Step 3 – Change Your Habits
To achieve a big change, you have to start with small ones. Begin with your habits. Practicing a new habit every day will help you achieve something bigger in the long run. It might be about your looks, your job, you relationship or your place of living.
Start from something small. For example, I promised myself I’ll make my bed every day (even if I use my bedroom only when I go to sleep), drink water with lemon after I wake up and make a veggie smoothie to take with me to work, even when I’m too lazy to do that. Do you think these are stupid things? Maybe, but sometimes I look for excuses to not to do them. When I don’t feel like doing those, I have a serious conversation with myself and I force myself. I force myself because I know that if I’m not able to do something that small, I won’t be able to do something bigger, which will have much larger consequences for my life.
Four months ago I promised myself to have one coffee a week. Even though it’s extremely difficult for me, I’ve been trying to be consistent (it happened maybe 3 times that I had coffee twice a week). I want to drink coffee every day and I’m suffering when I walk past a coffee shop, but I simply train myself not to get tempted. And that’s why I know that you can train yourself.
I also did the Plank Challenge recently. I did it not only to have a flat stomach (well, that was a reason, too) but to overcome my weakness and do something I wasn’t capable of doing a year before (I tried and I failed). I did it, but there were days I really struggled to put my body on a mat. I did it because I didn’t want to fail again.
Someone can say: what kind of life is that if you have to train yourself? Where is the beauty of just being spontaneous? My answer is, being spontaneous is still there and setting a few new rules doesn’t make your life worse. It’s actually the opposite – it will make it better very soon. As soon as you start working on yourself, your life will start changing. You will become more aware of what’s going on in your life and the quality of your life will simply improve. Someone can say: It’s not life – it’s jail. And I believe that by saying that, folks are just looking for excuses for their weaknesses that they can’t handle.
Louis Hay, one very wise lady, once said: “When you achieve a series of small victories, the boost in your confidence can last for months”. Try it and start with something small, like not adding sugar to your coffee or tea in the morning. It may seem small, but then Rome wasn’t built in a day, either. I promise you that something as grand as Rome started with putting two little bricks together. There is no other way.
