Changing your habits

Dear Young Person, It’s the 9th day of the year, how many of those habits you said you will stop do you still do? How many of the ones you said you will develop have you already slipped up on? It’s okay if the changes you want in your habits aren’t happening as smoothly as you might wish. Truth is change is hard. 

So now you know what you want to change in your life, if you don’t you should review your life and the person you wish to be. Knowing the habits you want to change is the first step. Then you have to make a deliberate plan to change these habits. It’s not enough to say you want to change, you have to have a plan to effect that change.

Your plan must not be overwhelming. Don’t expect to change so much so fast, cut yourself some slack. Let’s say you wish to start exercising daily, don’t jump from zero hours of exercise to three hours of exercising daily. Chances are your body would protest, both physically and emotionally. Take it gradually. 

Your plan should include incentives and sometimes disincentives. Let’s say you wish to complete one book every week and you wish to reduce the time you spend watching movies. You can reward yourself with two hours of seeing a movie when you complete your book for the week. Looking forward to this reward would encourage you to stay the path.

 

You have to evaluate how far you have gone with changing your habits. Once in a while, look back and evaluate the progress you have made. Can you now exercise comfortably for two hours at a stretch? Do you now some times start up the next book before the week runs out? Be truthful to yourself . If your evaluations show that you have not made as much progress as you wish, don’t be hard on yourself, re-evaluate your methods and plan. Maybe you have taken on too much too soon or maybe there isn’t enough incentives to change. Whatever the reason, re-evaluate and try again.

No matter what happens, you must not give up. If you really wish to change your old habits, then you can not afford to give up. You have to keep trying till you get it right. When striving to change something as much a part of you as your habits, it is expected that it would be difficult and that at first you might fail. But you can not give up, not if you want to succeed, you must keep trying till you succeed because once you give up, you have failed.

Dear Young Person, changing your habits is not easy but it is not impossible. You have to make a plan and once in a while evaluate the plan and your performance. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t perform so well at first, just keep right on trying and eventually you would have successfully adopted the new habits and discarded the old ones.