WANT TO SUCCEED?

Here’s my question. Have you ever started a new habit only to quit it a few days later?

I guess we’ve all been there and if you’re anything like me, the answer is probably – YEP – quite a few times actually.

Creating a new habit can be tough. I don’t have to remind you of that. We all know how challenging it can be to live a healthy, fulfilling and prosperous life. If it were easy, everybody would do it.

But we also know, that our chances of success are exponentially higher, if we start small and don’t take on too much right from the get go. It’s kind of common sense, but reality is that only very few people actually follow this solid advice.

When you look around – and to be honest, we belonged to that group, too – most people like to start big instead of small, which only gives us more reasons to give up, because we get overwhelmed easily.

But why is it that most of us want to start big rather than small?

I think the answer is actually quite simple… We all get excited about doing something new or making a change and when we dream about making a change and actually believe in it, the excitement usually takes over and logic goes out the window.

That’s why so many people end up doing too much too soon.

Let’s be clear. I don’t think excitement is a bad thing. In fact, excitement is a great thing, because it gives you energy and you need energy to make a change and create a new habit…. So ultimately it’s great to get fire up about something you want to achieve in your life.

But it’s not just important to get fired up in the beginning. It’s also hugely important to keep that fire going and stay motivated and energized, especially when you hit a roadblock or obstacles. Because when things get tough, it’s very easy to lose that fire.

So when you set out to form a new habit, whether that’s starting a new workout routine, incorporating meditation into your morning routine, reading more, eating healthy or learning a new skill, it’s important to remember to start small and that it should not feel like a challenge.

In fact, the activity that gets you into a new habit should be just plain easy.

Because if it’s not easy, we quickly start to procrastinate. Even the most disciplined people can fall off the wagon sometimes.

So when you start something new, keep in mind that it’s not about the results you want to achieve, at least not in the beginning. It’s about taking the first steps and making the set-up as easy as possible.

When I started to write every day for our online course, I couldn’t care less about how many words I wrote.

Or when we started to get back to a daily exercise routine after the pandemic put a stop to our regular routine, I didn’t really care what type of exercise we did.

I just wanted to make sure that we got back into the swing of things and moved our bodies.

The same goes for when I started learning Spanish. Just a few exercises every morning was enough to get the ball rolling. It made me feel accomplished without getting overwhelmed.

Wrote for 10 minutes?

Great – done.

Worked out for 30 minutes?

Great – done.

Studied Spanish for 15 minutes?

Great – done.

So here’s our strategy to changing your life: Form small habits that make it impossible to procrastinate and remove all the barriers that prevent you from starting the new habit.

This way you can create kind of like a ‘gateway habit’ that naturally leads to more productive habits down the line.

Of course, the ultimate action can be challenging, but the first few minutes must be easy. And when you really look at the habit you want to create, you’ll find that you can scale down nearly any habit into a short gateway activity that gets you going.

Let’s say you want to work out every day…

Put your running shoes in front of your bed, so when you wake up you’ll fall over them. Or put a sticky note on your phone – because that’s the first thing you’ll grab in the morning anyways.

Want to read more?

Start with a couple of pages each day.

Want to start a mindfulness practice?

Sit in a comfortable position for 5 minutes and focus on your breath.

Want to learn a new language?

Open up your language app and do one lesson a day.

With this strategy of doing something easy for a few minutes a day, it becomes nearly impossible not to succeed.

When I look back at all the times we’ve failed to create something new, it was always related to getting overwhelmed in the beginning because we took on too much and started too big.

The thing is… when you haven’t even started, yet, the end results seems like lightyears away and it’s easy to say ‘screw this’, I’ll never get there anyways…

But if you focus on a SMALL start instead of a BIG result, you give yourself a much better chance of succeeding.

So look at what you want to achieve in your life.

Then look at the habits that will get you there.

Then scale down the habits you need in order to succeed into a short and easy activity that doesn’t overwhelm you.

Of course, you don’t just want to go for a walk around the block for the rest of your life or just read a couple of pages in a book. But this will get you started. And then it’s all about keeping it going.

Creating the small gateway habits is the perfect strategy to getting used to doing something every single day.

And yes, changing the way you live your life is not going to be an easy thing. Just look at how you’ve been living for let’s say the last 10 years. You can’t expect to change overnight, that’s for sure.

You and I both know that changing our lifestyle takes time, so we need to adjust our perspective accordingly.

Our #1 priority should always be to do something regularly to form a new habit.

And keep in mind, habits are not about results.

Nobody cares about whether or not you walked around 1 or 2 or 10 blocks, how many pages you’ve read or how long you sat in meditation.

The only thing you should care about is that you actually did something today and forget the metrics.

Keep in mind, life is not a competition with others. It is a competition with yourself.

And if you want to win that competition, you have to make the start easy for yourself.

And if you need a little help in keeping the motivation going, download our >>FREE MOTIVATION GUIDE.