The hump before the habit
I’m clearly struggling to make this daily blog work.
Habits take time to form. That’s a fact.
There are books that will back me up on that statement. I will link a couple that I like below.
Anyway. Because habits require repeating an activity over a long stretch of time, there will be days when one’s enthusiasm for said activity drops from where it started. In the case of writing, my ability to write sentences (that I would be happy with) start to crap out. This, in turn, makes the act of writing more difficult than I would like.
Like, for example, now. With this blog post.
This leaves me with a choice. Push through the boredom and pain and get the work done, or stop and do something that I would like to do. The former seems like the only way to go, but to assume that it is the sole option is a trap — you have to treat both as equally valid choices.
It’s my experience that choosing any path because “failure is not an option” only leads to more frustration, because your brain subconsciously knows that is really not true. And being lied to only leads to resentment. To the point where you challenge that disciplinarian inside of you and fail on purpose to prove a point. You know, “cutting your own nose just to spite yourself.”
And that’s a worse result than just actively choosing to give up, because at least that decision was made without coercion. It was not a reactionary decision. You had agency on that choice to fail. That is powerful in of itself.
And to make a decision to move forward even though it is just as fine to choose not makes for another powerful choice. This is the choice I made today and I am glad for it. Even though quitting is just as valid, at least this choice will benefit me in the future. I know it.
Anyway, as promised, here are a couple of books on habit that you can check out:
The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg
Atomic Habits - James Clear (I really recommend this one)
