Sure We Can

Slow Habit Makeover

As the New Year began, most of us would’ve made a goal to get up early. The usual time of getting up would be at 7 AM, and the new goal is at 5 AM. The body is so tuned to getting up at 7 AM, if you ask it to get up early, it would protest. The bed would be so inviting. Moreover, the weather outside would be cold whereas the blanket would be warm. It would be a great struggle to get up so early.

Though there are a lot of tips being given, to instantly be on your toes. It would be wise to first convince your mind that getting up early is not a big deal. It is always your mind that has to be won over your body. One simple way is to keep your alarm for 10 minutes early than your usual getting up time. If you are getting up at 7 AM daily, now set up the alarm for 6:50. Getting up 10 minutes would not be a tough deal for the mind and the body. After getting up at 6:50 AM for 3-4 days, now set up the alarm a little further by 6:40 AM.

In this manner, you would be able to get up at 5 AM and the mind is ready by gradually tuning itself and accepting the fact and also convinces the body that it is easy to get up at 5 AM.

Practice this method for 10-15 days and comment on how it felt getting up early with just 10 minutes of resetting your alarm.

Perseverance Pays

Many years back, when I was reading Ti**le, I came across a story. The magazine's feature was about spiders. It had two pages worth of articles about some interesting facts on spiders:

• How the web is made,
• Though the web looks thin, if it is wounded right, we can pull anything.
• How the spider crawls over the web to catch the prey.

In that same magazine, there was a story about the usefulness of the spider. Once there was a king whose army was defeated and he was chased by the enemies. He ran away to the mountains and entered a cave. In the cave's entrance, a spider was spinning its web, as it was starting, the king entered the cave and hid in it. It was dark inside the cave and he concealed himself. The enemy troops came in search of the king, and they wanted to check the cave where the king was hiding.

When the soldier wanted to enter, the commander saw that the entire cave entrance was covered with the spider's web. The commander told that there is no point in searching the cave, because it was covered by the web, and asked the soldiers to move on. The king thanked the spider and rested in the cave for some more time. The king also observed that the spider failed many times to wound the web and to make it into the circular formation. It did not stop after its failed attempts; it resumed its work again and again. This perseverance of the spider brought more determination from the king too. As soon as he left the cave, he contacted his troops and fought over his enemy, and succeeded.

Perseverance matters

There was a Greek hero who had to take his bull for the grazing fields on top of the plateau. He would just lift the bull on his shoulders and would climb the rocky steps to reach the top. Imagine this, carrying a 500 Kg bull in the shoulder, walking let alone climbing the rocky stairs...

How did he do it, you may wonder. He combined the two methods, gradual practice and not breaking the chain. He had been lifting the bull when it was a calf, the weight of the calf didn't matter to him at the beginning. Though the bull gained weight over the years, he had been carrying it on a daily basis and the gradual weight didn't matter to him. Had he took a break-even for a couple of days in between, he would've noticed the weight difference and would've been overwhelmed about the increase in weight and stopped carrying.

Whatever habit you want to start off, ensure that you continue it always, and follow it with a visual marker that would push you forward for the next day.

This is Part 2 of the Procrastination series - the final part.
In this video, two strategies are discussed to overcome Procrastination. Practical strategies and mental strategies. Both these strategies are easily implementable. Kindly view and comment.