achievers burning the candle at both ends.

“Look at the driver of success. That’s always where I start,” he said. He’s seen pro athletes driven by a need to impress a parent or a coach since they were six, and founders holding huge companies because they feel deeply lonely or not good enough. “Don’t lie to yourself,” he said, “because it will erode in the background.”

He also shared a line from Robyn Moore, the Australian voice of Blinky Bill. When he asked what keeps her so driven, she told him: “I’m not driven. I’m drawn.” Purpose that pulls you is healthier than pain that pushes you.

We talked about the Superman complex too: trying to manage everything because no one else can do it perfectly like you. Then Nash turned the question on me. I told him that asking what success looks like when it can’t just be about achievement opens a box a lot of people haven’t looked in. That was a big thing for me. I was in a very insecure stage, dating a woman and giving away so much, without much coming back. My friend Ben finally asked me, “Why do you think I’m friends with you?” Then he listed probably about 50 things for five minutes. The more he said, the more I realized I wasn’t accepting those things. I started tearing up. How does he see that, but I don’t? I’d just been in this performance. You’ve got to find something deeper than accolades.

The biggest thing for me was forgiveness. I realized I wanted to be chosen. I didn’t feel I had that reciprocal love from my father, and I had to achieve things for him to pay attention. It wasn’t until I had a forgiveness conversation with him, and sealed it with what I’m grateful for, that it transformed our relationship. I redefined what it meant to actually love and be loved.

Don’t build your identity around the wound

I asked Nash something controversial. Have we gone too far into validating people’s trauma and not far enough into teaching them how to become strong again? Don’t be a feather in the wind. Build your house on rock, not on sand.

He pointed to The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, which draws on Alfred Adler’s psychology. Nash was careful. He acknowledges trauma is real, and he has a lot of compassion for people who are in it. His concern is identity. “When people start forming an identity around ‘I’m a traumatized person,'” he said, “I see that as, well, a pretty unproductive way to live.”

I like how he said we should challenge our beliefs. Just because you’re told something for a long time doesn’t mean you should adopt it. And we can’t over-identify with the trauma, which can be limiting. None of that means skipping professional help. It means not letting the worst thing that happened become the only thing you are.

Build capacity before you ask for more

When I asked about the biggest lie in personal development, Nash said it’s that you can reap a harvest without planting seeds.

His fix is to own where your feet are. Bring order to what you already have: the messy shed, the chaotic room. “Why would you expect more when you’re not looking after what you have?” And if you’re overwhelmed, he said, you’re literally declaring you’re at capacity. Daily habits should build mental, emotional, physical and spiritual capacity, so you can hold more.

Even after a world record, he told me he feels like he’s playing at a level three out of 10. I said, “Man, I don’t know what level I’m playing at if you’re at a level three, breaking records.” For him, the next level isn’t doing more. It’s depth.

When I asked what makes a life well lived, he talked about the day people stand up to say a few words about you. “If there’s more people than not who feel a little bit of love within their systems when they reflect on you as an individual, I think that’s a life well lived.”

How to turn pain into purpose: 7 steps

1. Decide, as early as you can, that this will be used for something.
2. Don’t carry it alone. Call someone you trust and talk it out.
3. Feel what needs to be felt, then come back down with breath, movement or rest.
4. List what you can control today and put your energy there.
5. Picture the life on the other side of this and hold on to it.
6. Pick one cause or message bigger than yourself and take one action for it.
7. Build capacity with daily habits before you ask life for more.

FAQ

How do you turn pain into purpose?

Decide the pain will be used for something, get support, focus on what you can control and connect the loss to a cause bigger than you. Nash Mackey calls it turning your mess into your mission.

Can you find purpose while you’re still grieving?

Yes. Nash Mackey says purpose doesn’t replace grief. You still feel what needs to be felt. Purpose gives the grief somewhere to go and something on the other side to hold on to.

What does “turn your mess into your mission” mean?

It means taking the hardest thing in your life and using it to help others. For Nash Mackey, that meant a Guinness World Record to encourage people to check in and reach out.

Is it unhealthy to build your identity around trauma?

Nash Mackey says trauma is real but forming your whole identity around it can keep you stuck. Acknowledge it, get professional help when you need it and don’t let it become all you are.

Where can I get help if I’m struggling right now?

In the US, call or text 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In Australia, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Elsewhere, contact your local emergency number or crisis line.