Building a habit

It has been almost a year to cycling and now I can, with authority, share the habit-building hack with you. No! It is no sorcery but a purely simple method.

We generally think that building a habit requires mountain-loads of efforts. This is precisely where we are mistaken. Remember: Motivation is what gets you started and habit is what helps you continue. The moment you get motivated to do something, introspect on how the activity is helping you. Do you feel like doing it repeatedly? Are you motivated every morning? Are you willing to skip? If the answer to the first two questions is “yes” and the last one is “no,” then my friends, you are already a bit ahead from the start line. You have got the needed motivation to start. What next? Continue till it becomes a habit. But, take care of a few things:

Habit building requires patience and consistency. Once you start getting the results, continuing the habit will happen naturally. As Mark Manson writes: Habits are an investing mindset. Habits require one to invest one’s efforts for a little while and then take the rewards of that effort and re-invest them in a greater effort to form even better habits.

Start small and don’t rush into going bigger because you can go. It will only break the habit and what will follow will be regret. One starts to workout and in a week realises that one has got used to it and ups the intensity. Since one has not really developed a habit, it will be like pushing the accelerator just before a speed breaker. Control your urge to up the intensity for a month, stick to the small routine until it becomes a natural habit. Let the body absorb the habit in a way that everything works towards it: from waking up in the morning and looking forward to your workout to the post workout happiness. And there you are. One’s small efforts have already resulted in building a habit.

Trust me when I say this: the efforts that it takes to build a habit are much smaller in comparison to the time we spend thinking about the obstacles in building the habit. Just get into action and it will be done. Your hardwork will feel like magic but it really is your hardwork. Kudos and best wishes on building a habit!

And hey you! Thanks for being here. Means a lot. If you liked reading this, do share it with others, comment your thoughts on it and help share the optimism.