Day 029

#100Days

Power of consistency and the negative self-talk

I've been focusing on creating healthy habits for a long time. There were different seasons. Some of which I managed to grow good habits, and some others when it was pretty hard to achieve any satisfactory level of development.

The main focus today is in the second category, when you do your best to develop a habit, but you don't manage to go far, or when you don't see results.

First of all, many items are related to developing a habit. There must be something that has an important meaning to you, that will help you achieve a goal that matches your interest(s) or wish(es). You also need an oppositor, something that 'scares' you about not achieving that goal (that can be achieved by developing that habit). So let's assume these items are being fulfilled:

• You know why you're developing the habit;
• You commit to it and do it with the regularity you set;

But after a while, you get tired. You have built a routine, you have established consistency. But you still lack that sense of achievement you were expecting to feel after developing the habit.

Maybe you just got used to the new routines, and that might have numbed your perception, so you don't realize how far you've gone since you started the habit. I remember feeling a bit lost, and feeling that I was starting to miss the point why I was developing a habit, that actually happened quite a few times during the course of my life. Recently I discovered the magic move of renewing your vows, that helped me a lot to restore the initial motivation that led me to create a plan for developing a habit.

Maybe your negative self-talk is putting you down, and keeps repeating that you haven't done much, that you should be way further in your development if you were at least doing it right (negative self-talk is a very personal thing, so I can't really guess accurately how it would work for you, but I you get the idea, right?).

What the negative self-talk never tells you, is that the details are important, and you certainly managed to change things since you started, even if they looked too small to "be relevant". When we set expectations, we can aim too high, and when we do it, of course we would feel down for not achieving the highest achievable level.

The problem with that approach is that it tends to underestimate the effect of consistency.

Consistency is important, because it lives on. Small moves sum up over time, and anyone can verify progress. 1% every day sums up to 100% after 100 days. But the gradual improvement is usually overlooked because it "seems normal".

When aim too high, we tend to disregard the smaller improvements, even if they occur on a daily basis.

A bit of it is due to human bias, and bias is a natural phenomena.