21 days of time tracking with TimeTag: Day 8
Creating and failing at a new habit - What to do
Remember your intention.
Day 8 - Last week I was able to hit my meditation goal, but I missed my writing and my running goal. That's totally okay -- the fact that I was able to integrate one goal into my daily life and keep that on track is actually a huge win. It leads to today's lesson: it's okay to mess up or miss early on. That's no reason to quit or be frustrated, or say that it's not possible.
The thing you need to continually ask yourself is: why do I want this? The why really is important -- if you set an intention when you're interested in achieving a goal, then that intention drives you. It's what gets you to go that extra few steps, or wake up a little earlier, or work a little longer on your own project to get it ready, etc. When you want to quit or back off, you remind yourself of your intention: I am doing this because _____. If that reason/intention is strong enough, it will enable you to achieve anything.
Even though I missed my goals on writing and running, my intentions are still clear: I want to run because I want to feel healthy, and fit, and feel confident in my body. I want to write every day because I view it as a way to teach, and I love teaching -- if I can connect with even one person, it will be worth it to me.
With that in mind, I actually already ran for an hour for this week's goal -- making me about 1/3rd of the way there already. I was really proud of myself. I used my trick of making something a little bit easier for myself, and lowering the activation energy. I was taking my dog out for a walk, as I always do, but this time instead of wearing my regular outdoor clothing, I put on workout clothes. When I got back with him, I was already dressed/ready to go-- so that's what I did. I went right back out again and went for a run.
Attaching habits to existing ones really does help with that activation energy -- you're training your brain that when you do A, you also do B. Then one day you do both A & B without much thought at all.
So if you've fallen off the habit tracks, do two things:
Forgive yourself for it and know it's totally okay.
Find your intention again and your "why". If it's a strong enough reason, you will simply get right back to it.
There are no failures when you are trying to change your daily life, or build a new habit, or lose a bad habit. There are only learnings. If you struggled doing it one way, try a different approach. Place reminders around your other habits (like post-it notes near your keys that you always grab when you leave the house -- the post-it note will remind you of some other intention). Little tricks / hacks like that will help a lot!
I now have a weekly streak of 1 for my meditation goal, but still at 0 for the other two. That's okay. I'll get it soon!
If you haven't already gotten your copy of TimeTag, download it below for free! Hope you have a wonderful day!