Once you start to establish a new habit or routine, there will be days when it’s just plain difficult to stick with it. “I don’t feel like going for a run,” “I do want to have that extra piece of dessert,” “I don’t want to sit down and write,” etc.
We all have days like this when our motivation can wane. The problem, or course, is that once we break the rhythm of working on this new habit daily, it becomes just that more difficult to keep it up.
One thing that can help is clarifying to ourselves why we want to do this in the first place.
Why exactly do I want to exercise, or to change my diet, or begin to meditate, or to learn to respond this way instead of that? What are the long term benefits, and why did I start in the first place? If there were good and worthwhile reasons at the beginning, they most likely haven’t changed. We just sometimes forget.
Clarifying to ourselves why we want to make this change–remembering the reasons we had at the start–can go a long way on those days where it may be easy to give up.