Habit And Momentum

Habits are hard to break and easy to form.

Is that true?

Well, to an extent, yes.

The longer we keep a habit, the more it becomes part of our subconscious,
and breaking it does indeed take a lot of hard work from the conscious
mind.

The hardest habits to break, and the easiest to form, are usually the ones
which make us feel good!

The hardest to *form* and *easiest* to break, are the ones which we
impose on ourselves to try and change our lives.

This is because they usually involve sacrifice of some sort.

It might be effort to exercise, it might be missing out that slice of cake,
and it might be saving some extra money instead of treating yourself.

Our subconscious won’t like these habits, and at the slightest opportunity,
will drop them like a stone, and march us straight back to the old habits.

Fear of change also plays a part in this, our old habits are comfortable,
even if we know they are unconstructive to our lives.

When it comes to self-improvement, I see and read it so many times, that
people feel great when they read a book or go to a seminar, and make
changes in their life with great intentions.

However, once the initial enthusiasm wears off, or they don’t see
immediate results, they go right back to how they were before, and
eventually get cynical about the self-improvement industry.

Obviously you are not like this my friend, or you wouldn’t be reading this
little old article!

I have 2 points about getting round this problem of motivation wearing off.

Firstly, read some sort of self-improvement message every day, and this
can be a message you write out on a card that you keep by your bed, and
can read before and after sleep.
This is powerful for programming the subconscious.

Incidentally, most people that ‘poo-poo’ an idea like this, have never tried
it!

Secondly, imagine one of those ‘Strongest Men in the World’ shows on
TV, where a huge mountain of a man is trying to pull a 50 ton truck with
his teeth.

His eyes are popping, veins bulging on his neck, but the truck doesn’t move.

Then the truck wobbles, and slowly begins to edge forward.
The crowd cheers, and the strongman starts to walk forward, grunting like
an elephant.

If he stops, he is in trouble, because he has to start all over again with the
eye-popping, but if he keeps going, it gets easier for him, because the
truck picks up momentum, and begins to move by itself.

The man still needs to pull, or the truck will stop, but the man’s effort has
been reduced to keeping up the movement, and nothing more.

This is due to the laws of physics, and can be applied to goal achievement
and life change.

You need to keep going until your life picks up the new momentum, and
even then, you need to keep putting in the effort.

Intention to form new habits is great, taking action to form new habits is
even better, but it won’t amount to anything unless you accept that you
need to keep working until the momentum kicks in!
(It *always* does eventually!)