Habits are not dependent on enthusiasm.
Forming and cementing habits is about repetition.
Just do it, over and over and over and over and over again.
Does it have to be great every time? NO
Does it have to be good every time? no
Do you still need to do it even when you don’t want to? Yes
That is where the mental disconnect is for myself and the majority of people when it comes to establishing and sticking to new habits. When starting something new, it’s rarely if ever going to be good at first.
The not wanting to do something different is baked into the human condition. If starting and sticking to new, hard things was easy we would be living in a utopia.
What I have found in my experience is the lack of motivation gets its fuel from the thought of not wanting to be bad, look bad, come across as bad, etc.
Bad meaning inferior, mediocre, amateur, inadequate.
People don’t like looking foolish. That’s human nature. One can notice this in the ratio of creators to critics.
One of the things that has helped me is taking enthusiasm and expectation of quality out of the equation. I have so many journal entries that have the line “I’m just going through the motions” written, then list what I did that day, what I ate that day, my current mood, etc. With the end goal being habitual daily journal writing.
Not quality journal writing. Habitual journal writing.
Not quality published essays/articles/blogs (at first). Habitually published essays/articles/blogs.
It’s so natural and so common and so normal to resist doing something because we’ll be bad at it at first. I stopped playing video games because my friends all got way better than me and I didn’t want to keep losing to them and didn’t want to invest the time into getting better.
On the other end of the importance spectrum; after finally following my life’s dream of becoming a professional wrestler, I resisted practicing and taking low level indy bookings because I didn’t want to look foolish or embarrass myself.
Every bar and nightclub in the history of the world has been filled with men and women who don’t talk to each other because they’re scared of sounding foolish on approach and/or looking foolish if rejected.
So consider taking positive expectations, excitement, and enthusiasm out of the equation and just go through the motions. Literally saying to yourself internally or out load that’s what you’re doing in the process. Or writing it down. Or texting it to yourself. As long as the thing you want to do gets done, today.
Then the next day. Then the next day. Then next week. Then the week after that. Then next month. Then the month after that. Until it’s just something you do. Until the thing you want to do is something that you start to do on autopilot. Until you know you are going to do it that day as your default setting when you wake up (and have your morning coffee).
It’s when we reach the point of doing it by default, that we can shift our focus to proficiency, quality, excellence, and hopefully one day…mastery.
There’s value in just going through the motions.
