Forget Perfection, Here’s the Easiest Way to Form Any New Habit!
This article is by Ever Widening Circles, an online platform that’s on a mission to prove it’s still an amazing world. View the original article here.
We’ve all felt the pull of a giant goal, just waiting for us to accomplish it. We want to drink more water, keep our house tidy, become a raving success, and create an exercise routine that we will actually keep up with. Regardless of how revved up we are when we start these journeys to self-fulfillment and success, it’s all too easy to peter out a few weeks in. We end up disappointed in ourselves; in our inability to just do the thing.
You’ll be happy to know that it’s not your fault.
It’s hard to keep up that sort of consistent, hyper-focused motivation, no matter how committed you are. Even Christine Carter, who has been coaching individuals and corporations on how to accomplish their goals for decades, struggled to keep up the goals she set for herself when quarantine started in March of 2020.
In her failure, she wound up realizing that if we come to expect disappointment, we can use it to our advantage. What if we simply require ourselves only to do something so minuscule, that it would feel silly if we didn’t?
Want to start getting outside more? Try just opening your door. Working to eat healthier? Put one piece of lettuce on your sandwich.
The hardest part of accomplishing any goal isn’t getting started, but sticking with it. Here’s Christine with her take on the most effective way to do so in her awesome TED Talk! You can find more TED Talks over on their YouTube channel! Or check out the ones that have inspired us the most here at EWC in our TED category.
I had brain block yesterday. I listened to this. Decided to take 1-minute just to do one thing – not everything. Thanks to TED by Christine Carter “allowing yourself to be bad” helped and hope it helps others #ProjectM too @NHSLeadership https://t.co/vMMsV9N7No via @TEDTalks
— Nikki Squelch (she / her)???? (@Squelchisms) June 11, 2021
“Our ability to follow through on our best intentions to get into a new habit … or to change our behavior in any way really, doesn’t actually depend on the reasons we might do it or on the depth of our convictions that we should do so. It doesn’t depend on our understanding of the benefits of a particular behavior or even on the strength of our willpower. It depends on our willingness to be bad at our desired behavior.”
Go on, be your bad self!
Developing a real habit or breaking old ones is already hard enough without expecting ourselves to be perfect right away. When we allow room for ourselves to feel unmotivated and to be pretty not-great at the task at hand, we leave space for—dare I say it?—fun! And possibly some pride, as well.
The goal isn’t high achievement, it’s repetition.
When we don’t force ourselves to meet the big goal every single time, and instead focus on doing as much as we enjoy, even if just for a minute, we’re more likely to keep coming back and eventually create a goal that sticks.
