Take very small steps!
If you are reading this, most probably you are interested in improving yourself. Striving to be a better version of ourselves is a very commendable goal.
The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to improve our behaviors and develop new habits. Most of us have experienced the excitement of setting new-year resolutions. We are very motivated to achieve our ambitious goals and we start working on them from January 1st. Unfortunately, many of us are also familiar with the disappointment of seeing our motivation fade away and eventually disappear.
This has happened to me and to many of my clients, not only with new-year resolutions but with many other goals. I have many times wondered why it is that we abandon the goals that we were so motivated to conquer.
What I have found is that the main reason for this phenomenon is unrealistic expectations. We take very big steps that are not sustainable. This is one of the reasons why it’s hard to build habits. You make a change, fail to see a tangible result and decide to give up. Habits need to persist long enough to see results.
Frequency is more important than intensity or quantity.
Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. Think about water heating on a stove. It can be heating for a long time, but it will only start boiling when it reaches 212o F. We have to be patient and leave it on the stove until that moment. If we become impatient and remove earlier, we will never get the water to boil. When we persist with our actions even though we don’t see progress, our efforts are not wasted, they are being stored. They are accumulating until they reach the critical point, like the water boiling point.
If you want to develop a new habit, commit to taking very small steps every day. Make the steps so small that it will be impossible for you not to take them. You want to read several books this year? Commit to reading 10 minutes each day, every day. You should be able to do that, right? However, you may say, I will never finish a book at that pace. But you will. The key is to do it without fail every single day. For example, the book “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee typically takes 5.51 hours to read. That is 330 minutes. If you read 10 minutes per day without fail, you will finish the book in 33 day, just a bit over a month! You will be able to finish 12 books in one year and develop the habit of reading in the process.
Want to develop the habit to exercise? Commit to a small goal that you can do every day. Perhaps waling walking around the block after dinner, or doing 10 minutes on the stationary bike every morning. With time you will see progress and will feel motivated to do more because you would have developed the habit. Unfortunately, this is not the way most of us approach it. We would start exercising by picking an ambitious 45-minute routine. After the first few days we are sore and exhausted and we quit.
Too often we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. We underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.
Next time you want to develop a new habit, think of a small step that you can commit to taking every single day!
