Begin again and again

When New Year comes around, we can tend to set ambitious goals for ourselves, only to stop doing anything about them shortly after. How many people join a gym in January and drop off a few weeks later? The number is very high, it seems!

That said, I have to admit that there is some sound advice available for growing humanly which can really make a genuine difference to the quality of your life.

One such man I always find helpful is Cal Newport. Normally I don’t subscribe to anything that can jam up my inbox but I subscribe to him. He’ll only send you an email when he thinks there is something important to say, so naturally I open them up when they come. 

On January 1st, he emailed with this sound advice (he’s a big advocate of digital minimalism by the way).

“When it comes to reforming your relationship with your devices, successful outcomes are less about deciding to stop harmful digital behaviors than they are about deciding to start committing to meaningful analog alternatives.

If you simply resolve to quit social media, and end up sitting on your coach, bored, white knuckling the urge to check Twitter, you’re unlikely to experience lasting change”.

Meaningful Alternatives

What Cal Newport reiterates again and again about habit building is that if you want to stop a bad habit, you need to replace it with something else. Nature abhors a vacuum. It needs to fill it with something and the same goes for human nature. You can’t just give up drinking, sleeping in, binging on Netflix, procrastinating on key life goals, etc. You need to replace these habits with something else.

We are always improving. But like nature, we don’t improve dramatically. Social media gives the impression that we should (like the ladies with the flabby tummy that then 8 weeks later look like the next top model). But the reality of it is, change takes time. And change always involves beginning again and again. So be kind to yourself!

For example, you mightn’t think you have improved in the last year but you have. Jay Shetty has this line where he says:

You remember the bad times more than the good times. Because when you’re struggling you cry for a week when you succeed you celebrate for a day. Appreciate your wins more.

You mightn’t think you’ve improved during the past year because we tend to remember the negative, but be assured that you have!  

Quick Methods

Getting down to basics, there are two quick methods that help build a habit or stop a bad habit. 

Create Friction -  

You need to create friction to stop a bad habit. For social media addicts, for example, Cal Newport gives this advice: Only access social media on your computer, always log out when you’re done, and unsave your password — introducing the crucial extra friction of typing in this information every time you want to check your account.  You create friction points to make it harder to fall into this habit. 

Virtue Bundling -

If you want to build a good habit, place something you like doing alongside it to help you achieve the goal. For example, you want to run 5km, pick things you like doing alongside this exercise: an excellent playlist that motivates you or at the end of your exercise, treat yourself to iced-cold glass of Coke or a really nice coffee. Whatever motivates you. It might seem you are cheating yourself but the chances of you fulfilling this goal long term is more promising if you do this. 

Beginning Again

After 1 or 2 weeks, when you start to give up or your energy levels deplete, I would recommend watching this video. It is the best and simplest explanation I have seen on what happens to your brain when you find it hard to commit to long term goals. 

With all of the above, the important thing with our dreams of improvement is to be specific and real in our goals. To pick 1 or 2 goals max and be really specific about how we plan to live out this goal. Unfortunately, to say “I’m going to run 5km by March” is not specific or real enough. “I’m going to walk 2km this week and run 2 minutes of this”. That’s more real and doable.

And finally I would recommend to ask a friend to join you in this goal because when you’re lacking energy, this friend will encourage you and vice versa. It’s hugely helpful. 

And know that it’s not about winning, it’s about getting up after falling!