16 May 2017
By Cory Watson
Maybe you’ve said something like this before?
“I want to become stronger.”
You could have been talking about body-building, or getting good at Mario, or diving headfirst into rationality.
Simple words. Many have said them. Easy words.
“I want to become stronger.”
The goal is clear. We see strength. We understand strength.
What about the path to that goal? The path is clear, too, right? To be strong, you practice. Train. Stay motivated. Everyone knows that.
Not quite. That’s not good enough! There are vital steps missing. Everyone knows about training. And yet, there are those who want to be strong, and who yet fail to achieve strength.
So, how do we get to that part of the path, the training? We all know about it. We all know about the results.
What have we done wrong?
There are dozens of self-help books all trying to answer this question. They generally agree that you win if you form the habit of your choice.
These books then bust out pseudoscience claims like “21 days is enough to form any habit!”
No. Some habits form faster, and others take longer. It varies between different people. Expect a new habit to take about 66 days to form. Don’t be surprised if it takes longer.
But there’s no point worrying about it! You want to keep the habit in place for life, so you might as well aim for a thousand days. Or ten thousand.
Forget about counting the days, and go with the flow. Just make sure the flow leads toward your chosen habit.
But how?
It may not work, but I have a plan to try out.
I call it simply “Discipline Training”, and it requires three vital behaviors:
Extra Credit: Get so comfortable with Discipline Training that it feels natural to call it “DT”.
On top of this, since habits are triggered behaviors, I need to choose triggers for each specific behavior I want to try. I should choose objects or situations I will encounter every day.
Many people use waking up as a habit trigger. Other options include:
Most of my triggers will be private, but this much I will share:
For writing in my journal, there will be several triggers:
Keeping a daily journal improved my life before I got my first serious job. Now I can go back and review those years of memories. I only stopped keeping that journal after my life became agonizingly repetitive, a mistake I aim not to repeat.
Since I know I can maintain a journal, it can help with building other habits.
Often, what gets in the way of new habits is just the tiniest feeling. The impulse to delay. However, if I delay, then I must write why I delayed in the journal. Tiny delays are easy to accept wordlessly. Tiny motives are easy to forget. So now they must be written down. Forgetting is not an option. If these tiny impulses must be taken seriously, they are too shameful to stand as valid motivation for violating the sanctity of Discipline Training.
Every day where I follow through — when there are no excuses — my journal will stand as a record of my success.
The only question now is, “Shall I produce a happy journal, or a sad one?”
As usual for humanity, it’s a paradox. To be powerful — to be truly free — we must let ourselves be bound by regularity. Without habit, we are aimless. Without aim, we go nowhere. Going nowhere, we cannot be free.
Tags: techniques