Your Biggest Struggles When Building Habits?

[Wind]

Hey fellow friends,

What is your biggest struggles, challenges, problems, and pains related to breaking bad habits and building good habits?

What particular habit(s) are you struggling to incorporate the most?

 

[Hardkill]

It doesn't matter as much as the fact that most people fail to change their habits as they grow old.

[BjarkeT]

Mostly procrastination and forgetting 

[Socrates]

@Wind Consistency 

[Girzo]

Homeosthasis is a bitch. Also, I often forget about a bigger goal. I need to remind myself consistently that why is more important than how. Because when focusing only on 'how', I loose a motivation and a struggle to build a habit becomes much harder than it could be.

That's why it is important to develop awareness and consistently ask yourself questions about where your life is going. It gives you motivation to make changes.

[HII]

One pattern that I noticed coming up for me is that I would start a habit with enthusiasm and it'd be very easy for a while and give me momentum for doing the things I want and need to do. But then at some point, there wouldn't be this motivation anymore that just makes me going for the right choices with ease and I'd start to wonder "why am I resisting this right now? It has been fun and easy last time, so why can't it be fun and easy now?" I'd want this motivation back and try out different things in order to obtain it and postpone the actual thing I needed to do, instead of just going for it anyways, even if it seems uncomfortable right now.

To fix this in the future, I plan to push myself into going for it anyways and get curious about how uncomfortable/hard it's really gonna be and thereby raising the awareness of how the activity really feels in that moment.

Another one is that I would sometimes get arrogant about my quick progress and go like "well, I kinda don't need this right now, 'cause I'm moving in the right direction anyways and doing pretty well overall, so I can afford skipping or doing this stupid thing or that stupid thing 'cause it doesn't really matter". But then I'll be thrown off-guard and learn very quickly that it DID matter.

[ElenaO]

3 hours ago, HII said:

 

Another one is that I would sometimes get arrogant about my quick progress and go like "well, I kinda don't need this right now, 'cause I'm moving in the right direction anyways and doing pretty well overall, so I can afford skipping or doing this stupid thing or that stupid thing 'cause it doesn't really matter". But then I'll be thrown off-guard and learn very quickly that it DID matter.

That's exactly what I notice for myself. I think it's the ego playing tricks on us. 

[HII]

@ElenaO What if I told you that I'm scared of asking what the ego really is because I think that I might make a fool of myself by doing so?

[Tightrope Walker]

Wow, nice topic!! If I had to tell you my experience I would be repeating @HII's words. 

[Lorcan]

Enduring the suffering and resitance of trying to make a change.

Both physchial and mental resistance. Trying to get into a state of mind where you can just "Do it" with zero hesitation.

[Faceless]

Breaking a habit is necessary, but Is building habits necessary at all? 

 

Doesn’t order of thinking create its own action of pattern of inclination if I could use that word. 

[bazera]

My biggest struggles are the reasons that my mind very easily creates for why should I do the thing which I know I shouldn't be doing.

Mind is one giant tricky bastard 

[HII]

@bazera Like what reasons for example?

[exhale]

I struggle with moderation.  I am very compliant to rigid guidelines.  

[WaterfallMachine]

I tend to distrust others too much and get overly pessimistic about people, which doesn’t help in asking for help or connecting with others in intimacy well. I’m trying to open up to certain close people more, and ask favors a little more. It’s difficult, but I’m getting there.

[HII]

@WaterfallMachine Is that because you don't want to admit that you're in the need of help and feel like you have to figure it out by yourself first in order to even feel confident enough to step infront of other people? Because that's my problem. 

But I had the fortune of stumbling upon a climate activist forest occupation recently, where I was constantly thrown in situations where I just had to connect with people and ask around whenever I needed something. That helped tremendously. It feels so good to let these walls of "protection" down, that I was only sabotaging myself with for all these years. Still a lot of work for me to do there, though.

[bazera]

22 hours ago, HII said:

@bazera Like what reasons for example?

For example, eating garbage fast food after eating clean for a month, just to reward myself for being such a good boy

Of course, all such rationalizations are bullshit, but it's really hard to see that in the actual process of doing it. 

[ctro]

The main struggle is to carry over the motivation from the first couple of days/weeks/months and turn it into a permanent habit. The second struggle is forgetting it in the first couple of weeks (due to business and stuff).

My current solution to this is to take an hour when I wake up and an hour before I go to bed to journal/meditate/etc and then do whatever other habits I want to do. Just carving out an hour for 'doing useful stuff and having a list of things to do seems to be the best thing for me.

Anecdotally, I find that fasting once a week immensely helps discipline in all areas of life (although I have no idea why).

[HII]

20 hours ago, bazera said:

For example, eating garbage fast food after eating clean for a month, just to reward myself for being such a good boy

Of course, all such rationalizations are bullshit, but it's really hard to see that in the actual process of doing it. 

But now that you've realized it's bullshit, this particular rationalization won't count anymore next time, right? So you were actually moving forward. What do your eating habits look like at the moment?

[bazera]

1 hour ago, HII said:

But now that you've realized it's bullshit, this particular rationalization won't count anymore next time, right? So you were actually moving forward. What do your eating habits look like at the moment?

 

Yeah maybe, but maybe not. In my experience, rationalizations are endless. There is always a new one replacing the old one. The trick is to realize that whatever the content of rationalization is, it's still a rationalization and that there are two choices, first, to do what your mind tells you to do and second, the opposite.  It's really hard for me to realize that I have a choice. I realize that after I break my commitment, but the hardest part is becoming aware of your action in the actual process of doing them. 

But hey, if it was easy, we wouldn't even be talking about this. 

There's another thing that helps me sometimes (when I am conscious enough to see it). When I'm about to do what I know I shouldn't be doing, sometimes I just stay still and realize that if I don't do this, I have to go through the emotional labor. And THIS is the actual possibility to actually develop my discipline a bit more. Then I think of all the things that I want to achieve and know that I won't achieve them without having a discipline and I realize that THIS, this moment right here, right now is literally creating my future. It helps to think of it that way. It puts things into a proper perspective. Because you realize that what you call future, and what you visualize as your future is being constructed at this very moment right now, And the emotional labor that people are talking about is not something that you'll do later. It's being done right now when I'm staying still and not doing what my mind tells me to do with its endless rationalizations. 

And to be conscious of this is hard for me.

What about you?