At around the beginning of this month, I made two commitments to myself – one body (the Orange Theory Extravaganza) and one brain (posting to this blog every day for the month of November). And today marks my mathematical halfway point in blog posts. Woot!
I’ve allowed myself to post without much editing. To have posts without any photos or images that are supposed to makes things look more “finished.” To allow myself to not have something earth-shaking or profound or not even anything better than mildly interesting to say. Those were my rules. Lower the barriers to entry, so to speak.
In the book Atomic Habits by James Clear (a book I highly recommend on habit-making and habit-breaking), he talks about how creating a habit is best done by starting out with something small and easily repeatable. For example, if your goal is to do 100 pushups a day, start your habit by doing 1 pushup a day. Make it so easy that it’s ridiculous that you wouldn’t be able to do it. The goal is to build up the muscle memory before making it more difficult.
Writing a blog post isn’t quite as easy as one pushup a day, but by holding myself to low standards, I’m getting myself into the habit of sitting down to write every day. And what’s surprised me is that while there were a few days that were idea-less, most times once I started that something would take shape (in fact, today is one of those days … I went into this thinking that I was going to write something like, “Does this count as a blog post?” and nothing more).
Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it does help create a habit. I’m halfway through the month, 15 out of 30 blog posts in the book, and this still stresses me out a little bit, but I’m proud of myself for keeping at it. Just like my Orange Theory classes, this is strengthening my muscles and it gets a little easier each time. I’m starting to have a little more faith that on most days, whether I think I will or not, I’ll be able to come up with some words to put down on paper.
Getting this out there and being seen and held accountable (if only in my own mind) is what’s important to me right now. I’m working on a habit here, right?