Hey guys. So I want to talk about self-sabotage and habits today, and you may think that’s a bit of, well, how can you be self-sabotaging if you’re forming good habits? Well, it’s quite easy. As I said, a couple of times this week I’m going to talk about things that I, in particular, struggle with, and one of them yesterday was the failing before you fail. And today it’s the self-sabotage that we do when we’re trying to form new habits. So have you ever thought to yourself, “Okay, I am going to make sure I drink two liters of water every single day and I’m going to start on the 1st of February because I’m so clever I can do that.” And then the 1st of February comes around and it’s pouring with rain and you’re a bit cold and you get to a liter and you think, “Oh, stop it.” See you didn’t do that well. I’ll start again on the 1st of March.” One example.
Another example might be you’ve making yourself a habit goal of tracking your food, your exercise, any of that kind of thing, using an app for example. And you go really, really well for two couple of days, and then you get to day three and you forget to do it halfway through the day and you go, “Oh, well I buggered that up, I’ll start again on Monday.” People, wrong, wrong, wrong thing to do. Let me promise you. So, everything improves in our lives by little incremental steps and there’s many ways of talking about it, but yeah, it’s like little incremental steps, like a baby. First falls over, then they pull themselves up a little bit, then they fall over. It’s the little steps, little steps, little steps that get to them to be walking, running, all that kind of thing. And the same as with our habits.
So there is no good day to start a habit. There really isn’t. It’s not the 1st of January. It’s not Monday. It’s not Sunday, if you start your week on a Sundays, which I never understand, but that’s a whole other live. It’s not the day after your birthday, even though I started this challenge the day after my birthday, it wasn’t because of that. There is no good day. If you fall off a habit bandwagon, the best thing you can do, no matter how catastrophic you think falling off that bandwagon was, the best thing you can do is get right back on that horse and start again. Lots of metaphors today.
So don’t… Oh God, I’m so guilty of this. You get your planner out and you’re like, “Okay, well I’ve got this organized then, this organized then, so this would be the perfect day to start that.” No, there’s no such thing as a perfect day. Just start. Doesn’t matter what your habit is. So if it’s water, walking, scheduling more sex with your partner, something to do with work, scanning your receipts up into the Cloud so your accountant doesn’t yell at you. Whatever it is, start today. Today. If you wanted your habit to be no chocolate and you ate chocolate this morning, doesn’t matter. Get back on the bandwagon. A little bit jealous by the way because I haven’t had chocolate today.
So it’s a really big self-sabotaging thing. And we think when we’re doing it, I think we think that we’re actually doing ourselves a favor because we’ll be in a better head space. It’ll be a better day. We’ll feel better. It’ll all be so much better if we start X on that day and it never is. So today look at any habit you want, take a piece of paper and a quill, no actually don’t take a quill, get a pen. I’ve been finding all these feathers recently, so I’ve been picking them all up because I’m sure it’s… Look at this beautiful one I found this morning, isn’t that gorgeous? Change of topic.
Write down, pick a number, 10 habits you want to have formed in your life. Whether they be daily habits, weekly habits, hourly habits, whatever they be, 10 habits. Write them down, and then I want you to write at the bottom of the paper what your excuses are for not starting forming those 10 habits today. Once you’ve written it out what those excuses are, I just want you to take a big texter, cross them out, because they’re all absolute bullshit. Unless your habit is you want to do 10,000 steps today and you’re getting on a plane in half an hour and it’s a 15 hour flight, I’ll let you have that one as an excuse. But 9 times out of 10, those excuses that you’re going to write down there are absolute crap and should not stop you from starting to form that new habit today. So cross them out.
Flip the paper over, write out what you need to do today to start forming one of them. Now I know you wrote 10 down, but that might be overwhelming for you to think you want to start those 10 today. So once you’ve crossed out all the excuses, just pick one habit that you want to start today, write out how you’re going to start it, how great you’re going to feel when I start it, when you start it rather, the benefits of starting it. They might be health related, they might be financial, any of those things. And yeah, the emotional part of it, how great you’re going to feel when you do it. Then, I know I’ve got you lots of things to do here, sorry, then I want you to let one friend know, or me, so send me a message or comment on here, what that one habit you’re going to start today is, how you’re going to do it, and how it’s going to make you feel, and then do it. That’s what I want you to do. I want you to do it today.
I had to pull myself up on this myself this morning, absolutely this morning because I was like, “Oh no, it’s the 4th of February. It’s not a great day to start something.” Samantha, it’s a great day to start something. It’s always, always a great day to start forming a new habit. I promise you. Have fun and I’ll see you tomorrow. Can’t wait to hear what you’re doing. Bye.