I have been reading a lot about habit building lately and watching my favorite YouTubers go on and on about their routines and habits. Its inspiring, but overwhelming at the same time. I loved the idea of bullet journaling, waking up early, maintaining a good skin care routine, taking out time for some fun stuff everyday etc. And I tried to do it all at once.
You won’t be surprised at how miserably I failed. Not only did it mess up my entire routine, but it also discouraged me from trying too many new things. My journal is kept untouched after the first page, my Yoga mat unused and my phone continues to remind me of how high my screen time is. As James Clear puts it, we all want quick wins and instant gratifications. To quote him from Atomic Habits, “What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.”
The challenge of consistency
Consistency is key, obviously. We will only be able to experience the compound effect of our actions when we do them over and over again. Take writing this blog for example, I am writing this blog after a few weeks. My inner critic did try to pull me down because it kept reminding me that I haven’t written a blog in a while. My Instagram page kept buzzing with notifications to remind me that I hadn’t posted in a while, when the world was posting stories and going live.
Incredibly discouraging, isn’t it?
But while in deep conversation with a friend, I realised that the most important reason I wanted to start a blog was to be able to write regularly. But should I limit myself to only writing the blog? Definitely not. Does not writing on my blog for a few weeks mean that I have not been writing at all? Surely not the case.
Silencing the inner critic
I have been writing consistently for the last few weeks and I am loving the habit. It just hasn’t been on my blog. With this realisation, not only was I able to silence the inner critic, but also that my thoughts are hardly my friends. More often than not, they work against me, trap me in a loop that I cannot get out of despite knowing exactly what I have to do to get out of them. I just have to constantly work on not giving into those tendencies. We are eventually going to become the story that we tell ourselves. So we might as well try telling a good one?
My mentor, Dr. Daisaku Ikeda says, “You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves.”
Therefore, if building a new life for oneself requires fighting one’s thoughts and silencing the inner critics, bring them on.
Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash
Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash
