RECIPE | MASTERY

---

Mastery of anything takes practice, patience, and time.

Force yourself every single day to go through the motions that you want to inculcate in your life while being careful to not overload your body or mind by taking on too much.

---

After maintaining a specific micro-habit for an extended period, you can pile on another. Given that the mind accustoms itself to one particular micro-habit, you can then begin to implement another if and when you find that the original micro-habit is performed daily with little to no effort. To repeat this, do not overload yourself with more than what you can realistically manage; you must be honest with yourself. If you decide to carry a load that it is more substantial than what you can take, you will drop it.

---

Weightlifters do not begin their careers with a 200KG bench-press, start at 5kg, then 10kg; this will make controlling your mind much more manageable.

---

This leads us perfectly to today’s topic: Incremental Implementation.

---

‘Incremental’ defined is a slight change in a system, either positive or negative. Both are important for our purposes. For example, you want to begin drinking more water in your day. You start by drinking an extra glass in the morning; this is a definite gradual increase.

---

You are a smoker, and you want to quit, you can stop ‘cold turkey’ ( I do not know why they call it that), but another method that is easier to maintain and has a higher likelihood of success is incrementally/gradually, decreasing the amount you smoke in a day. Instead of five cigarettes a day, you smoke four, then three, then two.

---

The concept of incrementation is easy to comprehend and internalize because performing any incremental change is simple in its execution, and it is for this reason that successful people are successful. They incrementally implement manageable changes within their lives and continually improve upon them. You have no idea how efficient these people become. You must start somewhere.

---

The very nature of incremental implementation of a change within your life is the reason it becomes easy to maintain. Once you retain a minor modification, you create a positive feedback loop within your mind. You perform ‘x’ then reward yourself with ‘y’ then because you received ‘y’ you perform ‘x’ again. This fact is powerfully understated. The reward is the serotonin & dopamine you receive from yourself in addition to whatever reward you have stipulated before implementation.

---

Think about where you will be in a few years if you decide to grab life with both hands. You are built for adversity; you are strong, you are capable.