Start really small.
Many people are hesitant to take the first step because what they had planned for themselves to accomplish is too big a step to start with. We put the task on hold because we are afraid to even start. After a long while of procrastination, our initial excitement to carry out the task dies off and we permanently do not take any action or stop taking further action.
We, people, tend to overestimate our abilities just because we have some knowledge about the task. We expect others to also have some knowledge about it as well. For example, programmers might create complicated programs thinking it would be easy for users.
In order to start small, you need to know the difference between steps, goals and dreams. Steps are tasks which can be easily and quickly completed in a few minutes to a couple of days. Goals can be short term or long term. Short term goals should be easily achievable in 1 week. Long term goals should be achievable in 1 month. Dreams should be achievable in 3 months or more. To give an example, a dream can be having a routine of exercising 4 days in a week and a total of 8 hours per week. Create simple steps such as, firstly, signing up for a gym membership at the nearest gym to your house, secondly, blocking out time on your weekly schedule to go to the gym once this week, lastly, plan a 30 minutes workout and turn up on that day. Next, your goal can be exercising routinely twice a week, 2 hours per week. You create further steps to help you reach your goal. Once accomplished, create bigger goals such as increasing each workout time by 15 minutes or increasing the frequency of gym visits per week.
To create steps, start with underestimating your abilities. Make it even simpler than you think it already is. Make it so simple that you feel like doing it right now. When you initially thought of signing up for a gym that you like as your first step, further underestimate yourself by signing up for a gym that is a 15 minutes walk from your house.
To create goals, be more specific than you think you are. It should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time sensitive — SMART goals. The goal has to be specific and measurable in a way such that you understand what exactly you need to accomplish. It has to be attainable and time-bound such that you are able to reach the goal by 1 month (long term goal). It has to be in-line with your values and drives you towards your dreams. A bad example would be “I want to go to the gym routinely.” A good example would be “I want to be able to go to the gym to exercise 3 times a week, 6 hours per week, by next month, so that I will be more energised to accomplish greater things.”
To create dreams, you have to imagine where you want to be in 3 months to 1 year. It is who you aspire to become or where you believe is exciting and gives purpose to your life. Most importantly, it has to be controllable by you. A bad example would be “I aspire that my blog page would reach 1000 views by 3 months.” Whereas, a good example would be “I aspire to be able to write weekly blogs and be able to utilise SEO properties to promote my blogs by 3 months.” The first example is bad because, though it may sound specific and attainable, having that 1000 views is not controllable by you, it depends on many other factors out of your control. Over time, after achieving more dreams, you may aim for bigger dreams. Only then, you may want to have an arbitrary number to hit (e.g. having 10k subscribers on your youtube channel) just to motivate you, so it is alright to not reach that number, but it should not be your main dream. Your main dream should be one that is intrinsic and aligns with your values.
Find a community.
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
– Jim Rohn
Finding the right community would bring wonders to you. It is the force of the community and its social magnet that propels people towards the purpose of the community. Finding a strong community in which its purpose aligns with your values would greatly help you start taking action, making changes to your life and stick with it for a long time to come.
How do you then determine if the community is right for you? There are 6 main pointers to look out for, and yes, ideally you should find one that accomplishes all 6 points.
- Trust: Community members openly share their struggles and advice to help others.
- Fit in: They are willing to change their actions and attitudes in alignment with the community’s values.
- Social Magnet: There is a force that keeps the community active and contributing. It could be the people, events, attitudes and actions of community members.
- Self-worth: Feeling good about themselves increases self-confidence and people are more motivated to contribute.
- Rewarded: Something about the community feels captivating to you. Weekly challenges, events or meet-ups? Achieving your goals?
- Empowered: There are role models to lead and follow by example.
Join a community, share your struggles, be vulnerable and help others in the community who are struggling. And lastly, find role models who you can follow to lead you to where you want to be.
Make it easy.
When things are easy, we are naturally inclined to do it. Do you remember how when you were studying, you naturally preferred to start studying a subject that you are better at than a subject you find difficult?
We, people, tend to overestimate our abilities and knowledge. We overcomplicate things to make it harder than it actually is. Overestimate and overcomplicate, the 2 words which naturally make things tougher. On our first healthy diet attempt, we might think that eating a healthy diet is not that hard (overestimate our abilities and knowledge). We create a grand plan of dieting starting the next day, planning to follow recipes for healthy meal preparations and not snacking (overcomplicate). We think we JUST need to eat healthy. What constitutes a healthy diet then? We lack that knowledge of having a balanced, nutrition rich and sustainable diet. Can we actually build that habit instantaneously by the next day when we have been eating unhealthily for the past 10 years? That is why there are so many diet schemes out there to entice people for their business profits because people fail so easily at diets and become reluctant to start a proper long-lasting habit of healthy eating.
There are 3 simple methods you can use to make things easy.
- Control your environment
Small changes to your environment can actually bring big changes to your behaviours. A perfect analogy would be how a branch on the road can make it so much more troublesome than a road without any obstruction. Drivers would have to slow down or even stop, signal to change their lanes and change back to their original lanes. All it takes is to move that branch out of the road and the traffic will be smooth again.
Take dieting as an example again. Remove all junk food from your house and replace them with healthy snacks will greatly help you appreciate healthy eating more and start on a permanent healthy eating habit.
- Limit choices
Reducing the number of choices you have relieves you of your brain power and energy. It makes it easier to make a decision and start taking action.
Going back to the previous example of healthy meal preparation, you can choose 2 proteins, 2 carbohydrates, 2 fruits and 2 vegetables to choose from for your meal prep for the whole week.
- Create a road map
This brings back to the point of taking small steps to reach your goals. Give yourself a clear step by step roadmap to start taking action. Though you may consciously know how to accomplish a task, break down your steps even further. For example, learning to rollerblade. Create a roadmap of weekly goals. Week 1: learn to move forward. Week 2: learn to turn. Week 3: learn to slow down. And so on…
Ensure it is important to you.
Motivation is a myth, there is no such thing as willpower. If you believe there is such a thing as willpower, then you would also believe that there is the existence of a lack of willpower. This belief is just an excuse for us to procrastinate or quit. I know it sounds harsh but it won’t be once you believe that having motivation is just a myth. You will never use the lack of motivation as an excuse anymore and you will start taking action and finish the task. Instead, you will use importance as the reason for starting and finishing the task.
Find out what exactly is important to you, what you value and use it to your advantage. The main 3 things most people value are money, social connection and health.
Money cannot buy happiness but it can propel you to where you want to be. You have to be able to use money as a resource rather than the final goal. Ultimately, money is in fact just a thing made of paper, plastic and some ink with numbers on it. It is up to you to decide what you do with it and that is what brings true happiness. The reason why people value money is because they want to have things or experiences which bring them satisfaction, not the money itself. If you find that money is something you value, ask yourself why you are seeking that specific sum of money and what you want to do with it or who you want to share it with. Aim for small financial goals, execute it and reach your dreams.
Social connection is an innate need of human nature. Having healthy and close relationships with family or friends is proven to reduce depression. In turn, a lack of close friendship may be hazardous to your health. If you value social connections, you may join a community of like-minded people or people whom you look up to, make strong bonds and that will propel you to start taking action. Surround yourself with people who you trust and support you, you will find the importance to take action and stick with it. Building new friendships may be difficult at first but it will be rewarding in the long run. Furthermore, you need to maintain good and close friendships. It is about the quality rather than the quantity of your friends. Quality relationships deserve more than your leftover time in your schedule. Put in the time and effort to strengthen these bonds and find ways to start taking action by involving these people.
Health could mean physical, mental or spiritual. Be specific as to which is important to you — it could be all three. When you want to start taking action, define your why. Health is the fundamental for you to achieve what you want in life. If you do not take care of your health, it’s effects will build up and once it takes a toil on your body, it may be too late to reverse it. If you want to start the habit of eating healthy, place significant importance on why you want to start this habit. Think very long-term, think as far as you will live. You want to have the energy, strength and mental wellness to live a quality life. Only after defining your why and placing importance on it, then you may start to create definite plans using the methods of starting small, making it easy or exciting.
Make it exciting.
The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?”
Before something can be exciting to you, it has to be IMPORTANT to you. Boredom is the enemy, not failure. Life is more than just living it, it calls for boldness and excitement.
There are 5 things you can do to make something exciting
- Make it fun. Fun does not necessarily mean pleasant. It can be challenging or odd. You can make mowing your lawn fun by beating your record time. You can make healthy eating fun by creating mini challenges such as eating only 2 types of vegetables, 2 types of protein and 2 types of carbs, and 2 types of fruit for one week, and see how many different food creations you can create in that week.
- No fear allowed. The reason why we start an action is to stick with it and make it better, if not, what’s the point of starting it anyways? Fear can definitely make you start an action but you will not stick with it for long. Once you realise that fear is not realised, you will stop continuing that action or habit. For example, you may use the fear of how others will see you as obese or ‘ugly’ to keep your exercise routine. But after a while you realise that people don’t say it in your face often enough to remind you of that fear. You then stop that habit of exercising after a while. Use rewards rather than fear, you’ll thank yourself in the long run.
- Make it intrinsically rewarding. Do not expect yourself to only feel good afterwards, such as expecting a reward after completing the activity. You don’t have to reward yourself with boba tea after a gym session. It could be as simple as just feeling satisfied that you feel more energised and stronger after a workout.
- Forget education, appeal to your emotions. We know our facts, we know that eating healthy brings tremendous amounts of benefits, we know that sugary food increases our risk of diabetes. However, we still do not do the things we know are good for us. Make it emotional (but no fear allowed) — love, excitement, serenity, pride…
- Don’t use money to make it exciting if the action itself is already exciting. Money may not be as important or exciting as what you think it is. Money can make you think that the activity itself is not as fun as you thought as you need to be rewarded for it.
Engrain it.
REPEAT, REPEAT and REPEAT! Repetition and consistency is key. Once you start an action and stick with it, you will develop an identity of a finisher rather than a starter. It will be easier for you to start taking more action and sticking with it.
Block out time in your calendar for it. Show up even when you don’t feel like it. Make it a routine such that you do not even need to think whether you should do it or not. This is when you have successfully engrained it in you. You do not need to waste your precious brain power to think if you should do it or not. And you would have more brain energy to think about other more important decisions in your life.
Reference:
I would like to credit this blog’s topic idea to the book “Stick with it” by Dr Sean Young. It is one of the best books I’ve read. It has really changed my life and will continue to do so. I recommend that you have a good read of the book as Dr Sean shares the scientific research behind habit formation. I assure you, it will transform your life for the better.