You have come a long way

When you are using systems and habits to improve your life, you will likely get to a point of exhaustion. It happens to everyone. Even with the best of intentions, you will become tired.

That is the point at which you start to question the work you are putting in. You measure it against what you feel you deserve to get from all that hard work. Many times, it seems like you haven’t received as many rewards as you feel appropriate.

While this is normal, it tends to be a make-or-break moment. If you let it discourage you enough, it will convince you to quit. It will tell you that there are easier ways to improve.

But you have to push past this. I tend to face this moment by reducing what I am doing. I make sure the minimums I set are easy enough to allow them to continue even with diminished willpower.

This will help you keep pushing forward. It will allow you to take the newly formed habits and solidify them. As you do, they will become more automatic and less reliant on willpower.

I was recently talking to a friend who felt very discouraged. He had been working hard to reach a goal and started to let the negativity in. He felt that he worked much harder than the results showed. He questioned the worth of the work if he didn’t gain rewards.

I decided to shift the conversation. Instead of talking about what he wished he had gained, we talked about the progress he has made. We talked about how far he travelled and how much better he was than before he started.

Sure, the pace might be slower than he hoped, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it. He just needs to focus on the progress he is making. He needs to stop obsessing about the outcome goal.

As we talked, he started to realize how much he has achieved. It gets lost in the daily struggles. But it is still there.

Changing systems and habits in life takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight or with the snap of our fingers. Because of the time it takes, we are left with plenty of time to question what we are doing.

If you find yourself at this point, stop and reframe your thinking. Focus instead on making progress. Even if you slow down a bit, keep going. After these hurdles tends to come the most rewards.

It is like the saying that it is darkest before dawn. Many breakthroughs in my systems and habits work came just after I was at my lowest point. Instead of quitting I kept going. That led to a sudden surge of progress.

The habits in our life help us improve. We can’t get too drawn into our own entitlement from the work we put in. It doesn’t matter what we think we should get from our efforts. It is better to focus on the reality and keep making progress.