Do you know someone who has committed themselves to a new project or habit, only for them to miss a day of it and then decide it's not worth it to keep going? Most commonly we see this when someone adopts a new diet. In fact, we've all probably been guilty of this at some point in our lives.
In 2018, I made the decision that I was going to write every day of this year and I have already failed. In fact, I almost didn't write today either and I only started writing this post at 11:50pm tonight.
I won't lie, it was a tough decision to decide to start writing this post so late. Laura and I had just purchased a bus yesterday and had to pick it up. We've been so excited to start renovating it that we have spent all of our time at any moment of the day cleaning it up and pulling chairs out so we can begin laying down the flooring.
This burst of excitement had completely distracted me from my decision that I was firmly holding myself to which was to write every day. As today drew to a close and the clock ticked closer to midnight, my mind was tossing and turning over whether I should write a post...
It wouldn't be that bad would it?
It doesn't matter that much I guess...
So I miss a couple of days? I can just start writing again tomorrow
You already missed writing yesterday, one more day wouldn't hurt!
These were all things that passed through my mind as I tried to justify to myself why it would be okay not to do what I said I would.
I decided that missing a second day of writing was just not good enough.
It would have been so easy for me to succumb to my rationalizations and skip another day. To give in to my tiredness and somehow believe that because I missed yesterday that missing today was fine as well.
But what standard would I be holding myself to then? A low one, that's for sure... And that's just not acceptable.
It is important to realise when we undertake a new activity that we have not yet developed it into a habit and it would be unreasonable to suggest that we would immediately achieve everything 100% of the time. For most people (including myself), that's just not the reality.
Failure is part of the process. An important part at that!
When we acknowledge this we are not giving ourselves permission to skip a day. Instead, we allow ourselves to accept our failure when it happens without beating ourselves up over it. We acknowledge that temporary defeat is okay, and even necessary to a certain extent.
Becoming conscious of this fact gives us the correct perspective we need to get back on the horse and keep going at it. The alternative is becoming discouraged that we missed a day and then just not trying any more because we 'messed it all up' which is just totally false.
Thank you for reading!
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