Jesus went out [of the city] to the Mount of Olives as he usually did. His disciples followed him. – Luke 22:39
To be human is to be habitual.
From breathing 20 breaths per minute, to circulating 6 litres of blood around the body every minute, to adding milk and then sugar, to the time we get up, what we choose off the menu, how we react to criticism…and a million other things we do as we usually do.
So for any change you want to make, the key is not the change itself. Instead, it’s the interweaving mesh of habits and customs that you will need to disrupt to effect a change that lasts.
Most people underestimate what it takes to do this, and beat themselves up for failing to “just do it”…where “it” is whatever resolution they’ve made in that moment.
If the Nike approach doesn’t work, try something gentler and more subversive.
Try growing a new habit to support the change you want to make.
For example, if you want to write every day, you’ll need a habit to support that. It might be the habit of going to bed by 9pm…allowing you to wake up at 4am and have an hour each day to yourself whilst the rest of the house sleeps. An hour you can use in any way you wish. With that daily hour in place, you can then decide to build the habit of writing each day on top of the habit of waking up at 4am on top of the habit of going to bed at 9pm.
It’s a chain of habits.
Go to bed at 9pm >> Wake up at 4am >> Write for 1 hour
Sticking with writing, maybe you decide to write on your drive to and from work each day, instead of listening to the radio. So you get in the habit of driving in silence first, disabling your car radio from turning on. You then layer on the habit of sticking on a pair of headphones every time you get in the car, and loading up Google Docs. You then get in the habit of speaking your story to Google Docs whilst you’re in the car. If the car engine is revving, then your mouth is talking. After a week of doing this, you’ll be amazed at how much writing you’ve managed to accomplish, simply by patiently installing these habits.
Drive in silence >> Stick on headphones and load Google Docs >> Speak storylines to Google Docs >> 2 hours of writing-by-speaking each day
Whatever you want to do, it’s not just going to happen. But it will happen if you install the habits you need to turn your wishes into what you usually do.