The Hardest Part of Any Habit is Consistency
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Today I woke up determined that today would be the day that I start working out. I just had to get my butt out of bed and get dressed so that I could run the world. I did not work out. Instead, I had a lazy morning where I knit.
A few years ago, I wanted to start a blog. I bought the domain name, set up the hosting, and started a Wordpress website. My first and last article was about how getting started was the hardest part.
Since then, I’ve changed my mind. Getting started may not be easy, but it’s not the hardest part either.
I’ve had many days where I would start things simply on a whim. Whenever I’m feeling good about something, it’s easy to pick something up and start. I’m excited, motivated. But that feeling doesn’t last, and getting started doesn’t mean anything if it’s the one and only time you do it.
The much harder part is staying consistent. It’s easy for me to say I’ll go for a walk today when it’s bright and cool outside, but that says nothing for tomorrow when it’s blazing outside.
There are so many times I’ve started something up, just to fall off. And the problem wasn’t getting started. It was showing up again and doing it again.
Consistency is the bread and butter of success. It builds the muscle so that it becomes easier and easier, but if you fall off you risk losing everything.
Building that muscle is hard. It takes discipline, which you hardly needed to get started. Now you have to sit down and put in the real effort.
I like to challenge myself every occasionally to do something consistently. I’ll do yoga every day. I’ll write a thousand words every afternoon. Doing it the first time is fun and exciting. To keep doing it repeatedly, on a consistent basis? That’s the difficult part.
I might get three days in before getting discouraged and giving up. Being consistent is difficult.
It means regularly doing the thing and making it a real habit in your life. These things are not meant to be easy. If they were, everyone would do them. It’s meant to be a challenge.
It’s like building a muscle. You have to start with something really small, do it until it gets easier, and then increase the challenge as your muscle grows.
I don’t know what compelled me to start publishing an article every day, but I know that every day I do it, I gain a little more traction. Every day I write, I get a little stronger. That’s how you get strong.
Nothing worth having is an overnight success. It takes work and effort.
You don’t deadlift 100 pounds unless you’ve lifted five pounds hundreds of times.
If you want the muscle, you have to build it first.
Every day, my writing muscle gets better. And every day is a new opportunity to start and build. What muscle are you working out today?
