It’s easier to have good intentions than persistence. Most of us have learned that the hard way.
Maybe you got to the gym religiously on schedule for several months – and then you missed a few days because of illness or work responsibilities or travel. Did it get any easier to get back or did it get easier to justify a more modified schedule?
Maybe you went on a diet with good intentions, and actually got good results for a few weeks, but then you decided to slack off during the holidays or a vacation. Was it easy to return to the diet? Most dieters find it difficult to maintain their healthy eating habits once the initial initial excitement is over.
Almost any good habit – whether it involves diet, exercise, becoming smoke-free or drug-free, getting out and socializing more, learning a new skill, or volunteering for a charity – is easier to start than to maintain. For some reason, the opposite seems to be true with bad habits. They tend to be difficult to stop.
I think that these two contrary phenomena are largely related to self-esteem, among other things. Once someone has defined a habit of theirs as bad, the continued maintenance of the habit says something about the person. If I’m doing something that I’m not proud of – and I continue to do it, what does that say about me? It’s pretty hard to have a high level of self-esteem under those circumstances.
Positive self-esteem is required for the maintenance of a good habit. If I’ve decided that pursuing a positive change in habits will be better for me, and I persist in maintaining that habit – even though I may slip up from time to time – I’ve got to feel good about myself.
To effectively maintain habit change, commit to persist, even though you may sometimes get hungry on a diet or though it may be more comfortable to stay in bed a little longer than to go to the gym or your volunteer activity. Your self-esteem will thank you.