The Secret to Building Sustainable Habits

I must admit…I’m not the best at keeping up with positive habits. On Twitter, I used to promote a lot of good practices. I talked about it a lot. It was second nature.

I made it seem like everyone was missing out if they didn’t jump on the bandwagon of my latest discovery — though I didn’t want many people, as wagons are expensive to maintain. After a while, I stopped building these habits I had once promoted.

What happened? What changed?

I am the problem, but it’s way cooler to sound like I am not the one responsible for my failure, so we will talk about me later.

Some unseen forces are beyond me that stop me every time I start developing new habits. It’s like they are anticipating my failure before I even start. Like time and discipline. And even my parents sometimes.

Cold death of habit formation

I used to take cold showers daily. I loved it!

But, my dad became concerned cold showers would be detrimental to my health and could cause pneumonia (which is a myth). Cold showers alone can’t cause pneumonia. Pneumonia is caused by cold, fungi, bacteria, and all those other good stuff.

Anyways, before I started taking cold showers, I was scared too. The idea of someone willing to immerse themselves in water filled with ice blocks sounded odd. So, I did my research and tried to look for the consequences. But, the internet was filled with benefits. Maybe a little too much, and I couldn’t find any disadvantage for a while.

So I kept convincing my parents with my research. But I wasn’t sure of myself, so I had to do my research again. After a while, I found a website that listed harmful side effects. I never mentioned this to my parents, duh. I concluded the article was probably written by a weakling who couldn’t handle his tolerance for cold showers.

If you know how African parents are, you know I had to stop at a point whether I liked it or not. Unless my house would have been unbearable for me to live in. But, the thing is, I didn’t stop completely.

I still take cold showers when my dad isn’t around. Don’t tell him. If you think I am a rebellious teenager, send him an email at [email protected]. I dare you.

Developing good habits effectively

Even though it seems I’m blaming my parents, which I am. Trust me, that’s not my intention. They are great people but can be a little over-caring at times. I love them still. I have no choice.

Now, let’s talk about me.

I want to work out, read books, and juggle chainsaws. The list goes on. But if I continue, you will get bored of me trying to develop habits only a psychopath would care about.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do these things. It’s just that I have a terrible habit of trying to build all these positive habits at once. I dive straight into them with no strategic plan for incorporating them into my daily life. And this has made my plate full of unfinished rabbits…I mean habits.

I soon realized it’s better to focus on one habit and stick to it, like hugging a cactus tree, rather than involving in too many that won’t result in anything positive. So, that’s what I did. I stopped developing any habits and focused solely on reading books.

The rewards were impressive. One habit started becoming the beginning of another.

Reading books made me start writing. Writing made me wake up early. I didn’t start waking up early because I think I’m one step ahead of the world, and everyone who wakes up after 6 am is a loser — well, that’s one of the reasons — but mainly because my house is loud brimmed with distractions. I would not even wake up if it was left to me.

Apart from picking one habit at a time, I started taking responsibility for my failure if I could not meet my habit goals. Woke up late and couldn’t write? My fault. Even when I was fighting demons in my dream and somehow woke up with a bruised body and couldn’t exercise, I took responsibility.

What I can’t do is change what has already happened. But I can choose how I handle these situations and move on.

Building positive habits is difficult, and several things can make you quit. But taking responsibility for your actions and downfalls when building them is important. Because when you blame anything or anybody else, you start to think external forces are the reasons you are not progressing. And that makes you lose control of the whole process.

To build sustainable habits that will stick, stop blaming others.

Positive habits can be difficult to develop. But with consistency and the willingness to take responsibility for your actions, it will be as easy as chewing a chewing gum.

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