Don’t Implement The Ideal

Here’s a problem I see a lot of ambitious, high performing people making. They think that when it comes to introducing change into their life, it needs to be exactly what they imagine.

To be in the best shape of your life you need to exercise 5 times a week and have a perfectly clean diet...

To grow your social media presence you need to be posting high-quality content, every single day, on all channels...

To afford your dream home you need to cut all unnecessary subscriptions and expenses to aggressively save more...

And while all of that is true, it’s the finish line. It’s what you want to get to eventually.

More often than not, the difference in lifestyle between how things are now and how you picture they could be is vast. And creating full, sweeping changes is more disruptive than is sustainable. 

Oftentimes that’s because the ‘new normal’ you’re trying to create can be so unfamiliar that it actually initiates self-sabotage. Your mind actively resists the changes and tries to convince you to give up, make exceptions, and take back your commitments - which makes change that much harder.

The commitment also doesn’t fit into the current design of your life and because of that, other areas start to suffer. Think of it like a puzzle piece - if you try to force fit a big new piece into the puzzle, it’s going to displace a lot of other things. This means you don’t have the time and energy for what you really care about, making sacrifices with unintended consequences that you didn’t choose.

That’s why the very basics of behavior change is all about starting small and consistent. It’s one of the core messages in “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and the mechanism behind the idea of improving “1% every day”.

And the reason why? Because it works.

So rather than committing to getting in the gym 5 times a week, start with going for a 10 minute walk 5 times a week. Rather than building a new healthy diet from scratch, replace your tendency to snack on chips to snacking on veggies. Rather than posting every day on social media, post once a week. 

People forget that in order to reach their ideal, they need to start by taking their first step toward it. It’s something you build toward as a progression plan. And once they start to do that, they realize that there’s less of a daily battle to take action, less fits and starts of undoing and redoing progress, and more continuity in growth.

And no matter what it is you’re looking to improve in your life, I have a first step for you that will help you be more consistent and accountable. It’s the underlying engine that makes all growth possible, and helps you put this lesson into practice. Because learning more won’t change your life, taking new action will. And that’s exactly what I show you how to do in the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge.