How many times have you thought about doing something new, only to create excuses for yourself as to why you can’t do it? Why is starting a new habit so difficult?
Whenever I come up with some new idea of something I’d like to do, there is always a little voice in the back of my head telling me all of the ways I could fail. Of course I shouldn’t go try out the new climbing gym, I’ve never actually climbed a rock before. Everyone there will know I’m not a real climber. Why would I start a blog when I’ve never written anything longer than a birthday card before? No one wants to read what I’m writing.
This little voice is the worst enemy you will ever have. No one else around you will have the immediate power over you like this voice. Most people would never say the types of things to someone else that this little voice will say to you, and the more you listen, the louder the voice gets.
Luckily, the voice is nothing more than an echo rattling around in your head. Is has no real strength other than what you give it. It is only as loud as you allow it to be, and you can, with practice, learn to drown it out almost completely.
There is an old story of a Native American elder explaining life to his grandchild. He explains that in each of us there are two wolves fighting an endless battle. One of the wolves is fear, doubt, and negativity. The other is strength, confidence, and positivity. When the boy asks his grandfather which wolf will win, the old man replies, “the one you feed the most.”
If you listen to the little voice telling you all of the ways you will fail, eventually the voice will win and you will fail. Whether that means giving up on something before you finish, or not starting something for fear of failure, the voice has won. Nothing in your life will change if you allow the voice to win, and you will never grow.
Feed the wolf of courage and confidence. Tell yourself all of the ways you could succeed at something before you try it, and you will approach it powerfully. Think of all of the possible outcomes in which you could win, and all of the different ways in which you could be successful. Failure is the exception, not the rule.
While we’re here, let’s talk about failure a little bit. When a young child is learning how to walk, they fall down many, many times. Sometimes they even get hurt. They never stay down, though. Without even thinking about it they will pull themselves back up and keep trying, the sting on their butt teaching them an important lesson on balance.
Failure is not an end point. It is a starting point. There is so much more to be learned from failure than from success, as anyone who has done something difficult will tell you. When you dominate someone in a game of ping-pong, you don’t get any better. When you get crushed, however, you rise up and evaluate where you failed, and what you need to do to be able to win.
That little voice telling you how you will fail is not trying to teach you anything. It is trying to prevent you from growing. That wolf is parasitic, and it will eat you if you allow it. When a parasite kills its host, it will often find itself out of a livable habitat, and will then perish itself. There is nothing to be gained from this relationship.
Feed the wolf of positivity, and you will find yourself growing out of your comfort zone, thereby expanding it. The more you break free from the constraints you have placed on yourself, the further your reach extends. I have written about this before, and I’ll write about it again. It is a topic which, for me, requires much repetition to hold sway, as the little voice is persistent.
Be more than your doubt. Be stronger than your fear. Break out of your comfort zone, and you will find yourself becoming a better person.
I have recently taken on a new habit, and it has been difficult. Last week, I decided I would finally put the exercise bicycle sitting in my basement to good use, but the only time I have to use it is before the world wakes up. So I set my alarm clock for 5:00 AM, and when it went off Monday morning I got up, grabbed a glass of water and my earbuds, and headed downstairs.
Before I could give myself much time to think about it, I sat down and started pedaling. Before I knew it, I had broken a sweat, I was breathing heavy, and the twenty minutes I had panned on working had flown by.
The next day I did the same thing.
I told myself I would do it Monday through Friday without missing a day. All I had to do was five days of this. I wasn’t telling myself that I would do this every weekday for the rest of my life, I wasn’t even saying I would do it for a month. Five days, and that was it.
That was last week. Today, I woke up and did it again. And it felt really good. The more I do it, the better it feels, and pretty soon it’ll just be something that I do, rather than a ground-breaking new idea.
Try something new today. It doesn’t have to be something wild or fantastic, just start with something fairly small. Try taking the stairs instead of the elevator just once every day for a week. At the very least, it’ll give you one small victory over the little voice, and one small victory leads to another. That is how we change our lives.
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Previously published on lifeoutsidethebox.me
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