How to Maintain the "New & Improved" You

Welcome back; this week is a continuation of the previous week's entry; briefly, we touched on how and why to pay attention to the nudges of your subconscious. Please read the entry found here.

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We have all been there, we made a slew of changes to our lives, be it in the form of a rearranged living room or a rearranged mindset towards your interactions with yourself and others, but that niggling sensation at the back of your mind saying that you will not be able to stick to the changes you have made can become difficult to ignore. In this entry, you will learn three ways to ensure that the beneficial changes you make stick to your core and carry you forward into the future.

Do Not Overburden Yourself

This is difficult to gauge because how can one understand their limitations without testing the waters? The dangers of overburdening yourself are apparent and obvious; you run the risk of multiple negative possibilities, the most likely of which is failing to maintain the plethora of changes you have instituted; another possibility is negatively affecting your health and/or your relationships.

The best way to ascertain whether or not you have overburdened yourself is to proceed and observe to see if the changes you made stick or not; if you find that maintaining the new habits is difficult, then consider reducing its difficulty/demand.

Another way is to consult your parents, asking them to give you their opinion, they will be clear and straightforward (sometimes brutally so) and they will inform you that either the changes you wish to make will overburden you or that you can easily maintain them. It is important to consult those who are older than we are in matters such as these as they have most likely experienced the emotions you will feel on this journey.

The best method is to keep it simple; the entries on this website mention this point numerous times; keep changes small and then incrementally build upon that; you will never run the risk of overburdening yourself if you stick to implementing incremental changes in your micro habits.

No More Zero Days

To truly ensure that you maintain your changes, never allow yourself to sleep knowing that you have not achieved a single thing. The circumstances for this concept shift depending on the individual but assuming you are employed in a corporate environment, and a zero-day for you entails not achieving your goal of 15,000 daily steps. Do not be deceived by the whisperings of your desire; it is highly adept at convincing us that we have achieved plenty for the day. And before we realise it, we have gained a few pounds, and we can not seem to reach our target goal of 15,000 steps a day.

Do not allow yourself to sleep without seizing your daily targets; if you said you would drink more water, you need to follow that promise. A failure to stick to the promises you have made to yourself will lead to failure to adhere to promises you have made to others. If you find that you continually experience a 'Zero-day', then consider reducing the difficulty of the demand you are placing on yourself.

Accountability - Feel Guilty

This point is self-evident; if you realise that you have slipped into old habits and find yourself feeling nonchalant towards your actions and thoughts, then there is a problem because you have become too accustomed to a particular way of living that reverting to your default state also reverts your perceptions towards your default state.

You need to feel guilt when you fail to stick to what you say you will do; you need to feel disappointed in yourself and then use the guilt and the disappointment and the shame you feel like a motivational nudge towards climbing back on the horse. Use those negative feelings as prods and pushes; those feelings are essentially positive because the outcome of those feelings will lead to a better, stronger you.