Here’s one powerful strategy for forming new habits:
“Make your desired change the path of least resistance.”
If you want to lose weight, make unhealthy choices the harder option — inconvenient or harder to access. That might look like removing them from your pantry or fridge and stocking your space with healthy, nourishing options instead.
You may not be thrilled with every healthy option at first. But when the only food available is food that supports your goals, the friction works in your favor.
Imagine if the only food in your house was healthy food.
Any time you wanted something unhealthy, you’d have to make a trip to the store to get it.
That inconvenience would dramatically lower your chances of eating poorly — and raise your chances of eating well.
That’s the power of the path of least resistance:
You’re no longer relying only on willpower.
Instead, you’re doing for yourself, when you are strong, what you can’t do when you are weak.
You’re letting your environment do the heavy lifting.
And one of the fastest ways to change a habit is to spend time with people who already live the habit you desire. They gently nudge you in the direction they are going — often without you even realizing it.
Small changes in setup can create big changes in outcomes.
And if your goal is to get fitter but you get hijacked by going to the cafeteria at lunchtime, make movement the easier choice. Pack your lunch so food is handled, then use part of that break to walk — with a friend or on your own.
If temptation hits on your commute as you drive by your favorite fast food restaurant, changing your route can eliminate that temptation all together.
Because here’s something powerful to understand:
Your environment is silently shaping your behavior every day. 
We don’t just rise to the level of our intentions — we often fall to the level of our surroundings. Willpower fades, but environment keeps influencing us long after motivation wears off.
Principle to Tap Into ⇨ Make the Good Option Easy, the Bad Option Difficult
Your environment will set you up for victory or for failure.
I was reminded of this firsthand recently:
One habit I’ve built is doing my grocery shopping online for three simple reasons:
To reduce unnecessary temptation
To buy back my time
To protect my energy (busy stores drain me)
But recently, I had to run inside the store — and as a student of human behavior (especially my own), I was fascinated.
I had zero intention of buying food. I wasn’t even thinking about it. And yet, almost instantly, I was surrounded by food cues and temptation I hadn’t considered — all because the environment was doing exactly what it was designed to do.
I didn’t give in — but make no mistake, it did cost me some mental energy to resist.
Neuroscience shows that self-control draws from the brain’s limited cognitive resources, which is one reason repeated exposure to temptation makes resisting harder over time.
You drain your internal battery. 
And, while temptation has a spiritual component — it also has a very real physical one. Our environment affects how our brain responds, often before we’re even consciously aware of it.
Here’s the key insight:
Every time you say no to temptation, it draws from a limited reserve of self-control.
That’s why wisdom isn’t just about resisting temptation — it’s about removing the temptation (ahead of time) you don’t need to face.
(Btw, because of this mental drain, often our worst habits happen at night. Your path of least resistance here? Go to bed an hour or two earlier and you just eliminated unnecessary temptation.) 
This is one way you can: “Win the battle before it begins.”
You can’t eliminate all temptation. But you can eliminate the unnecessary kind.
I’ll talk more about how to deal with temptation in future posts — especially the spiritual side of it. But for now, keep this in mind:
Make your good habits the path of least resistance. Make your bad habits inconvenient or harder to access.
So you can run the race set before you — and finish well.
“Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” —Hebrews 12:1 (NIV)
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