I Failed On Day One
Now, how do I go from here on?

Last week I read a two-year-old article about someone who fasted once a week for over two years and I also decided to do it myself.
I planned to do it every Saturday.
My first day was yesterday and I failed terribly.
To be honest, this isn’t my first time fasting. I have done it a number of times and the longest on my record is three days - three days of consuming only water. That was five years ago.
Thinking that I was already able to do fasting in the past, I thought it was going to be easy. I was too confident and yet I failed on my first attempt.
What happened?
Well, I was determined not to eat.
I just went on my regular Saturday programming. That is to go to church early in the morning, pray, review the things that happened during the past week, write in my journal, do some exercise, join choir practice and so on.
But I went to the mall.
I went to the mall because I was to register for a running event.
And in the mall, I saw an advertisement for a newly opened food chain. I saw it in three different places and on the third time, I took off my guard and searched for the restaurant.
Bam! My determination to fast was broken after over 12 hours of total control.
What we see, what we hear vs what we think, what we do
Seeing the ad one time didn’t seem to have a strong effect on me. I just thought, “That seems interesting. Maybe I should try it next time I go here.”
But then, seeing it on the second and third time, my thoughts about it changed. My desire to try it next time was immediately converted to a desire to try it at that moment.
And I did. I looked for directions and ordered food the moment I entered the store.
And that is how my determination to fast crumbled.
Failure, it is.
Has this ever happened to you?
If it has, then perhaps you are human just as I am.
We determine to do things and then we fail to keep them.
But this doesn’t mean we will always be like this. It doesn’t mean we will always be failures. It doesn’t mean we cannot progress.
On my end, it could be that my willpower wasn’t strong enough. Or it could be that Ben Hardy was right. That willpower doesn’t work and that the environment I put myself in was what caused me to fail.
Now, what do I do from here on?
I could start by making up my mind once again and making some revisions to my plan.
Instead of fasting on Saturdays, what about doing it on Mondays? The person who wrote the article I read did it on Mondays, after all, and he had no problem with it even if he also had his 8 to 5 on Mondays.
I need to understand that while willpower affects what I do, my environment, what I hear, what I see — all these also affect what I take action on.
I should also remember that though I failed a day of fasting, I was successful for over 12 hours.
I will start this fasting journey again tomorrow and see I could go from here on.
If you also have similar stories of failure on first tries, I would be very glad to know how you overcame and went on.
