You Only Need This One Thing to Change Your Life
Start small, gain confidence, increase difficulty, and achieve success.
Small wins don’t work!
Just start big, read for 60 minutes every day, write for 3 hours every day, and run every morning at 5 a.m. I can do it, and I believe I can do it because it’s easy. After 30 days, I will get used to it, and then I can build another habit again, or maybe I could just implement all my good habits today. That’s a great plan, which I will start implementing tomorrow.
Then you know it. I burned out after 5 days.
I used to force myself to start building habits. I thought I could do it, and I always feel like starting small is not working. I feel like starting small is wasting my time. I need to succeed fast and build my habits in 30 days. I need to build all of my habits in 30 days, starting today.
This actually causes me to burn out over and over again.
I escape from those failures by practicing my bad habits, and every time I burn out, I relapse even more into my bad habits. I feel like a failure, and the more I feel like that, the more I relapse. It’s becoming much worse until I have enough of it.
I research what’s wrong with me and ask myself every day, like, Why am I not improving myself? Why didn’t I just work hard and achieve my goal? I mean, it’s just 30 days, and it’s not hard to do. People on the internet are doing it, and it’s not hard for them.
Then I realized that I was overestimating myself.
I expect too much of myself, while in reality, I am far from what I expect.
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”
–Bill Gates
I’m forcing myself too much to hustle, while in reality, I’m just a beginner who still sticks to his old bad habits.
This hits me pretty hard because I was pretty arrogant to jump into a 3-hour session of writing or working out for 2 hours on the first day. I didn’t manage to start slowly and focus more on the progress than the result.
This is why people always say on the internet that we need to focus on progress more than the result.
Focusing on progress is more than mere progress
The key is not actually just enjoying the progress; it is actually more than that.
You see, we tend to always start big at first because of how big our motivation is. Starting out is fun, and planning is motivating.
Even so, it actually blinds us to what we will face tomorrow and how we felt on bad days or after 10 days of doing it.
Yes, the result is engaging and motivating. I love to imagine the result where I have the ideal body, expanded knowledge, and a lot of money. But to achieve that result, you need to make progress every single day. In order for you to maintain that progress every day, you need to start small if you are starting out from zero.
Win some small battles first before trying to win some big battles.
Even babies start by crawling and not running.
It’s about small wins
So, here’s why I tried to focus on small wins in my daily life.
At first, I need to humble myself and realize that I’m not as strong or disciplined as I imagine. I can’t overestimate myself too much and just rely on motivation and willpower every day. I need discipline and consistency.
This leads me to success and confidence in every day of my life. I became brave enough to step forward and set bigger goals. I still have some small habits for things that I’m not used to. The habits that I’m working on, which already stick to me, are already big sessions for me.
It doesn’t have to be forced to start from scratch anymore. I can continue to maintain it or improve it.
Then how do you change your life with small wins?
What’s the first step or plan to start?
1. Start with small wins.
You might not be ready for the big session, but a small session is a better way to focus on progress and guarantee success. I always talk about small wins in almost every article I write. This leads me to gain more confidence to take a bigger step, which leads to a second step.
2. Gradually increase the difficulty.
Once you are comfortable with small habits, you can start leveling up. You don’t have to stay for 1 minute of reading every day. You can increase it in one week or one month. I usually increase my reading habit every week until I achieve the time I want to spend reading every day.
3. Break it down; don’t jump from 0 to 100.
This is where I Am Literate focuses.
Start from 0 to 1, and then gradually increase until you reach 100. To build habits, you don’t have to jump from a 1-minute session into a 1-hour session. Just like I said before, start small and gradually increase to a bigger session.
You can break it down from 1 minute to 10 minutes and gradually increase it until 1 hour. This helps you to take it slowly and achieve success at a higher rate. This applies to many habits, such as reading, writing, working out, or many other things that you want to build.
The key to changing your life is not overnight success.
Focusing on progress means not just enjoying what you are doing but also how you do it. This is why starting small and winning some small wins could lead you to success.
It gives you confidence to move on to bigger battles and win your bigger habits in the future.
Start small, gain confidence, increase difficulty, and achieve success.
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I’m excited to share two new newsletters with you:
- Kevin Nokia Writing: My personal journey from struggling through depression to becoming a successful individual.
- I Am Literate: Discover how to replace scrolling addiction with effective reading habits to improve focus and attention span.
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Essential Resources for Your Journey 📚
- My Booknotes (Free) | Download here
Understand What You Read with Implementation Guide - Life-changing Blueprint (Free) | Download Here
How to Change Your Life with Implementation Guide - 30-day Simple Habit Tracker (Free) | Download Here
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