Tag: Habits

Kindness when you fall off the wagon

Posted on by philipdodson

IMG_7829

Making changes in your life is more about kindness and compassion to yourself on the days that you fall off the wagon, than it is on the days you stay on.

The tendency is to beat ourselves up for the one day we fail at sticking to a new habit, we focus on that failure rather than the other days that we successfully carried on down the path of bravery to make a change.

Many people fear taking those first steps towards change let alone sticking at it, so when there is that odd slip, pat yourself on the back and remember that change is all about a series of small regular steps. It is not about perfection, it is about commitment.

Commitment can only come if you are kind to yourself, as reproaching yourself brings in seeds of doubt and fear of failure.

Easy is painful

Posted on by philipdodson

IMG_7793

It’s interesting that often by default we opt for the easy option.

Whenever things get ‘tough’ we tend to go for the instant gratification, hiding very often from our fears, even just fears of something being hard.

Perhaps something we feel we do not have the skills for the task but frightened to show that to others or admit that to ourselves.

Easy to do nothing, harder to ask for help or to learn the skill we do not have.

We think avoiding something is easy, we can then go back to our comfort zones. But as I have posted before, comfort zones could be more accurately described as discomfort zones.

Easy is appealing but then we have to live with the pain of regret, the feeling of failing, the doom of the pressure from unstarted or unfinished tasks that we perceived as hard.

It’s overcoming the fear that is hard. But doing hard things brings results and success. Like most things, it’s a choice and then a habit building exercise. Hard things are usually worth it, rewarding and meaningful.

Hard is easy once learnt, easy is always painful.