Chapter 3: my journey

Let's talk about how I have gone about implementing those 12 habits into my life in just a year. Here are the 12 habits I decided to implement over the course of a year:

Running

Getting enough sleep

Re-reading books

Meditating

Writing

Learning a foreign language

Reflecting

Programming

Reading books

Planning

Drawing

Setting short term and long term goals

Some of them are health-related but most of them are just me working on my personal goals and those will differ from person to person. It won't be a good idea to implement the same exact habits as I did and you don't need to do exactly 12. I just wanted to challenge myself by trying something new every month.

Habit number 1 - running.

The first habit you implement is the most important one. You need this one to be a keystone habit. The one I chose was running. I planned to start running a long time ago but I "never had the time". So did a friend of mine. One day at school during a break he to me and asked me if I wanted to go for run. I immediately said yes. We ran for about 10 minutes which was about two kilometers. That was the only thing I needed: a small boost to get started and that day I decided to run at least a kilometer every day.

Next day we were going to a trip with the class. I came home pretty late but immediately after I changed I have gone to run. I ran a kilometer and came back home. The whole action took about 15 minutes from the moment I put my sneakers on until the moment I was back in my bed.

So a week went by and I was running daily no matter how tired I was feeling that day. At first running was pretty hard as was not used to it. I was sweating a lot and I needed a lot of time to put myself back even though I was not running fast at all.

Second week felt a lot easier because I began to get used to running and I even ran longer distances than a kilometer. My longest run at the time was 5 kilometers and I was feeling so proud. I began to enjoy running and downloaded an app to keep track of how much and how fast I was running. I also started following runners online. I was overwhelmed about the ridiculous speeds they were running long distances at. I was not even able to sprint that fast at the time. But I liked running a lot, at this point I was pretty much addicted to it, so I decided to set a short term goal for a 5-kilometer run. First time I ran a 5k in 26 and half minutes. I wanted to see how fast I can go under 22 minutes.

So I looked up on some of the workouts people online were doing. My third week went like this: a 5k on Monday ran in under 25 minutes. An attempt at running 6 sets of 1 kilometer at a pace slightly faster than my goal pace with 2 minutes of rest in between on Tuesday. I ended up running only 3 and a half sets before I could not run any more so I decided to stop. I ran 7.32 kilometers on Wednesday in about 43 minutes. On Thursday I ran a 5k in 23:06 setting a new personal best and I ran a 2k on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Next Monday I ran 7 kilometers and my knee began to hurt. Next day I ran 5k enduring the knee pain. On the next day I ran only 2k before I was not able to endure the pain anymore. This was my first injury. I was forced to take a week off to recover. I wanted to run so bad that my energy was on an all-time low. I was spending a huge chunk of my day looking online at videos about how to prevent knee injuries and how to treat them. I found that what I needed was to warm up and cool down before and after running. So after a week I began to run again. I ran 35 kilometers that week and after the run on the next week's Monday I was feeling knee pain again. I was forced to take another week off. I was feeling even worse than first time. I spent even more time learning about injuries. I learned that you can get different types of injures depending on what part of your foot you land on. I was landing on my heel which is correlated to knee pain and injuries. The ideal way is to land flat on your foot. Also, as it turned out, my weekly mileage escalated too quickly. I went from less than 10 to more than 30 kilometers a week in less than a month. I saw a lot of elite runners saying that you should not increase your weekly mileage by more than 10%. I did 300% in 4 weeks and I was paying for that. So I decided to start from zero, more specifically from one kilometer a day and increase than by 10% a week. So it took me about a month to get from 7 to 10k a week. But I was injury-free so it was definitely worth it.

It took me three months to finally run daily for a month. Now I had a keystone habit implemented and it was going to serve me as foundation for implementing other habits easier.

If you want to implement this habit the key is to start small. Everyone can do a kilometer in 10 minutes. The key is always consistency. It is not useful to run 5 kilometers in a day and then not run for an entire week. If you want to see progress you need to incorporate this into your daily routine. You need to choose the time when it feels the most natural for you to go for a run. You can run more if you want to but never less. The higher your streak is the easier it is to keep going. Make sure to do a warm-up before running and a bit of stretching afterwards. If you want to get serious about it and become a competitive runner learn from my and others' mistakes. In running, the key to achieving success is staying injury-free, or in other words being consistent (running daily).

If you don't want to pick up running than any form of physical exercise will do. Exercising is a habit that you must implement at some point but it doesn't have to be running. You can pick up cycling, swimming, playing football, going to the gym and many more. Pick whatever you're interested in and be active. If you don't know what suits you best just try of all them. You're not going to regret it!

Habit number 2 - reading.

So as I said before I began self-improvement after reading a book. But I have not developed the habit of reading. I was reading a lot one day then I was not reading for a couple of days. After I finished a book it took me quite a while to start reading another one. My biggest pause was about half a year long. Then I began building habits. After successfully implementing running I decided to implement reading as well. I decided to link it to running somehow so it would be easier to implement. I decided to place my reading session immediately after running. This time I set an even small goal than I did with running because I knew it would be harder to make this habit stuck. My goal: read daily. It does not matter if I read a chapter or a paragraph. If I was reading one day I would be totally satisfied despite of the quantity. And that was a good tactic. Although my minimum was at basically a paragraph I never read less than 5 pages but usually I was reading 20 to 30 pages and that meant that I was reading a book in about two or three week. And that was great. After the first week I pretty much went on autopilot. The power or routine was showing of: come back from school, have lunch, go for a run, read, free time. I did not have the time to think about how much I disliked reading or that I do not feel like doing it. I was jumping from one task to another without having to think so there was barely any mental resistance going on. After a while I began enjoying it. I downloaded an e-book I read whenever I was a on a commute to make use of the time I would waste otherwise.

The big helper here was the habit of running and for me reading was the perfect way to relax after exercising. As a bonus I was learning a lot of stuff and became more productive overall.

There is a productivity circle that goes like this: motivation leads to action, which leads to reward, which leads to more motivation. The good thing about it is that you can start with which one you want. It allows you to be productive on the days you are not motivated at all by just doing a small thing which is going to make you feel more confident and motivated. You can also use the reward but that works a bit different. If you have a small task and you are not in the right mood to do it say to yourself something like: "I will not use my phone until I finish the task" or "when I finish the task I can eat a cookie". You can make use of whatever motivates you. You can also use this technique when approaching bigger tasks. Set a timer at 5 or 10 minutes and give yourself a reward after working on the task for that amount of time. That way you will more motivated to complete the task no matter how hard or boring it might seem to be.

Reading (or learning in general) is a must do habit. I highly recommend reading books but if you can't do that than listening to audiobooks or podcasts is a good alternative. Read to acquire information and read to experience new points of view. Just make the time to learn something new and you won't regret it!

Habit number 3 - learning a foreign language

After I successfully managed to implement reading in my daily routine I decided that I wanted to learn a foreign language. I had a 30 minute window between having lunch and running so I decided to make use of that. I was fascinated by German culture for my entire life and I wanted to learn German because I have dreamed about moving to Germany at some point in my life. I searched on internet for a while and found a learning strategy that suited my time constrain: spaced repetition system or SRS for short. It makes use of flashcards and works like this: every time you learn a new word make a flashcard for it. First you are going to review the flashcard on the next day. If you get it right you put that away and review it after another 3 days. Then after a week, two weeks, a months and so on. But here is the catch: no matter how far you have gone if you forget the word you start all over again. That way you can memorize a bunch of words in a single day. I downloaded an app for learning German that made use of flashcards and began learning. I was not having a minimum amount of words I needed to learn in a day. My goal: study daily. That worked perfectly for me. After a month of using that app I already knew over 500 words. Sometimes I practiced writing, speaking and I was watching some YouTube videos in German (although I was not understanding too much), but for most part I was just using the app.

Learning a new language is beneficial but if don't have any interest in it don't do it. Pick something else that you are interested in instead.

Habits number 4 and 5 - meditating and getting enough sleep

I decided to implement those two habits together because I was already transitioning towards getting enough sleep because of running and the productivity boost it gave me. I decided that the best time to meditate for me would be right before I go to bed. That way I could link those two habits. I have struggled for the first few days. But it was not because I did not wanted to meditate but because I was forgetting to do so. So I set myself an alarm at 10 PM and it was a lot better. No matter what I was doing at this time when the alarm went on I stopped and meditated for two minutes then continued with whatever I was doing. So what exactly is meditation? It is all about the nothingness, the stillness, the awareness. When you meditate you sit down, close your eyes and do nothing. Your biggest enemy when meditating is your mind. As soon as a few seconds pass without you doing anything your mind will begin to wander. It is all right to let your mind wander if you do it in a constructive way. But most of the time we wander about random stuff like what clothes are you going to wear next day, or some memories from long ago. Here is how my first meditation went: I sat down, set a timer for two minutes and closed my eyes. After a few seconds I thought to myself:" well, this is not that hard. Wait a second... I was just thinking. Alright let's get back to it... ". After a few more seconds I thought about something random, then realized again that I was thinking and so on. In those two minutes I think I managed not to think for a maximum of 20 seconds. It is hard to meditate but it is absolutely worth it. Meditating has a lot of benefits but those become visible only after about 6 months so if you decide to start meditating do not be discouraged by the fact that you do not seem to be getting anything from it. The biggest benefits of meditating are calmness and mental clarity. Those help you make better decisions and make them quicker. I highly encourage everyone to begin meditating.

You do not need to implement 12 habits as I did. But there are four essential habits that will lead you towards success: exercising, reading, meditating and working on your hobbies. The first three are the foundation for you to be able to improve quicker and become one of the best in your domain. Exercising keeps your body healthy. Meditation keeps your mind healthy. Reading gives you the knowledge to progress.

Currently I am trying to implement a routine that will allow me to meditate 20 minutes a day or even more. There will surely be times when I will not want to meditate that much so my minimum is still at two minutes a day.

An important thing to remember is when you need to meditate. Mediation helps you concentrate better and take better decisions. So if you know you have some hard tasks to do that involve intense thinking try meditating before beginning to work on the tasks. It will not be as effective if you stop midway to meditate because you lose your train of thoughts. Better go for a short walk. Meditation is also helpful when dealing with stress. Aside all of that I consider that the best way to solve an inconvenience is to prevent it. That being said, meditating daily can reduce the stress when you get into an uncomfortable situation. It is impossible to fully eliminate the stress but at least you will be able to get back on feet a lot faster.

Why is it good to sleep enough? Besides the obvious reason that if we so we don't feel tired the next day there is one more important role that sleep has. Imagine that there is statue, and there is a man that comes daily to repair the statue from the damage it suffered during the day. It takes him a while but he does it almost perfectly. Now, imagine what would happen if you did not gave the man enough time to fully repair the statue. At first the statue would look pretty much the same but after a while some cracks begin to show up. You can compare yourself to the statue and the sleep to the man that comes to repair the statue. During sleep our brain is slowly repairing our bodies. If you do not give the man enough time, that is, if you neglect sleep, you will slowly begin to break down. Not only will you become more tired, and thus, less productive, but your body and your immune system will become weaker. This can make you injure and get ill a lot faster than someone who sleeps the right amount. Professional athletes usually need about 9-10 hours of sleep so that they could fully recover after a hard day of training. Now, if you sleep too much that is also going to make you more tired during the day and can cause some health problems. So get about the amount of sleep you need. The best way to find out how much sleep you need is to go to bed at the same time every day for a week and will be able to deduce the amount of sleep you need.

As I said, getting enough sleep is a thing that comes naturally with running or any kind of physical activity. But another aspect that is frequently overlooked is the quality of the sleep. How do you get better sleep? There a two major things that can influence the quality of the sleep. First, if it's too hot or too cold in your room it will be harder to fall asleep and you won't sleep that well. Second, if you have too much screen time close to bed time. It's recommended that you have no screen time at least an hour before going to bed. Instead, you can spend time with your family or working on a habit, like reading or meditating, for example.

First you need to figure out how much sleep do you need. An average person needs anywhere from 7 to 9 hours of sleep a day. Most probably that is also the case for you. I figured out that for me 7 and half to 8 hours is just the right amount. Sometimes I am more tired and sleep more but usually that is the perfect interval.

Sometimes it might be hard to go to the bed at the right time. Do not just go to bed three hours earlier than usually because you are not going to fall asleep. First you need to wake up at the desired time. You will feel more tired for the first few days to a week so do not set yourself tasks that are too exhausting and do not plan on doing too many things. After a week you will be able to be as productive as you possibly can.

But there is a catch. And that leads me to...

Habits number 6 and 7 - reflecting and planning

These two habits go hand in hand. Let's talk first about planning. Why is it so important and I see this a must do? There is a common scenario that goes like this. Let's say that someone decides that he wants to become more productive. Next day he wakes up early. Then a problem occurs: now what? He didn't plan anything so he does not know what to do. Sure, he can decide what he wants to do at that time but there is a problem that comes with that: decision making drains our willpower so much that we will not be able to make more than a couple of things before giving up and saying that we are too tired. By planning your day ahead you make sure that you do not have to waste your energy on deciding what to do. Your energy levels are highest during the first four hours after waking up. So in order to be as productive as possible plan your day such that during those four hours you do the things that are most important to you and the things that are the hardest and that require the most willpower. But do not do the hardest thing first. It is hard to start because you do not have any motivation immediately after you wake up. Do something that easy, so that you can finish in two minutes (like meditating or some physical exercises), but it need to be something important for you as well. That way you will feel more motivated and it would be significantly easier to continue with the harder tasks. As always it is important that you implement a routine and then move towards doing harder stuff. But sometimes we do not have the time to implement a routine, like when we have to study for an exam that is only a week away, or we have to finish a lot of stuff for our job. And that is exactly when this strategy is perfect. Start your day with something small, but important, then you can just fly through the hard work you have got to do while your energy is still high.

So what does reflecting mean? It means that you should sit for a while and analyze your activity, put yourself some questions: what did I do right, what did I do wrong, how can I make it work, how can I do this more affectively, and so on. John C. Maxwell recommends reflecting between 10 and 30 minutes once a day, for two or three hours once a week, for several hours every 3-4 months and for a couple of days once a years.

This goes hand in hand with planning because you know what changes you can make to your routine to make it better. This also applies to planning, let's say, a training program, or when you just want do make the stuff you want more efficiently. Do not be afraid of variety. Tweak your plan as many times as needed to suit your lifestyle.

I made an experiment during winter holidays, and I had this experiment in my head for a long time, and it implied that I planned my day in a way that I had about 2 hours of spare time in a day. I do not like to plan my days hour by hour. I like to plan just want comes after what. But I needed to plan it by hours in order to know if I can do everything I want in a single day. So I roughly estimated the time it would take me complete each activity and ended up with an hour and a half of spare time.

I planned on doing the hardest things in the morning but I made something that for me was a huge mistake. In my plan I wrote just "morning routine". Although I knew what I needed to do I still felt a resistance that kept me from getting up and starting the immediately. Sometimes I just went to stop my alarm, sat on the side of bed and did nothing. I did not know what to begin with and that told me that in order to make this a consistent routine I had to plan my entire morning routine so that I do not have to think about what to do next. Surprisingly for me the rest of the day went normal, and I attribute that to the fact that the rest of the day was properly planned and I had no troubles sticking to my routine. It was just hard to start the day as my morning was poorly planned.

Over the course of vacation I tweaked my schedule several times and thus I learned more about myself and the best way to schedule a day for myself. I learned that the best way to keep me doing everything I want in a day I need to ignore the time markers as those were just guidelines for planning. I was doing everything until I felt I have done something, that I have made some progress and did not wasted my time. That way of going about things made being productive a lot easier. I had times when I was ahead of my schedule and times when I was far behind but I still did everything I wanted even if it was something as simple as thinking about an idea or a way to make stuff work.

Habit number 8 - setting short term and long term goals

This one is good to implement after you have implement some habits related to your passion. A habit does form after 21 days but it takes 90 days for the habit to remain. Do not think that after 90 days habits can't be broken. It is just a lot harder to do so unintentionally or even intentionally if the habit implies some kind of instant gratification like smoking, drinking, eating lots of sweets and so on. Even running is a habit that is hard to break even intentionally because of that immediate gratification in the form of better a mood and higher levels of energy and motivation. But of course bad habits are harder to break.

So after you successfully incorporated in your lifestyle a routine that involves doing the thing you enjoy the most, or even more of them, you want to become good at it. And that is exactly where setting goals comes in. At first, when you were trying to implement the habit you had a small daily goal, like meditate for one minute, or read a page, or play the guitar for 5 minutes. Now that you want to perfect your skill setting goals would be a great way to make visible progress. You need to gradually increase the amount of time you are spending daily on your passion. Sure, you can will get good at it with as little as 15 minutes a day. The problem is - you will remain on this average level most people are and you will not be successful that way. The top 1% work the hardest. They love what they are doing so much that they often forget do eat or neglect sleep. I am not saying this is a good thing, but you should consider the passion those people have when it comes to the thing they enjoy doing. What you want is to slowly turn those 15 minutes a day you are spending on your hobby into an hour, than into two hours and so on. It is up to you how much time you can dedicate to your passion but be careful not to waste your time on things that do not matter for you.

You might have heard of the 10 000 hour rule. It is a belief that after practicing something for 10 000 hours you achieve mastery. This is only half true. You can make progress and eventually achieve mastery only if you do something that Daniel Goleman, in his book, "Focus", calls "smart practice". He puts it like this: if go and repeat the same thing for thousands of times you will make the same mistakes over and over again. In order to make progress you need to slightly tweak the way you are doing that, thus coming closer and closer to you goal. He also says that you need to get feedback from someone that already achieved mastery or at least by someone that is better than you at what you want to do, someone that is at a level you want to be and you do not know how to get there. This means a simple three steps process: exercise, analyze and improve. The speed at which you improve totally depends on the quality of the changes you make. If you were to make no changes you would remain at the same level. Imagine training 10 years for a race, and at the race day being as slow as in the first day.

Professionals have it all in their muscle memory. The process is simple but takes time. First you repeat the action until you can do it with ease. They you evaluate what is that you are doing right and what you are doing wrong, searching for ways to improve. That is why it is so important go get a constant stream of information. The richest people in the world read well over 50 books a year but the average person reads about one to two books in a year.

After you found a way to improve you repeat that new thing until you can do it effortlessly. This basically applies to everything.

Setting goals is a good way to track your progress. But there are a few characteristics a goal should have: it must be achievable, it must have a realistic deadline and it must be measurable.

For example: if you say that you want to write a good book, you are setting yourself an immeasurable goal. What does it mean for a book to be good? That it's interesting? That you sold a lot of copies? Or that your best friend liked it? A good goal when you are just starting out might be just writing a 100 pages long book in a year. It is achievable, it has a realistic deadline and, you definitely can measure the progress you have done so far.

If you want to become good at something you must understand that it takes time to master a certain skill. If you look at a person that is successful in a domain you are interested in, there is a very high change that the respective person spent a lot more time that 10 000 hours perfecting his technique.

Habit number 9 - writing

The next thing I wanted to cross off of my list way writing. I had this idea for the book and I wanted to try and see what is going to happen. I knew this was not going to be anywhere close to a good book but I wanted to gain experience in this domain. If you are reading this book then I made some good progress with it, otherwise, well, I can write whatever I want because nobody is going to see this.

Anyways, at first I was pretty scared of this idea because I had been always struggling with writing essays because they needed to be, let's say 400 words. This number seemed a big number. But that is nowhere near the length of a book. A book that has 200 pages has, on average 55 000 words. I said that if would be able to pull off 30 000 words I would call that a book and a successful project. Now I am getting somewhat confident that I would be able to do this as I am slowly approaching the 10 000 words mark. This also seemed huge for me, but here I am, as far as I would not be able to even imagine I could get.

Writing was pretty easy to implement by linking it to another habit. My routine when I was coming from school was: learn German, run, read, spare time/study time. So I included writing after reading. That way, not only I was linking it to another habit, but also was getting information right before writing.

Now, this does not need to be writing for you as well, but any form of creative process, like drawing, singing, playing an instrument, crafting things, basically anything that implies creating something. Also, remember that it does not need to be perfect first try, it does not even need to be good, you just need to get used to the act of creating. With time, and through experience, you will learn how to create something valuable. In order to be successful you need to be able to create value for people, high quality stuff, that you spent your entire life learning to create. It does not need to be something physical, it may as well be just a good advice that holds the potential of a turning point in one's life.

Habit number 10 - programming

I still had plenty of time in my day so I wanted do dedicate it to something I was good at but I knew that I was not good enough to achieve something - programming.

If you are interested in programming, there is really nothing to be intimidated by. It is a skill that is very easy to learn, and all you need is a decent computer and access to internet. There are lots of great tutorials online and intros into what programming really is. So if you fell that programming might be something you would like to do on a daily basis do not hesitate and start learning today.

For me, this was the most enjoyable habit. I've implemented so far because I had a lot of fun working on a personal project: an app that solves the Rubik's cube. This was challenging at first so I split it into smaller parts: draw the cube, save its state, implement the moves, solve the cube layer by layer (the beginner method), store the solution, show how to solve the cube, add animation. The task "make a program that solves the Rubik's cube" is pretty overwhelming but each separate step isn't that hard. It took me about three months to finish the project. On some days I wrote a bunch of code, on others I barely wrote any code and rather stood and thought about how to do certain things. I was a bit sad when I finished because I really enjoyed working on it. It wasn't easy but it was fun and I will continue to work on all kinds of projects.

It is a personal goal related habit so I do not expect even 1% of you to pick this one. Instead you should choose something you like to do, or just something that you think you will enjoy doing. If you do not know what you like doing that just try different stuff. Stick with it for a months or so and if by that time you got bored of it move to something else. Make it into a game and try becoming as good as you can during that month and that will make it a lot more enjoyable. That way, if you end up discarding the habit, at least you know that you had fun time trying it.

Habit number 11 - drawing

There is not that much to talk about with this one. It is the same as with programming. Interested in it? Just do it. There are a lot of great tutorials out there. Many believe that you have to be talented to have success with something like drawing or composing. But it is just a myth. The only thing you need is dedication. If you apply the 10 000 hour rule correctly then you can be successful in any domain. Sometimes it might be better to quit if you lost interest but before that you should reflect a bit and determine what made you lose interest. If it is because of the goals that you have set to yourself that overwhelm you or the stress you are feeling because you feel that you are somehow obligated to become better consider the following story: a man was interested in physics from the very youth. At the age of 13 he became as good as Physics college students. But when he was 20 he began to lose interest because of the thought that he must do something practical as usual. He decided to not do what others wanted him to do but decided to just have fun and experiment. Not only he regained his interest but after a while he discovered something that someone who was working only seriously would have never been able to discover. The discovery was so important that he received a Nobel Prize because of it.

Habit number 12 - re-reading books

How to get the most of a book? Buy yourself a highlighter and some sticky notes. When reading highlight everything that you think might be useful in some day. Do not rely on your memory and do not get fooled by your brain by thinking that it is logical so there no way you would not apply it. Every "aha" moment is important. Every phrase that catches your attention should be highlighted. An even better thing you can do is to have a folder with the book quotes that made you think. Ideally you would want to separate them by the categories they belong to.

Now, you may think that it would be better to do this the first time you read a book, so there would be no need to read it again. Except, you need to consider the fact that your mentality changes over time, especially when reading a lot of book. So after a year's worth of reading your mentality changes a lot and you notice some phrases that haven't caught your attention the first time you read the book. This is because of the difference in context. Now you face different problems and have different questions so it's natural that other phrases are more likely to interest you this time.

Also, this needs to be a separate habit. It is good if you can read old books for the same time as you would read normally, but if you got an hour of reading a day, it does not mean that you should read old books for an hour as well. It is a new habit after all, so start small as with any habit. Although it is also reading it is a completely different habit just because you have your highlighter with you and stop from time to time to highlight certain phrases or even write and store them (preferably).

It is true that some books are not worth re-reading, but the best books must be re-read several times. Some of the books that I think are worth re-reading a lot of times are: "How to win friends and influence people", by Dale Carnegie, "Rich dad, poor dad", by Robert Kiyosaki, "The power of now", by Eckhart Tolle, "Think and grow rich", by Napoleon Hill and "The subtle art of not giving a f*uck" by Mark Manson.

As I read books for the first time I try to stay as focused as possible on the main lessons of the book. If, after reading it I feel like I left some valuable information behind or that some aspects remained unclear, or if I feel like the book completely changed my vision, I place that book on my re-read list. Those do not need to be all self-improvement book. If you got inspired by a fiction book then you should definitely revisit it in the future.

Conclusion

So, those were the habits I worked on implementing over the course of one year. Besides the benefits that those habits have, they also make you develop the important most habit there is: self-discipline. What exactly is self-discipline? It is when you go to the gym although it is raining outside, it is when you take two minutes to meditate although you are tired and want to sleep. Self-discipline is the act of showing up when you don't want to. To master self-discipline means to overcome mental resistance and to do what you have to do despite not feeling motivated and wanting to spend your entire day staying in bed. Also, it means to be able to practice delayed gratification. What does that mean? It means to choose long-term rewards over the immediate pleasure. You do this every time you stop yourself from eating junk food in order to lose weight, every time you take a cold shower or meditate in order to feel more energized throughout the day, every time you do something unpleasant in order to collect greater rewards in the future. Mastery of self-discipline and the practice of delayed gratification represents the key towards achieving success. Many studies have shown that most of the people that are successful practiced delayed gratification from a very young age.

Delayed gratification is the foundation of breaking bad habits. It is a lot harder to quit bad habits that it is to form new, good ones. Quitting sugar, alcohol, cigarettes, junk food or social media is hard because of instant gratification.