WORKBOOKS: How to Build Better Habits
Use these guides to help you build new, more sustainable, habits
This was the moment I qualified for the Boston Marathon.
I didn’t run in high school and I’m not particularly fast.
For most of my adult life I’ve been overweight and struggled to maintain a consistent workout schedule.
And yet, I did something less than 5% of runners are able to achieve.
How did I do it?
I set a goal, created new habits, and changed my entire identity in the process.
Qualifying for the Boston Marathon wasn’t just possible — it was inevitable.
But to understand how I got here, we first have to go back in time.
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In 2019, I set a goal to qualify for the Boston Marathon.
“I don’t see the Boston Marathon on your blueprint.”
That’s what my life coach said to me during one of our final sessions working together.
In 2019 I hit my equivalent of rock bottom. I was living in an apartment I could barely afford, working in a job I hated.
I was the heaviest I had ever been and could barely get out of bed most mornings. It was a miracle if I got to work by 10am.
I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually sick. With nothing to lose, I decided to reach out to a life coach for help.
During our 12 weeks working together she helped me come to the realization that my career in Washington, DC was a choice and I didn’t have to continue living there if I didn’t want to.
In an essence, she gave me permission to leave something I had spent years working toward.
In the process, she helped me develop a process — a blueprint, as she called it — to set goals.
We talked about relationships, career, spirituality, and physical well-being.
I ran my first marathon in 2015 but by the time I found myself sitting in her office I had missed my fourth. It’s not that I didn’t finish the race — I was so sick I just didn’t show up.
I told her one of my life goals was to qualify for the Boston Marathon. And yet it wasn’t on my blueprint.
At that stage in my life I didn’t think I could do it.
Three years later, I decided to make a BQ attempt.
Fast forward a few years.
I swapped my tiny DC apartment for life on the road. For the first half of 2021, I was living in my car, traveling around the country.
On this day, I’m temporarily living in Jackson, WY, where I decided to pick up a few part-time jobs for the summer.
On nights I didn’t have to work, I’d take my hammock to the park. Most of the time, I would crack open a book to read. On this particular day I decided to listen to an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast.
His guest: David Goggins.
At this point in my life I was kind of running but not really. I was still overweight. Not to mention my diet was a mess. I was eating so poorly that my body was in the midst of one of the worst psoriasis flare up of my life.
As a full-time car lifer, I used my Planet Fitness membership to shower. Occasionally, I would job on the treadmill but even that was a rare occurence.
I didn’t know who David Goggins was, but as I listened to his story he captivated me. A former Navy Seal turned ultramarathoner, David Goggins was a professional goal crusher. Nothing could stop him.
I don’t know exactly what he said on the podcast. But he said something profound.
It shook me to my core and made me bolt straight out of my hammock.
In that moment I knew I had to try.
I opened my phone and without any hesitation, registered for my hometown race, the Wineglass Marathon.
The next morning I woke up at 5am before my shift at the local coffee shop, laced up my shoes, and went for a run. A few weeks later, I wrapped up work in Wyoming and headed home to New York.
By November 2023, I had lost 40 lbs and was 18 minutes away from a qualifying time.
I didn’t qualify for Boston when I ran the 2021 Wineglass Marathon. But I came within seconds of setting a new personal record.
I was back. I knew I had what it took to qualify.
Over the next two years I ran four more races: the Tobacco Road Marathon in North Carolina, the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati, the Pittsburgh Marathon, and the Philadelphia Marathon.
At the Flying Pig I ran part of the race barefoot. My new shoes were too small and too painful to accommodate my bloated feet.
Sometime during my training for Pittsburgh I injured myself. I swapped running for riding a stationary bike in the weeks leading up to the race. On the day of the race, I wore three Icy Hot patches to try to dull the excruciating pain I was in.
None of these races were Boston Qualifiers but they got me closer to a qualifying time.
By the time I ran the Philadelphia Marathon in November 2023, I was at the lowest weight I’d ever been and was close to qualifying.
I was almost there, I could feel it.
In 2024, I did it. I qualified for the Boston Marathon.
This gets me back to the picture at the top of this post.
The moment I qualified for Boston.
As soon as I got back from Philly I registered to run the Austin Marathon.
The weather on race day was perfect — not too hot, not too cold.
Just like Pittsburgh, I ran the Philly marathon injured. Austin was my first race in almost a year where I wasn’t contending with any pain.
At Mile 3, I clocked my first ever sub 7:00 minute split. By Mile 20 I knew if I held a steady pace this would be it.
Three hours and 24 minutes later, I barreled down South Congress, crossing the finish line.
Qualifying for Boston wasn’t just a goal. It represented a total transformation of my identity that took years to complete.
By aspiring to qualify for the Boston Marathon, I had to become a new person — a Boston Qualifier — years before actually accomplishing that goal.
I changed my diet and made running a core part of my daily routine. Even when I had to report for my 7am shifts at Waffle House, I got up at 4am to make sure my run was in.
One small habit change at a time, I had become an entirely new version of myself.
A new habit represents incremental change. It’s the process of becoming a new person.
Qualifying for the Boston Marathon is an example of setting a goal and taking action to achieve that goal.
A habit is something you do on autopilot. Understanding how habits form and how you can change them is the action you need to take to reach your goals.
During my quest to qualifying for the Boston Marathon, I read every book I could find about habits. Two books stood out: Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.
In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg looks at habits as a loop. If you understand how habit loops form, you can modify your habits to change your behavior.
In Atomic Habits, James Clear evaluates how incremental changes — atomic-level changes — can help you make progress towards your goals.
Before you can run a marathon, you have to run a mile. But before you can even do that you first have to put your shoes on and make the decision to do so in the first place.
To help me with my study of habits and goal setting, I used these books to create a series of workbooks to follow:
Habit Loops
Habit Audit
Habit Plan
Habit Identity
Combined, these workbooks reflect the process I used to change my own habits so I could become a Boston Qualifier:
I had to understand what habits were and how they formed
I had to study my own habits
I had to develop a plan for changing my habits
I had to adopt a future identity for myself — that of a Boston Qualifier — to make the implementation of my plan possible
Below are my four workbooks. Download them and use them to work towards your own goals.