The Science of Habits: How to Create Lasting Change in Clients

Understanding the science of habits will allow you to consistently create lasting change in your clients. Every expert-level coach masters this skill, even if they don’t expressly state it. It is a foundational meta skill, that is required to coach effectively. You see, as you’ve probably noticed, your clients often actually know what to do.

They know they should eat more vegetables. They know they should move their bodies regularly. They know sleep matters, that water is important, that stress management isn’t optional. They’ve read the articles, listened to the podcasts, maybe even hired coaches before you.

And yet, here they are.

The gap between knowing and doing is where most coaching happens, and unfortunately, where most coaches get it wrong. We load clients up with perfect plans, detailed protocols, and motivation-filled pep talks, then wonder why they flame out after three weeks. We blame their lack of discipline or commitment, when really, we never taught them the one thing that actually creates change: how to build habits that stick.

You see, results don’t come from perfect plans. They come from imperfect action, repeated consistently enough to become automatic.

When you understand the science of habits, how they break, and how to architect them in real human lives, you stop being a plan-provider and start being a transformation-creator. You stop getting clients who need you forever and start getting clients who develop autonomy. You stop chasing motivation and start building systems.

But what makes this challenging is that you’re not just fighting against your client’s current habits. You’re fighting against millions of years of evolution, deeply ingrained neural pathways, and environments designed to exploit every cognitive bias humans possess. Without understanding the biology, psychology, philosophy, and behavioural economics at play, you’re essentially showing up to an architectural project with a hammer and hoping for the best.

That’s what we’re going to unpack here. Not theory for theory’s sake, but the practical science of behaviour change that will make you a better coach. The kind of coach who creates results that actually last.

Because the cost of ignoring this is that you get perpetual restarters cycling through programs every eight weeks. You get dependence instead of autonomy. You get burnout; both yours and theirs. You get clients who quit because “it didn’t work,” when really, the approach was fundamentally flawed.

But when you master the art and science of habits? You get compounding results. You get clients who become self-sufficient. You get referrals because transformation creates evangelists. And you get longevity in this profession because the system does the work, not just your charisma.

TL;DR

Most coaching fails because it focuses on motivation and perfect plans instead of understanding how habits actually work. Real transformation comes from building systems that make desired behaviours automatic, and working with your brain’s biology, not against it.

Habits form through a simple loop: cue → routine → reward. Your job as a coach isn’t to motivate clients or provide detailed protocols; it’s to help them design environments where good behaviours are easy, build ridiculously small habits that create momentum, and shift their identity from “someone trying to change” to “someone who does this.”

Stop chasing motivation (it’s unreliable weather). Start building systems (they’re the climate). Focus on what clients can control (their daily actions), not outcomes. Replace willpower with better cues, friction reduction, and immediate rewards. Teach clients to self-coach through weekly reflection so they develop autonomy, not dependence.

The gap between knowing and doing is where coaching happens. Close it by understanding the science of habits, meeting clients where they are, starting smaller than feels comfortable, and playing the long game. You’re not building six-week transformations; you’re teaching people how to live well through consistent, repeated action.

The Science of Habits

Let’s start with the science of habits and what a habit actually is, because if you don’t understand the mechanics, you’ll keep coaching like habits are just “things people do consistently,” and you’ll keep getting mediocre results.

A habit is a behaviour that’s been repeated enough times in a consistent context that your brain automates it. The process follows what researchers call the habit loop: cue → routine → reward.

The cue is the trigger; this could be a time of day, a location, an emotional state, or another behaviour. Your client walks into their kitchen (cue), pours coffee (routine), and feels alert and ready (reward). After enough repetitions, the cue triggers the routine without conscious thought.

The routine is the behaviour itself; the thing you’re trying to help your client build or break.

The reward is what the brain gets from the behaviour. What’s critically important to be clear on here is that the reward doesn’t have to be objectively “good.” It just has to satisfy a craving or create a feeling of completion. Your client scrolls social media when they’re bored (routine) and gets a hit of novelty and distraction (reward). Boom, habit formed, whether they wanted it or not.

This all happens in the basal ganglia, a primitive part of your brain that loves efficiency. Once a behaviour becomes automatic, your prefrontal cortex (the part responsible for conscious decision-making) can basically take a nap. That’s why your client can drive home from work and not remember the route. It’s also why they can demolish a bag of crisps while watching TV without realising they’re eating.

The brain does this through a process called chunking, where it takes repeated sequences of behaviour and compresses them into single units. When you first learned to tie your shoes, it required intense concentration. Now? It’s a chunk. One neural command executes the entire sequence. This is the same mechanism that makes habit stacking so powerful, which we’ll get to later.

Dopamine is the neurochemical doing the heavy lifting here. It doesn’t just reward the behaviour, it creates anticipation. Your brain starts releasing dopamine when it expects the reward, not just when it receives it. That’s why your client starts craving their post-work snack before they even leave the office. This is also why hyperbolic discounting sabotages so many good intentions: our brains massively overvalue immediate rewards and undervalue future ones. The pleasure of Netflix right now feels infinitely more compelling than the abstract benefit of being fit three months from now.

So how do you coach around this biological reality? Interestingly, the answer was figured out long before modern neuroscience existed.

The ancient Stoics understood this without fMRI machines or dopamine research. Epictetus taught his students to focus only on what they control: their actions, their responses, their daily practices. Not outcomes. Not other people. Not genetics or luck. Marcus Aurelius, literally running an empire, wrote in his Meditations: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

This is the foundation of process-focused coaching. Your client doesn’t control whether they lose twenty pounds this month. But they absolutely control whether they show up to train today. They control whether they eat protein at breakfast. They control whether they go to bed at a reasonable hour.

The Stoics also understood habit formation as a form of discipline, not as punishment, but as training the mind through repeated action. They practised daily rituals, examined their behaviour each evening, and constantly asked themselves whether their actions aligned with their principles. This sounds like what every self-help guru recommends: a weekly reflection framework. Except they were doing it in 170 AD.

Now, when you understand this biology, and the ancient wisdom that recognised these patterns long before we had the science, you stop trying to willpower your clients into change.

Willpower is a prefrontal cortex function. It’s conscious, effortful, and it depletes. Habits are basal ganglia functions. They’re automatic, efficient, and they compound. If you’re coaching someone to “just try harder” or “stay motivated,” you’re fighting biology. If you’re coaching someone to build better cues, routines, and rewards while focusing on what they actually control, you’re working with biology.

The best coaches I know don’t have the most motivated clients. They have clients with the best systems.

The Role of Identity in Behaviour Change: Becoming Who You Are

Here’s where most coaches miss the mark: they focus on outcomes and behaviours, but they ignore identity.

Your client says they want to “lose 20 pounds” or “work out four times a week.” Cool. But ask them who they think they are, and you’ll usually hear something like “I’m not really a gym person” or “I’ve never been good at sticking with things.”

Sustainable habits don’t come from grinding through behaviours you hate. They come from identity shifts. Your client needs to stop seeing themselves as someone trying to exercise and start seeing themselves as someone who moves their body. Not someone “trying to eat better,” but someone who “takes care of their health.”

James Clear talks about this brilliantly in Atomic Habits: every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become. The problem is, most people are still voting for their old identity while hoping for a new outcome.

But this idea isn’t new. It goes back to Aristotle. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argued that we become what we repeatedly do. Virtue (arete, excellence) isn’t something you’re born with. It’s a habit (hexis in Greek). You become courageous by doing courageous things. You become temperate by practising moderation. You become fit by training consistently.

Aristotle understood that character is built through repeated action in pursuit of eudaimonia, which is often translated as “happiness,” but more accurately understood as human flourishing or living well. It’s not pleasure or comfort. It’s becoming the fullest version of what a human can be.

This is what you’re actually coaching toward, whether you realise it or not. Not abs or PRs or before-and-after photos. You’re coaching people toward flourishing; toward becoming someone who lives in alignment with their values, who expresses their potential through disciplined action.

Aristotle’s critical insight for our coaching is that virtue exists as a mean between extremes. Too little sleep? Exhaustion. Too much? Lethargy. Too little structure? Chaos. Too much? Rigidity. Your job is to help clients find the golden mean; the sustainable middle that they can maintain not for twelve weeks, but for decades.

Now, the existentialists would say you’re not helping your clients discover who they are through coaching, you’re helping them create who they are. Sartre’s famous line, “existence precedes essence,” means you’re not born as “someone who doesn’t exercise.” You become that through repeated choices, or lack thereof. Every time your client skips a workout and tells themselves, “I’m just not disciplined,” they’re reinforcing that identity. Every time they show up despite not feeling like it, they’re authoring a different version of themselves.

Kierkegaard talked about despair as the condition of living inauthentically, and being trapped between who you are and who you want to be, but lacking the courage to bridge that gap. Sound familiar? That’s most of your clients on day one. They’re in existential despair, even if they’d never use that language. They know they’re not living as the person they want to be, but they don’t know how to change.

Your job is to help them take radical responsibility for that gap. Not with shame or judgment, but with the recognition that they have agency. They’re not victims of genetics or circumstance or “just the way I am.” They’re authors of their own story, and the next chapter hasn’t been written yet.

This is why identity work is so powerful. You’re not just helping someone lose weight. You’re helping them step into authentic being, and living as someone who actually aligns actions with values, who takes ownership of their choices, who becomes through doing.

However, coaching identity shifts can be quite difficult. This isn’t about affirmations or fake-it-till-you-make-it nonsense. It’s about language, reflection, and evidence.

Reframe the language. When your client says, “I have to go to the gym,” that’s obligation language. It reinforces the identity of someone who doesn’t want to be there. Help them shift to, “I’m someone who prioritises movement.” When they say, “I can’t eat that,” help them reframe to, “I don’t eat that.” It’s subtle, but “can’t” implies deprivation. “Don’t” implies identity.

This connects to Albert Ellis’s work in Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). Ellis developed the ABC model: Activating event → Belief → Consequence. When your client misses a workout (A), their belief might be “I’m a failure, I’ll never be consistent” (B), which leads to giving up entirely (C). Your job is to help them challenge that irrational belief and replace it with something more functional: “I missed once. That’s data. What can I adjust?”

Use reflection questions. Ask your clients: “What kind of person do you want to be? What does that person do daily?” Then work backwards. If they want to be someone who feels energised and strong, what does that person eat for breakfast? How do they move? What time do they go to bed?

This is Aristotelian practical wisdom (phronesis): the ability to discern the right action in the right context. You’re not just telling them what to do. You’re teaching them to think like the person they’re becoming.

Collect evidence. Every time your client follows through on a behaviour, even a small one, point it out. “You showed up today even though you were tired. That’s what someone who prioritises their health does.” You’re not hyping them up. You’re helping them see the identity they’re building, one action at a time.

This also interrupts negative loops in the Default Mode Network (DMN), which is the brain’s idle state where self-narratives form. If your client’s DMN constantly tells them, “I’m not a gym person,” that becomes their reality. Mindfulness, reflection, and reframing help reprogram those automatic stories.

Invoke the eternal return. Nietzsche posed a thought experiment: what if you had to live this exact life, with these exact choices, over and over forever? Would you choose it? This isn’t meant to be depressing; it’s meant to focus attention on whether your daily actions are ones you’d willingly repeat for eternity. Ask your clients: “If you had to live this exact routine every day for the next ten years, would you choose it?” or “Can you see yourself doing this when you are 75?”

If the answer is no, you’re not building a sustainable habit. You’re building a prison. Now, sometimes we do need scaffolding, and not everything has to be eternally sustainable. But this is a good thought experiment to run, so that you can identify if you are building the right systems.

Breaking Down the Habit Formation Process: Small Actions, Big Architecture

Alright, let’s get practical. You understand the loop, you understand identity, you understand the philosophical and psychological dimensions. Now, how do you actually help a client build a habit that sticks?

Start Small; Ridiculously Small

New coaches love to go big. “Let’s get you working out five days a week, meal prepping on Sundays, and meditating every morning!” And then they’re shocked when the client burns out in two weeks.

Here’s the rule you should be following instead: if a habit feels hard, it’s too big.

The goal in the early stages isn’t to create massive change. It’s to build momentum and proof. You want your client to succeed so easily and so often that their brain starts to trust that they can do this.

James Clear calls these “atomic habits”; tiny behaviours that require minimal friction. Instead of “work out for 45 minutes,” start with “put on your gym shoes.” Instead of “eat a healthy breakfast,” start with “put a glass of water on the counter the night before.”

I know, I know. It feels almost embarrassingly small. But here’s what happens: your client does it. They do it again. And again. Their brain starts associating the cue with success, not failure. And once the behaviour is automatic, then you can build on it.

There’s a cognitive principle at play here too, called the Zeigarnik Effect. This is where incomplete tasks create mental tension until they’re resolved. When your client puts on their gym shoes (even if they don’t work out), their brain wants to complete the sequence. That tiny action creates momentum that makes the full behaviour more likely. You’re using psychology as leverage.

Environment Design: The Nudge That Changes Everything

Motivation is unreliable. Your environment is always there.

If your client wants to drink more water but keeps forgetting, the problem isn’t their memory, it’s that water isn’t visible. Put a bottle on their desk. Done.

If they want to stop snacking on junk food at night, telling them to “use willpower” is a losing strategy. Don’t keep the junk food in the house. Friction matters.

This is choice architecture, which is the idea pioneered by behavioural economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in Nudge. Small changes in how options are presented can dramatically influence behaviour without restricting freedom. You’re not forcing your client to do anything. You’re designing an environment where the desired behaviour is the path of least resistance.

Here are the key principles of choice architecture applied to coaching:

Default options: Make the healthy choice the automatic one. Meal prep on Sunday so healthy food is the default during the week. Pack the gym bag the night before, so training is the default in the morning.

Friction reduction: Reduce the steps required for good behaviours. Want clients to eat more vegetables? Pre-chop them and put them at eye level in the fridge.

Friction increase: Add steps to bad behaviours. Want clients to scroll less? Ask them to delete social media apps from their phone (they can still access via browser, but the extra friction matters). Want them to eat less junk food? Put it somewhere else in the house, not the kitchen.

Salience: Make cues visible. If you want your client to take their supplements, put the bottle next to their coffee maker. Out of sight is out of mind.

The best coaches I know are obsessed with environment design. They ask questions like:

• What’s the first thing you see when you walk into your kitchen?
• Where do you keep your workout clothes?
• What’s on your nightstand?

You’re not just coaching behaviour. You’re coaching context. The easier you make the desired behaviour, and the harder you make the undesired behaviour, the less your client has to rely on willpower, which, remember, is limited and depletes (or at least feels like it does).

This also aligns with evolutionary psychology. Our ancestors didn’t need willpower to avoid junk food, as it didn’t exist. They lived in environments where movement was necessary and calorie-dense foods were rare. Modern environments exploit our evolutionary wiring. Your job is to design environments that align with our biology rather than sabotage it.

We’re not meant to resist constant temptation. We’re meant to live in contexts where healthy choices are normal and automatic. You’re creating that context, one environmental tweak at a time.

Repetition and Reward: What Gets Rewarded Gets Repeated

Your client’s brain doesn’t care about long-term goals. It cares about immediate feedback.

This is why “lose 20 pounds” is a terrible motivator on a daily basis. There’s no immediate reward for eating a salad today. The reward comes in three months, and your client’s basal ganglia doesn’t think that far ahead.

This is hyperbolic discounting in action again. Behavioural economics shows that humans are terrible at valuing future benefits. We need immediate reinforcement to wire new behaviours.

So you need to build in immediate wins. This could be as simple as:

• Checking a box on a habit tracker (visual progress feels good)
• A text from you saying “Nice work today” (social reinforcement is powerful)
• A post-workout smoothie they actually enjoy (pair the behaviour with something pleasurable)
• Noticing how they feel after the behaviour (“I always feel clearer after a walk”)

The reward doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be immediate and tied to the routine. Over time, the behaviour itself becomes rewarding, but early on, you need to engineer that feedback loop.

Loss aversion is another tool from behavioural economics. People are more motivated to avoid losses than to pursue equivalent gains. You can use this in coaching through:

• Streak tracking: Once your client has a seven-day streak, they don’t want to break it. The fear of losing the streak becomes motivating.
• Accountability partnerships: When clients commit publicly or to a group, the potential social loss (disappointment, judgment) creates pressure to follow through.
• Framing: Instead of “you’ll gain fitness,” try “you’ll lose momentum if you skip.” The negative frame can be more motivating for some clients.

Accountability and Feedback Loops: The Social Brain in Action

External accountability works. Largely because humans are social creatures, and we’re wired to care about how others perceive us. When your client knows they’re going to check in with you, or report to a group, or share their progress publicly, the likelihood of follow-through skyrockets.

From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. For most of human history, being excluded from the tribe meant death. We evolved to be highly attuned to social dynamics, social approval, and maintaining our standing within groups. Accountability leverages that ancient wiring.

But the nuance here is that accountability without judgment is what works. If your client feels like they’re going to disappoint you or get lectured, they’ll start avoiding check-ins. The goal is curiosity, not shame. “What happened this week? What worked? What didn’t?” Not, “Why didn’t you follow the plan?”

Feedback loops are how your client learns. They try something, they see what happens, they adjust. That’s the coaching relationship in a nutshell. You’re not there to enforce compliance. You’re there to help them iterate faster.

This is where you start teaching reflective practice, which is a concept developed by philosopher and educator John Dewey. Dewey argued that learning happens through cycles of experience, observation, hypothesis formation, and testing. Your weekly check-ins are Deweyan reflection in action: What did I experience? What worked? What hypothesis can I form about why? What will I test next week?

Helping Clients Break Bad Habits: Replacement, Not Removal

Building new habits is one thing. Breaking old ones? That’s where it gets tricky. In most cases, you can’t just remove a habit. You have to replace it.

Your client doesn’t come to you with a blank slate. They come with years of ingrained routines. Evening snacking, skipping breakfast, and doomscrolling before bed. These behaviours exist because they’re serving a function, even if that function is just “distraction from stress.”

If you try to just take the behaviour away without addressing the underlying cue or reward, you’re setting them up to white-knuckle it for a few weeks before they inevitably relapse.

Identify the Trigger

First step: figure out what’s cueing the unwanted behaviour.

Is your client snacking at 9 PM because they’re actually hungry, or because they’re bored? Stressed? Lonely? Watching TV?

Most of the time, the behaviour isn’t about the behaviour, it’s about what the behaviour provides. It’s not a problem, it’s a solution. Your job is to dig into the context.

Ask questions like:

• When does this usually happen?
• Where are you when it happens?
• What are you feeling right before?
• What do you get from this behaviour?

Once you identify the true trigger, you can start to intervene intelligently. This is detective work, not prescription.

Replace, Don’t Remove: Habit Substitution in Action

Let’s say your client stress-eats at night. You can’t just tell them to “stop eating when stressed”. Stress isn’t going anywhere, and the craving for relief won’t disappear.

Instead, you help them find a different routine that satisfies the same reward. Maybe it’s:

• A 10-minute walk around the neighbourhood (movement, distraction, stress relief)
• A cup of herbal tea and five minutes of stretching (comfort, ritual, calm)
• Texting a friend (connection, distraction)
• A short journaling session (processing emotions, creating closure for the day)

This is called habit substitution. Same cue, same reward, different routine. You’re not fighting the habit loop, you’re rewiring it.

The cue and reward pathways in the basal ganglia remain intact. You’re just swapping out the routine in between. This is much easier than trying to eliminate the entire loop, which is why “just stop” rarely works.

Environment Restructuring: Removing Temptation at the Source

Sometimes the easiest way to break a bad habit is to remove the cue entirely.

If your client scrolls Instagram every night when they are supposed to be sleeping, ask them to delete the app from their phone. If they eat junk food every time they walk past the kitchen cupboards, move the junk food to another part of the house that they don’t associate with eating (or better yet, don’t buy it). 

I know this sounds overly simple, but it works. You can’t rely on willpower when the cue is screaming at you twenty times a day. Change the environment, change the behaviour.

This is friction engineering again. You’re making the unwanted behaviour harder to execute. It’s not impossible, just less convenient. And because humans are cognitive penny pinchers (we default to the easiest option), that friction is often enough.

Habit Stacking for Replacement Behaviours

You can also take an existing habit (one that’s already automatic) and stack a new, desired behaviour onto it. For example:

• After I pour my morning coffee, I’ll drink a glass of water.
• After I brush my teeth at night, I’ll lay out my workout clothes for tomorrow.
• After I sit down at my desk, I’ll take three deep breaths.

You’re using an established cue (the existing habit) to trigger a new routine. This works because the neural pathway is already there, you’re just adding onto it. The brain has already “chunked” the original behaviour, so piggybacking onto that chunk requires minimal cognitive effort.

When helping clients break bad habits, you can reverse-engineer this: identify the cue, interrupt the old routine, and stack a better one in its place. Let’s say your client always snacks while watching TV at night. The cue is sitting on the couch. The routine is grabbing chocolate. The reward is taste and distraction.

New stack: After I sit on the couch, I’ll make a cup of herbal tea and keep my hands busy with knitting/sketching/a puzzle. Same cue. Different routine. Similar reward (something to do with your hands, taste/comfort from the tea, distraction from the activity).

Coaching Psychology: Motivation vs. Systems

Every new coach thinks their job is to motivate clients. You post inspirational quotes, you give ra-ra speeches, you try to pump them up before every session. And it works… for about three days. Then life happens. Your client has a rough week at work, the kids get sick, they travel, they get tired. And suddenly, all that motivation evaporates.

What I’ve learned after years of coaching is that motivation is a spark. Systems are the actual fire. Motivation gets people started. Systems keep them going. Motivation is like the weather; it is variable, unpredictable, and beyond your control. Systems are like climate; more stable, reliable, and in our context, something you can design.

You see, the problem is that motivation is an emotion. Emotions fluctuate. Some days your client will feel fired up and ready to crush it. Other days they’ll feel flat, overwhelmed, or just… meh. If their entire behaviour change strategy depends on feeling motivated, they’re cooked. Because on the days they don’t feel it (which will be most days), they won’t act.

This is where newer coaches go wrong. They think their job is to keep clients motivated. So they work harder, send more messages, create more content, and try to be more inspiring. But they then burn out, because they’re trying to be their clients’ emotional supply. The better approach is to build systems that make motivation optional. 

A system is simply a set of inputs and processes designed to produce a reliable output, regardless of how you feel. Your client doesn’t need to feel like working out if their gym bag is already packed and their calendar has a non-negotiable block at 7 AM. They don’t need to feel like eating well if their fridge is stocked with prepped meals and the junk food isn’t in the house.

Systems remove decisions. And the fewer decisions your client has to make in the moment, the more likely they are to follow through.

This is pragmatism in action. William James, writing in 1890, argued that truth is what works. Applied to coaching, the “right” approach isn’t the most scientifically perfect one. It’s the one your client will actually do. James also said, “All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.” He understood that habits free up cognitive bandwidth for higher-order thinking (creativity, problem-solving, relationship-building, etc.). When the basics are automatic, you have energy for what matters.

Here’s how you shift from motivation-based coaching to systems-based coaching:

Stop asking, “Are you motivated?” Start asking, “What’s the smallest version of this behaviour you can do even on your worst day?”

Stop relying on willpower. Start designing environments and routines that make the desired behaviour automatic.

Stop giving pep talks every time they struggle. Start helping them troubleshoot the system. “What got in the way? How can we make this easier next time?”

This is also deeply Stoic. Epictetus taught: “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” Your client can’t control whether they feel motivated. But they can control the systems they build. They can control whether they prep meals on Sunday. They can control whether they set out gym clothes the night before. They can control their response to the circumstances they face.

Marcus Aurelius, running an empire while dealing with plague, war, and political chaos, still found time to train and reflect daily. How? Not through constant motivation. Through discipline, which is just systems by another name.

Implementation Intentions: Pre-Loading Decisions

One of the most effective tools in systems-based coaching is the implementation intention (If-Then plans), which are just a pre-decided plan that removes in-the-moment decision-making.

Instead of, “I’ll work out this week,” your client says: “If it’s Monday, Wednesday, or Friday at 7 AM, then I will go to the gym.”

Instead of, “I’ll eat better,” they say: “If I’m eating lunch, then I will include a palm-sized portion of protein and two servings of vegetables.”

The “if-then” structure creates a clear cue and a predetermined response. When the situation arises, the brain doesn’t have to deliberate, it just executes.

People who use implementation intentions are significantly more likely to follow through than people who rely on vague goals or good intentions. You’re essentially pre-loading the decision, so your client doesn’t have to make it under pressure, when willpower is depleted, and alternatives are tempting.

From a neuroscience perspective, implementation intentions work because they create a direct link between a situational cue and a specific behaviour. You’re building a neural pathway before the situation even occurs. When Monday at 7 AM arrives, the prefrontal cortex doesn’t have to weigh options. The basal ganglia just executes the pre-programmed response.

Habit Stacking: Building on Existing Neural Infrastructure

We talked about habit stacking earlier in the context of building new behaviours. But it’s worth revisiting here because it’s one of the best systems tools you have.

The formula is simple: “After [EXISTING HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”

This works because you’re anchoring a new behaviour to something that’s already automatic. You’re not relying on memory or motivation, you’re using an established routine as the trigger. You’re literally building on existing neural infrastructure. The brain has already created a strong pathway for the existing habit. You’re just extending that pathway to include a new behaviour.

Examples:

• After I finish my morning coffee, I will write down three priorities for the day.
• After I put my kids to bed, I will change into my workout clothes.
• After I eat lunch, I will go for a 10-minute walk.

The key is making sure the existing habit is rock-solid. If your client “sometimes” makes coffee in the morning, that’s not a strong enough anchor. Find the behaviours they do every single day without fail, and build from there.

Coaching in the Real World: Common Pitfalls and How to Pivot

Now, I understand that you can understand all the theory in the world, but if you can’t navigate the messy reality of coaching actual humans, you’re going to struggle. Let me walk you through some of the most common mistakes I see newer coaches make, and how to fix them.

Mistake #1: Overloading the Client

You’re excited. Your client is excited. You want to help them transform their entire life, so you give them a training program, a meal plan, a sleep protocol, a stress management routine, and a mindfulness practice.

Week one, they’re all in. Week two, they’re overwhelmed. Week three, they ghost you.

The reality is that change is hard, and humans have limited bandwidth. Every new behaviour requires cognitive load, decision-making, and willpower. If you stack too many changes at once, you’re setting your client up to fail. This ties back to Aristotle’s golden mean. There’s a virtuous middle between doing nothing and doing everything. Too little change, and there’s no momentum. Too much, and the system collapses. Your job is finding that sweet spot.

The fix: Start with one habit. Just one. Get that dialled in. Make it automatic. Then add the next one. This is slower, yes. But it’s also the only approach that actually works long-term.

Slow is fast. This is a paradox worth embracing.

Mistake #2: Focusing on Outcomes Instead of Process

Your client wants to lose 20 pounds. You design a program that, if followed, will get them there. You track their weight every week. And when the scale doesn’t move fast enough, both of you get frustrated.

The problem is that outcomes are lagging indicators. Process is what you can control.

Your client can’t directly control their weight. They can’t force fat loss to happen on a specific timeline. What they can control is whether they show up to their workouts, whether they hit their protein target, and whether they get to bed at a time that allows them to get eight hours of sleep.

This is pure Stoicism. It’s literally the dichotomy of control. Focus on what’s within your sphere of influence. Let go of what isn’t.

The fix: Shift the conversation from outcomes to behaviours. Instead of “Did you lose weight this week?” ask “Did you hit your training sessions? Did you follow your meal plan?”

Celebrate process wins. Your client trained three times this week, even though they were slammed at work? That’s a win. They meal-prepped on Sunday for the first time ever? That’s a win.

When you reinforce the process, the outcomes take care of themselves. And when your client learns to value the process, they stop being outcome-dependent. They build identity around the behaviours, not the results. They become someone who trains, not someone trying to lose weight.

Mistake #3: Treating Every Client the Same

You have a system that works. You’ve used it with ten clients, and it got results. So you assume it’ll work for everyone.

Then you get a client who doesn’t respond the way you expect. They struggle with the same things that were easy for your other clients. You start to think they’re not trying hard enough.

Here’s the truth: every client is different. Different schedules, different stress levels, different histories with food and exercise, different personalities, different values, different contexts.

What works for one person might be completely wrong for another. This is where the art of coaching meets the science.

The fix: Get curious. Ask more questions. Instead of assuming you know what will work, ask your client what’s actually getting in the way.

“What made this week hard?”

“When you think about doing this behaviour, what comes up for you?”

“What’s worked for you in the past, even if it wasn’t fitness-related?”

You’re not a plan-pusher. You’re a behaviour detective. Your job is to figure out what will work for this person, not what works in general. This requires Aristotelian phronesis (practical wisdom). The ability to see the universal principle (habit formation works through cue-routine-reward) and apply it intelligently to the particular situation (this specific human with these specific constraints).

Mistake #4: Using Judgment When a Client “Fails”

Your client commits to working out four times this week. They do it once. You’re disappointed. Maybe you don’t say it out loud, but they can feel it. So they start avoiding you. They stop checking in. They feel like they’ve let you down, and now the shame spiral makes everything worse.

This is where understanding CBT becomes critical. Remember the ABC model: Activating event (missed workouts) → Belief (I’m a failure / I’ve disappointed my coach) → Consequence (avoidance, shame, quitting).

The fix: Replace judgment with curiosity.

When a client doesn’t follow through, that’s data. It’s information about what got in the way, what needs to change, and what support they need.

“What happened this week? Let’s figure it out together.”

Not, “Why didn’t you stick to the plan?”

The second your client feels judged, you lose trust. And without trust, coaching doesn’t work.

This is also where Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers insight. ACT teaches that psychological flexibility (the ability to stay present with discomfort without being controlled by it) is key to behaviour change. When clients “fail,” they often experience discomfort (shame, disappointment, frustration) and immediately try to escape it (through avoidance, rationalisation, or quitting).

Your job is to help them sit with that discomfort without letting it derail the entire process. “You didn’t hit your goal this week. That feels frustrating. And… that’s okay. It’s information. What can we learn from it?”

You’re teaching them that discomfort isn’t a reason to quit. It’s part of the process.

What to Do When a Client Hits a Plateau or Relapses

It’s going to happen. Your client is crushing it for two months, then life explodes. Work gets insane, they get sick, or a family member has a crisis. Suddenly, all the habits fall apart. Newer coaches panic. They think they’ve failed. Or worse, they think the client has failed.

Neither is true. This is just part of the process. The obstacle is the way.

Here’s how to handle it:

1. Normalise it. “This is completely normal. Life happens. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s getting back on track quickly.”

2. Assess the damage without drama. “Okay, what fell apart? What stayed consistent?” Usually, not everything goes to hell. Find the things that held up, and reinforce those. This is collecting evidence for the identity they’re building.

3. Restart small. Don’t try to get back to where they were immediately. Go back to the minimum viable habit. Just like when they started. Rebuild momentum. This is the Zeigarnik Effect again; starting small creates the psychological tension to continue.

4. Adjust the system. If the same thing keeps causing relapse, the system needs to change. Maybe the habit was too ambitious. Maybe the cue isn’t strong enough. Maybe life circumstances have shifted, and the old approach doesn’t fit anymore.

This is where data beats emotion. You’re not here to motivate them back into action. You’re here to help them iterate smarter. This is pragmatic coaching. What works? Not what should work according to the textbook, but what actually works for this person in their real life. Adjust accordingly.

Teaching Clients to Self-Coach: The Ultimate Goal

The ultimate goal of great coaching is to make yourself obsolete.

I know that sounds counterintuitive. You’re building a business, you want long-term clients, you want recurring revenue. I get it. But the coaches who create the most transformation (and ironically, the most referrals and loyalty) are the ones who teach their clients to think like coaches.

Because at some point, your client needs to navigate behaviour change without you. They need to self-correct when things go sideways. They need to adapt when life changes. If they’re dependent on you to make every decision, you haven’t created transformation, you’ve created dependency.

This is Aristotelian education in action. The goal isn’t to fill someone with information, but to help them develop the capacity for practical wisdom. You’re not giving them fish. You’re teaching them to fish.

The Weekly Reflection Framework

One of the simplest tools I give every client is a three-question weekly reflection. I have them do this every Sunday night (or whatever day works for them):

1. What worked this week? Not “What did I do perfectly?” but “What actually moved me forward?” Maybe they only trained twice instead of four times, but they showed up even when they didn’t feel like it. That’s what worked.

2. What didn’t work? Again, no judgment. Just data. “I planned to meal prep on Sunday, but I was exhausted. That didn’t work.” Cool. Now we know.

3. What’s one thing I’ll adjust next week? Not ten things. One. Based on what didn’t work, what’s the smallest tweak that’ll make next week better?

This is self-coaching in action. Your client is diagnosing their own patterns, identifying friction points, and iterating. Over time, they get really good at this. They stop needing you to tell them what to do, because they’ve learned how to figure it out themselves.

This is the Deweyan reflective practice in action: observe experience, form hypotheses about what worked and why, test new approaches, and observe the results. It’s the scientific method applied to personal behaviour. You’re teaching them to be researchers of their own lives.

The Stoics called this the “evening review.” Seneca and Marcus Aurelius both practised daily reflection, asking themselves: “What did I do well today? Where did I fall short? How can I improve tomorrow?” So, by teaching this to your clients, you are quite literally teaching a 2,000-year-old practice, that is only now being backed by modern learning science.

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset: Rewriting the Self-Narrative

You’ve probably heard these terms before, but let me tell you why they matter in coaching. A client with a fixed mindset sees struggle as evidence that they’re not cut out for this. “I missed three workouts this week. I’m just not disciplined enough. I’ll never be consistent.” A client with a growth mindset sees struggle as information. “I missed three workouts this week. What got in the way? How can I make it easier next time?”

Your job is to consistently reinforce the growth mindset. Every time your client talks about themselves in fixed terms (“I’m not a morning person,” “I’ve never been good at this,” “I just don’t have willpower”), you gently reframe it.

“You haven’t built that habit yet.” 

“You’re learning what works for you.”

“This is just the current version of you, with your current skill level. That can change.”

Language matters. The stories your clients tell themselves about who they are dictate what they believe is possible. When you help them shift from a fixed to a growth narrative, you unlock a completely different level of potential.

You are not a fixed essence. You are constantly becoming through your choices. Every action is an act of self-creation. The client who says “I’m not disciplined” is reinforcing that identity through the story they tell. The client who says “I’m building discipline” is authoring a different future.

When the brain is at rest, it defaults to habitual self-narratives. If those narratives are fixed and limiting (“I’m lazy,” “I’m not athletic”), they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Mindfulness and reflective practice interrupt those loops and create space for new stories.

Celebrate Progress Over Perfection: The Anti-Perfectionism Protocol

Most clients are brutally hard on themselves. They focus on what they didn’t do, what they messed up, what’s still not perfect. And if you’re not careful, you’ll reinforce that. Instead, get obsessive about celebrating progress.

Your client used to skip breakfast every day. Now they’re eating breakfast four times a week. That’s not perfect. But it’s progress. Your client used to doomscroll for an hour before bed. Now they’re doing it for 30 minutes. Still not ideal. But it’s progress.

When you consistently point out progress, especially the small, unsexy stuff, your client starts to see themselves as someone who’s improving. And that identity shift is what makes long-term change possible. This is also collecting evidence for identity. Remember that every action is a vote. You’re helping them see the votes they’re casting for their new identity, even when those votes feel insignificant.

Ultimately, getting results isn’t about perfection, it’s about habitual action in the direction of excellence. You don’t become excellent by never failing. You become excellent by failing, learning, and trying again. The trajectory matters more than any single data point.

Values Alignment: The ACT Approach to Sustainable Change

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy often discusses the difference between goals and values, and that is a really important point to keep in mind when discussing the science of habits and habit change.

Goals are destinations. “Lose 20 pounds.” “Run a marathon.” “Bench 100kg.”

Values are directions. “Being someone who honours their body.” “Living with vitality and strength.” “Showing up as the best version of myself for the people I love.”

Goals can be achieved and checked off. Values are ongoing commitments, and you never “finish” them.

This is important because, when habits are tied only to goals, they’re fragile. Your client loses 20 pounds, and suddenly the motivation to keep training evaporates. But when habits are tied to values, they’re resilient. “I train because I’m someone who values strength and vitality. That doesn’t change whether I hit a specific number or not.”

Ask your clients: “What do you value? Not what do you want to achieve, but what kind of person do you want to be? What matters to you?”

Then help them see how the habits you’re building serve those values. Training isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s about embodying the value of self-respect. Meal prep isn’t just about nutrition, it’s about embodying the value of intentionality.

When habits align with values, they become identity. And identity is the most powerful driver of behaviour.

The Paradox of Mastery

Now, before we start getting deeper into how to use this stuff more in your coaching, I want you to understand that the better you get at coaching habits, the less your clients will feel like they need you.

They’ll stop white-knuckling. They’ll stop relying on your pep talks. They’ll stop asking “What should I do?” and start saying “Here’s what I’m thinking, does that make sense?”

They’ll just… do the thing.

This is success. But it doesn’t feel like it when you’re used to being the hero.

World-class coaches aren’t heroes. They’re invisible architects. The client gets the credit. The habit gets the credit. And you? You get the satisfaction of knowing you built something that lasts.

You do the work for its own sake, not for recognition. Your reward isn’t being the centre of the transformation, it’s witnessing someone become autonomous.

Ultimately, you’re not solving your client’s life. You’re creating the conditions for them to author their own solutions. They don’t need you to tell them who to be. They need you to create space for them to become.

But here’s the paradox: when you coach this way (focused on autonomy, not dependence) you create more loyal clients, more referrals, and more impact. Because people don’t forget the coach who gave them the tools to change their own life. The less they need you, the more you get in return.

Building Your Coaching Practice Around The Science of Habits

Alright, let’s talk about how you actually integrate all of this into your coaching practice. Because understanding the science of habits is one thing. Applying it consistently, communicating it clearly, and building a business around it? That’s where the rubber meets the road.

How to Structure Your Programs: The Three-Phase Arc

If you’re still selling one-off training plans or generic meal plans, you’re leaving money and impact on the table. Habit-based coaching is inherently more valuable because it creates lasting results, and clients will pay more for transformation than they will for information.

Here’s how I structure my programs now:

Phase 1: Foundation (Weeks 1-4) 

Focus on one keystone habit. Usually it’s training consistency, but it could be sleep, hydration, or protein intake. It totally depends on the client. The goal is to build momentum and prove to the client that they can be successful.

This is about establishing the foundation for eudaimonia. Human flourishing starts with the basics. You can’t build the good life on top of chaos.

Now, I say to focus on 1 habit, but you can do more. But this requires skill, and you have to clearly tell your clients the order of importance with the habits they are building. If you don’t rank order the habits, they will end up thinking they are all equally important, when in reality, there are going to be 1-2 habits that are keystone habits, that unlock everything else. These are the habits that should get more attention. 

Phase 2: Expansion (Weeks 5-12) 

Layer in additional habits, one at a time. Training is consistent? Great, now let’s dial in nutrition. Nutrition is solid? Let’s look at sleep and recovery. You’re still moving slowly, but you’re building a system.

You’re just adding enough to create progress, but not so much that the system collapses.

Phase 3: Autonomy (Weeks 13+)

Shift from directive coaching to facilitative coaching. You’re asking more questions, giving fewer answers. The client is leading the reflection process. You’re there to support and troubleshoot, but they’re driving.

This is phronesis (practical wisdom) development. Your client is learning to make good decisions in context, without needing you to tell them what to do.

This structure creates a natural progression from dependence to independence. And when clients graduate from your program, they don’t just have results, they have the skills to maintain them.

Tools and Tech for Habit Tracking: Make the Invisible Visible

You don’t need fancy software to coach habits, but the right tools can make your life easier and your clients more accountable.

Here’s what I recommend:

Habit tracking apps: I like Habitica, Streaks, or just a simple Google Sheet. The key is making it stupid-easy for clients to log their behaviours. The act of checking the box is a micro-reward that reinforces the habit loop. It also leverages the Zeigarnik Effect (incomplete tasks create tension). When the box isn’t checked, your client’s brain wants to complete it.

Check-in forms: I use a weekly check-in form (Google Forms or Typeform) that asks the three reflection questions I mentioned earlier, plus space for wins, challenges, and questions. This gives me a clear snapshot of where they’re at without requiring a lengthy call. It also trains Deweyan reflection, as they’re practising self-diagnosis.

Photo accountability: For nutrition clients, I sometimes have them send a quick photo of their meals (not to nitpick, just to create awareness). The act of taking the photo makes them more mindful of what they’re eating. This is also costly signalling; they know someone will see it, which creates gentle social pressure.

Shared training logs: If you’re coaching remotely, a shared spreadsheet or app where clients log their workouts gives you visibility into adherence and lets you provide feedback asynchronously.

The tool matters less than the consistency. Whatever you use, make sure it’s low-friction and integrates into your client’s existing routine. This is choice architecture again. Reduce the friction for tracking, and you’ll get more data and more awareness.

Positioning Yourself as a Transformation Coach: The Narrative Matters

The reality is that there are a million coaches out there selling training plans and meal plans. If you position yourself the same way, you’re competing on price and personality. That’s a race to the bottom.

But if you position yourself as someone who teaches behaviour change, who helps clients build sustainable habits, who creates lasting transformation and not just 12-week results, you’re in a completely different category.

This is how you communicate that:

In your marketing: Talk about the clients who are still training three years later, not just the ones who lost 20 pounds in 12 weeks. Share stories about habit change, not just before-and-after photos. Show the process, not just the outcome.

In your sales conversations: Ask potential clients about their history. “What’s worked? What hasn’t? What do you think got in the way?” If they’ve tried (and quit) a bunch of programs, position yourself as the coach who teaches them how to build habits, not just what to do.

In your coaching: Make the process visible. Talk about cue-routine-reward. Explain why you’re starting small. Help clients understand why the approach works, so they become advocates for their own behaviour change. You’re not just doing coaching, you’re teaching them to coach.

You’re not just a fitness coach. You’re a behaviour architect. You understand psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and human behaviour at a level most coaches never reach. Own that.

The Science of Habits Conclusion: Mastery in Coaching Comes from Mastery of Behaviour

Look, you can know every training protocol, every nutrition framework, every recovery modality. But if you don’t understand how to help people change their behaviour, you’ll never create lasting results.

The coaches I respect most (the ones who’ve been doing this for decades and still have thriving practices) aren’t the ones with the most credentials or the fanciest programs. They’re the ones who’ve mastered the art and science of human behaviour. They understand that motivation fades. That willpower is limited. That clients don’t fail because they’re lazy or undisciplined; they fail because the system wasn’t designed for their real life. And they’ve learned to meet people where they are, start small, build momentum, and create change that compounds over time.

That’s what separates good coaches from great ones. That’s what creates clients who don’t just get results, they keep them. That’s what builds a practice based on referrals and reputation, not marketing and hustle. But here’s something your clients need to understand, and you need to help them see: there is no finish line.

Consider the Greek myth of Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a mountain for eternity. Every time he nears the top, it rolls back down. He has to start again. Forever. Most people read this as a story of futility and punishment. But the philosopher Albert Camus reframed it: Sisyphus can find meaning and even happiness in the repetition itself. The struggle is the point. There is no summit. The practice is the arrival.

This is habit coaching in mythological form.

Your client will never be “done.” There’s no finish line where they can stop training, stop paying attention to nutrition, stop managing stress. The work is ongoing. The boulder keeps rolling back down.

But you can teach them to find meaning in the repetition. Training isn’t something you do until you get fit. It’s something you do because you’re someone who trains. The routine itself becomes the reward. The practice becomes the life.

Nietzsche asked: if you had to live this life over and over forever, would you? That’s the test. Are the habits you’re building ones you’d willingly repeat for eternity?

If not, change them. If so, embrace them. Love your fate. Amor fati.

Because human flourishing doesn’t come from perfect knowledge or peak motivation. It comes from consistent action in alignment with who you want to become.

You’re not just teaching people to lose weight or build muscle. You’re teaching them to live well. To become who they’re capable of becoming. To express their potential through deliberate, repeated action.

That’s the real game. That’s what world-class coaching looks like.

So here’s my challenge to you: pick one client. One person you’re working with right now. And apply what you’ve learned here.

Ask yourself:

• What’s the one habit they need to build first?
• How can you make it smaller, easier, and more automatic?
• What’s the cue? What’s the reward?
• How can you design their environment to support success?
• What identity are they building through this habit?

Start there. Master that. Then do it again with the next client.

Because world-class coaching isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about being obsessively curious about behaviour, relentlessly focused on systems over motivation, patient enough to play the long game, and wise enough to know that you’re not building six-week transformations, you’re building lives.

That’s the work. That’s the craft. And if you commit to it, you won’t just build a better coaching practice, you’ll change lives in a way that actually lasts.

Now go do it.

For those of you ready to take the next step in professional development, we also offer advanced courses. Our Nutrition Coach Certification is designed to help you guide clients through sustainable, evidence-based nutrition change with confidence, while our Exercise Program Design Course focuses on building effective, individualised training plans that actually work in the real world. Beyond that, we’ve created specialised courses so you can grow in the exact areas that matter most for your journey as a coach.

If you want to keep sharpening your coaching craft, we’ve built a free Content Hub filled with resources just for coaches. Inside, you’ll find the Coaches Corner, which has a collection of tools, frameworks, and real-world insights you can start using right away. We also share regular tips and strategies on Instagram and YouTube, so you’ve always got fresh ideas and practical examples at your fingertips. And if you want everything delivered straight to you, the easiest way is to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss new material.