This is a much delayed posting. I wrote a long post that was deleted by one of my cats, I’ve never had the heart to try and write this again, at least in full. So here’s a shorter version.

Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.

Yet we often psyche ourselves out of getting started by mentally thinking about the change as something permanent — before we’ve even begun. It seems too overwhelming to think about making a big change and sticking with it every day for the rest of your life when you’re still habituated to doing the opposite. The more you think about the change as something permanent, the more you stay put.

But what if you thought about making the change only temporarily — say for 30 days

That’s what it is about. It’s a great idea that might work for you. I tried it and it didn’t work for me. I think the reason this didn’t work is I’m a lazy bastard. I knew that the 30 days was artificial time constraint and that really I intended the change to be perminant.

In other words I couldn’t lie to myself about it. YMMV though so give it a try.

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