How to Build Better Habits as a Man

Confidence isn’t just something that you wake up with. While some may seem to naturally have more of it than others, it’s something that can be worked on. In this respect, you can improve confidence by repeatedly doing things that allow you to respect yourself.

There are many positives to building better habits. It can help you to improve your dating life, become more confident in the bedroom, or simply feel better about the man you are becoming. If your everyday bad habits are working against you, you’ll struggle to make any positive changes stick.

That’s where I can help. The good news is that you don’t need to completely reinvent yourself. Building better habits is mostly about making small improvements consistently enough that they become part of who you are. Here’s everything you need to know.

Start With the Man You Want to Become

One of the easiest mistakes is choosing habits without thinking about why you want them. Due to this, you can end up trying to focus on habits just because they seem like the right thing to do. If it doesn’t fit in with your values, you’ll end up falling back into your old routine.

Take going to the gym, for example. You may think you need to start lifting weights, build muscle, and look ripped. That’s great for some people who get those endorphins from hitting the gym but what if that’s not you? It may be an image of who you should be, rather than who you want to be.

Instead, think about the person you actually want to become. Do you want to be more energetic? More socially confident? More attractive? More disciplined? Better at communicating? More comfortable around women? More reliable in relationships? More proud of how you spend your time?

Those goals can then inform your habits. Ultimately, your habits shouldn’t be goals. Rather, they should be there to serve your goals. Want to be more confident speaking to women? Set a goal to have three conversations a week with strangers, for example.

This is particularly important for men who have spent a long time feeling frustrated with their dating or sex lives. It can be tempting to search for one magical technique that will suddenly make you more confident and desirable.

In reality, confidence tends to grow when you repeatedly prove to yourself that you can take action, handle discomfort and keep promises to yourself. Whatever habits you set yourself, make sure they’re in line with something you actually want to achieve.

Make Your Habits Almost Too Easy to Fail

One of the biggest reasons men struggle with habits is starting too aggressively. You want to make a big and immediate change. You make a good start but then perhaps you’re tired or stressed. You miss one goal for your new habit and suddenly the entire plan feels ruined.

“I’ll do this every day” is unlikely to work, but “I’ll do this three times per week” automatically becomes much more manageable. A better approach is to start small, even embarrassingly so.

If you want to exercise, begin with ten minutes. If you want to read, start with five pages. If you want to keep your home tidier, spend five minutes putting things away. If you want to become more socially confident, make one small interaction each day that takes you slightly outside your comfort zone.

The objective initially isn’t to achieve impressive results. It is to establish the behaviour. Once something becomes routine, increasing the difficulty becomes much easier. This also gives you an important psychological win. You begin seeing yourself as someone who follows through, and that identity can become incredibly powerful.

Focus on Habits That Improve Your Confidence

If your ultimate goal is to become more confident with dating and sex, don’t make dating your only measure of progress. Build a life that makes you feel better about yourself regardless of whether somebody else is interested in you.

Exercise is an obvious example. You don’t need to become obsessed with bodybuilding or spend two hours in the gym every day. Regular physical activity can improve your fitness, energy, appearance and sense of accomplishment.

Again, do what you’re comfortable with. If the gym or running is an issue, start with small walks. Whatever feels like a win to you. And don’t care about comparing yourself to anyone else. Only care about improving yourself.

Personal grooming is another simple win. Get a haircut when you need one. Look after your teeth. Keep your facial hair tidy if you have it. Wear clothes that fit properly. Use deodorant. Look after your skin. None of these things guarantees attraction, but they can change how you feel when you walk into a room.

Then there are the less visible habits. Keep your promises to yourself. Finish things you start. Keep your living space reasonably tidy. Turn up when you say you will. Learn to tolerate being uncomfortable without immediately looking for an escape.

These behaviours may not sound particularly exciting, but they gradually create self-respect. This self-respect then feeds into a much sturdier foundation for confidence than pretending to be someone you aren’t.

Stop Waiting to Feel Motivated

Motivation is useful, but it is unreliable. Some mornings you will wake up ready to attack the day. Other mornings, the last thing you will want to do is exercise, work, clean the house, or talk to somebody new.

If you only act when you feel motivated, your habits will constantly depend on your mood. This was best said by the elite boxer Oleksandr Usyk, who said that “I don’t have motivation, I have discipline.” Pointing out that motivation can be a temporary thing, he gives an example that he doesn’t want to wake up early for training, but does it anyway, as he has discipline.

This line of thinking is important. Are you going to exercise today? This shouldn’t be a question, as you should have decided already. You should stop negotiating with yourself. I won’t brush my teeth tonight, since I can just do it in the morning? No, do it now; have discipline in your routine.

The fewer decisions you have to make, the easier your habits become. Don’t worry about waiting for motivation to strike. There are a million aspects of life that you can apply this to. The point isn’t to become a machine. It is to stop allowing temporary feelings to make every decision for you.

Build Habits Around Your Weak Points

Self-improvement advice often focuses on adding positive behaviours. It’s equally important to look at what you are doing that you can stop as it is to add improvements. Look honestly at how you spend your time and work out if it’s actually serving you well.

Are you staying up late scrolling through social media? Spending hours watching pornography when you would rather be meeting people? Drinking more often than you intended? Constantly checking dating apps? Avoiding social situations because they make you uncomfortable? These are all behaviours that may be holding you back.

There is nothing inherently wrong with relaxing, watching television, using social media, or enjoying porn. The problem comes when these activities start replacing things you actually value. You want to stop periods of dead time.

If you like to unwind after a day playing a couple of hours of video games, that’s perfectly okay. It’s your time and you need it to refill your proverbial cup. If you’re staying up to 3 am and it’s ruining tomorrow’s workday, that relaxation can become a stressor.

If your behaviours are causing an issue, look at ways to be more disciplined around them. For the video game example, have a cut-off time where you go to bed. Small restrictions still allow you to unwind but in a healthier way.

Get Comfortable with Discomfort

Better habits often require doing things you don’t particularly want to do. You may put off messages because you’re nervous about your reply and the response. This can have a negative impact on your social or dating life. Sometimes you need a little discomfort to get to your destination.

You need to become comfortable with the fact that discomfort isn’t necessarily a warning sign. This is especially relevant to dating. If you expect yourself to feel completely confident before approaching someone, asking somebody out, or making a move, you may wait forever. Confidence often comes after the action rather than before it.

If you’re feeling discomfort, it’s important to ask the reasons behind it. If you genuinely don’t want to do something, that’s okay. For example, you may not want to go to a party as you genuinely don’t like the people who are attending. That’s a valid reason. However, if you’re not doing something out of fear or anxiety, that’s the feeling you need to push past.

Don’t Turn One Bad Day Into a Bad Week

This might be the most important habit of all. You will fail. It’s almost impossible to have a completely good week. Sometimes you’ll slip up in the changes you’re trying to make. Sometimes life will come and kick you in the balls.

I’m definitely guilty of thinking “I’ll just start again next week,” but when the next week comes, the bad habits have crept in even further. It’s normal to have a bad day but the problem can be what happens next.

All-or-nothing thinking can turn a small mistake into a much bigger problem. Instead, develop the habit of returning quickly. Miss one workout? Do one tomorrow and make sure you’ve caught up. Spent three hours scrolling? Put your phone down and make yourself feel good with something productive.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s recovery. It can take a long time for positive habits to be ingrained in you. It takes even longer if you take ages to get back on track when you do slip up. A man who can repeatedly get himself back on track is far more resilient than someone who can maintain a perfect routine for three weeks and then gives up completely.

Track Progress You Can Actually Control

It is easy to measure yourself against outcomes that aren’t entirely within your control. “I want to get X amount of matches today from Tinder”. That’s an example of something that is partially out of your control, as you’re relying on the behavior of other people.

Instead, you want your progress to be tangible and completely under your control. Control your controllables. These measurements give you something useful to improve and stop you from feeling bad when other people haven’t met your expectations.

Over time, you may notice something interesting: the external results start changing because your behavior has changed. When you start improving those things you can control, you start to see related benefits with the things you can’t

You become fitter. You carry yourself differently. You have more experiences. You become better at conversations. You stop treating rejection as a catastrophe. You have more things to talk about. You become less desperate for validation.

Give Your Habits Time to Change You

A new diet. A new workout. A new dating strategy. A new productivity system. Another book. Another podcast. Another influencer telling you exactly how to become a better man. You can spend years consuming advice without actually changing very much. I went through that cycle.

Instead, exercise regularly. Sleep properly. Take care of your appearance. Reduce behaviors that make you feel worse. Spend more time doing things that matter to you. Put yourself into situations where you can meet people and practice being social. Keep promises to yourself.

None of this is particularly glamorous, but that’s why it works. You don’t need to become a completely different person overnight. You need to become slightly better at looking after yourself and taking action, repeatedly.