Introduction
You decide to do something every day, but it falls apart after a few days, and you feel let down. Has that ever happened to you?
Getting up early, taking one online language lesson a day, going for a run — that kind of thing.
In my case, my daily routine had been getting out of shape lately, so a little while ago I came up with a habit: get up early and eat breakfast, then go for a walk during the day (ideally, before the sunset). I tried to do it every day as much as I could. But as things got busier, I gradually stopped managing it. A while after that, I started feeling a bit let down with myself — and at the same time, something struck me. Before I decided on this habit, I wasn't doing those things either. And back then, it didn't bother me at all. What I do is the same. Only that feeling is different.
The days I didn't do it came into existence after I decided
The habit — get up early and eat breakfast, go for a walk during the day — wasn't a strict one. I started it at the level of "it'd be nice if I could." Still, somewhere in the back of my mind, I had a vague wish to do it every day.
A while after I started keeping this in mind, things got busier and my work began running late into the night. My wake-up time drifted into the afternoon, and I stopped going for walks. It's not that I couldn't go. There was still time to get out, but I just didn't feel like it.
Before I set this habit, it wasn't like this. There must have been plenty of days in the past when I got up at noon and didn't go for a walk. But I have no memory of thinking back on those days and feeling let down. I wasn't counting them.
Not going for a walk, the behavior itself hasn't changed at all. What changed is that the day became a day I didn't go.
What I did do hasn't disappeared, and yet
There's another odd thing.
A walk should do me good for each time I go. Even if I only managed twice in a week, those two are definitely better than not going at all. And yet, when I've decided on every day, those two barely stay with me. What stays is the other result: the five days I didn't manage.
Breakfast has something similar going on. On a day when I've slept until noon and missed breakfast — and this is just how it goes for me, so it may be different for others — I get the feeling that since I've already failed the breakfast goal, I might as well skip the walk too. It turns into "today's a write-off," and the walk goes down with it.
But the walk itself would still do me good, even on a day I got up at noon. If I'd gone, my mood would have shifted. The reason I don't go is that I've already made the day a failed one, and I feel that nothing I add to a failed day can change it.
Once you decide to do it every day, only two things remain: you did it, or you didn't. What should have been adding up gets erased into a pass or a fail. I decided on it in order to do something good for myself, and because I decided on it, I stopped doing the thing that was good for me.
Conclusion
Writing it out like this, I notice the order is backwards. I decided on it because I wanted to go for walks, and now the goal I set takes emotional priority, and I don't go.
But I'm the one who put it there. And if I'm the one who put it there, I can be the one to change it. Otherwise I'm just setting up a situation where I lose out to myself.
Has anything like this happened to you? If so, let me know in the comments.
Thanks for reading.
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