It just kind of happens. You didn’t expect it, and you didn’t know it was coming.
Then the next thing you know, you look up, and you can’t believe it.
You’re actually doing it.
The very thing you were too overwhelmed to start, too discouraged to begin, and too afraid to fail trying. The very thing you thought you could never do has now become so ingrained in your daily routine that you don’t even notice it anymore. It’s like breathing - it just gets done.
Habits are funny like that.
They seem insurmountable at first, with no time to squeeze into your schedule and no space to occupy on your to-do list.
As 18th century dictionary writer (how’s that for a job?), Samuel Johnson, so eloquently puts it, “The chains of habit are often too weak to be fed, until they are too strong to be broken.”
In other words, habits are like a light switch. They begin, as with most things, in the off position, and (this is the key) you have to manually flip them on when it’s time to act. When the time to move, create, work, or just do arrives…
...you must stop what you are doing
...reach over
...find the switch
...and intentionally turn it from off to on.
Nothing is automatic and everything is clunky. Efficiency is nigh, and ease is nowhere to be seen.
This repetition remains until one day, a moment comes where everything is different. You open the door, and not only is the room fully lit without your having even sniffed the faintest scent of the light switch, but the more incredible thing is you don’t even notice it (actually scratch our earlier parenthetical highlight - THIS is the key).
You don’t stop and say, “Oh wow, my habits are here...Hey, guys! How we doing today?”
No, you just go about your work. You just get to executing. You just do what you’ve been doing, which also happens to be the very thing you’ve been trying to do all along.
How did you get here? How did this happen?? What’s the secret???
The answers couldn’t be simpler or more straightforward. You just put your reps in. You went out of your way to start doing the thing you want to be disciplined enough to do without having to be intentional. You basically did what you would do if it were a habit and it was automatic.
Now, it won’t feel natural, and it won’t feel smooth.
It will feel hard, awkward, and cumbersome. It will feel like it will never stick, and you’re wasting your time. But this process is the only way forward. It is non-negotiable and unavoidable.
All mastery must have a beginning, and that beginning is never pretty nor polished, never graceful nor refined.
It always looks like a slow-motion train wreck, until those chains of habit are so strong they’ve fortified your daily routine so fully that you don’t even know they’re there.
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And building lasting habits is so important that there is an entire lesson inside of Module 5: How to Stay Lean in Full Throttle Fat Loss