The Problem With Being Too Ambitious
You may experience this…
Two years ago, I was introduced to self-improvement by a YouTube video that I randomly found on my home page. Curious, I clicked. I watched the whole video and started to become convinced.
I watched one video after another until I started to set goals. This happened over several weeks.
At first, starting my habits small felt manageable and rewarding.
But as I achieved more, my ambition grew, and I was hungry for improvement, and success so I decided to increase the difficulty of my habits.
For today, I’d like to focus on just one of my habits: mindfulness meditation.
I saw the appealing benefits of meditation.
At that time, my meditation practice was about 5 minutes, but I wasn’t satisfied with it. So, I decided to increase the length to 10 minutes directly.
In the following months, I saw my meditation streak collapse as I struggled to maintain it.
I immediately understood why this happened: I was too ambitious.
Ten minutes of meditation felt unsustainable, and my rigid mindset refused to accept anything less.
So I had to change something.
The solution
I had to reconsider my goals. I was maybe too quick to increase that much the length of my meditation practice.
Fortunately, this experience taught me something.
If you set the bar to success too high, you’ll probably fall.
The obvious solution was to grow gradually, reaching small milestones, and escalating when I felt comfortable to do so.
The human brain can adapt effectively, as long as you give it time and practice.
So, next time you think about leaping to a huge milestone, remember that you will be better off fragmenting it into small, achievable goals.
Everyone starts small, but consistent effort is what sets us apart.
Never release all your effort in a single instance. Instead, aim for sustainability.
That’s all for today.
Thank you for reading!
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