So, it’s yet another day, maybe even a Monday or, god-forbid, the start of a new month. And, oh boy, it’s time to make those new resolutions that I inevitably drop at the first graze of inconvenience.

xkcd: Resolution

I believe the issue here is improperly conditioning the mind. Expecting to “go there and do it” is wrong. “Doing it” requires a lot of things to go smoothly. Things, that sometimes are out of my control. For example, I could try to start writing a blog this Monday, but be unable to do so because of that critical task I had to do at work after office hours. Life is like that. It’s hard.

So, instead, I use a different way to thinking: Accept that I am inevitably going to face major obstacles ahead. Concretely, when preparing myself for a committing to a new resolution, I like to pinch skin on my arm to feel a bit of pain. That way, I tell the lazy part of my brain that: “Yes, it’s going to hurt. Yes, I will continue receiving the pain. Yes, I will commit to this resolution, no matter what”. And, more importantly than that, I try to imagine how despite my best efforts, I fail to achieve whatever objective I had in mind. I believe this is also important, since during long-term resolutions there inevitably are moments when I will be convinced that “it’s hopeless, I failed”. But these brief moments of desperation should not dictate the course of action in long-term commitments. To make sure that I did, in fact, fail, takes more time. And acting on the impulse like that is just not beneficial.

Some might argue that this kind of mindset is the same as “having low expectations to be happier in the end”. But despite what I said above, I usually find that having high expectations motivates me more.

So, if I were to summarize all of the above in a single sentence, I’d say something like: “Pain and Gain”. Incidentally, there is a movie with that exact name, check it out, it’s great. :smile: