Acquiring a new habit, or gaining an initial improvement is always going to be the toughest part. Getting over the initial challenge of keeping motivated for a long enough period to gain the muscle memory and mind calluses that it requires to stick to something everyday is the hard part. Once that is accomplished, and the trigger’s have been established, then habit will kick in and you will not need to lean on motivation as much.
You will still need motivation as it will help you power through tough days or burst past a plateau, but you need things like will power less and less as time goes on. This is why, it is absolutely critical to keep in mind the all important step of starting small in your commitments. The goal is NOT to make massive amounts of progress in a few short days. The goal is actually simply to establish a habit of doing a good thing, the right thing and then once the habit is established start the process of increasing intensity, duration, repetitions or whatever is required.
However, even with this bit of plain wisdom people will continue to bash their head into the wall of trying to force discipline through shear will power. They will take on more then they are capable of repeating and just as sure as the sun rises, they will find themselves failing. This will lead to discouragement, further procrastination and all out abandonment of the activity, I speak with authority having repeated this failing process 1000s of times. It is almost such a simple piece of advice, I can almost hear my grandmother telling me, Guy you have to start out with something easier to do if you want to build a habit out of it.
Think on this. What is more valuable. A well established habit doing a good thing, or a few days of doing a great thing followed by long periods of inactivity? The answer is easy, it is the little things that count. Little things that start out as tiny habits become great strengths to you over time. Since the acquisition of the habit is always the hardest, this is the reason that you must set out doing an almost ridiculously easy activity to begin with. Give yourself a great chance to build that habit by doing something easier.
That, of course, will be hard to do. You feel great when you start out, all motivated and excited. You want to just jump out there and get it all done today. You over do it, all excited and you unfortunately set a precedent that you cannot achieve. Do the exact opposite, get all excited about starting and then do something really, really, easy and allow yourself to stop and wait until the next day and repeat. A mental exercise in patience that will pay dividends as you bank more well established habits.
Guy Reams
