Why Are Habits Difficult To Keep

Grant Merrill

Why Are Habits Difficult To Keep

Grant Merrill

Please Stay The Same

We are creatures of habit. We like routine and we don’t like to change. There may be some variation between us, but for the most part this is true. This is very true with me. I will go to a restaurant that I’ve been to one thousand times and still order the same thing. Spicy deluxe, no tomatoes, with fries and a Dr. Pepper; Steak quesadilla and a crunchwrap supreme; Baby back ribs with a moist towelette. Or on my birthday its the same meal: Yellow curry and for dessert I have New York style cheesecake. In other words, I like sameness. However, I also love the idea of bettering myself. It started back when I got back from my mission and my Dad gave me the book “The Slight Edge”. This book was amazing. Honestly, it reminded me of the gospel. By doing little things every day, you can achieve so much through the compound effect. I marked that book up and applied the lessons learned. Since then I have read several more books pertaining to “self help”. This genre of books can get a bad rap (and I get it) but for me, it was just right. So why do I feel like I haven’t moved?

I read “The Slight Edge” back in 2013. Since then I have graduated from college, gotten married, had kids, and landed a job that I love. Life is going very well! I’m very happy with what I have accomplished so far. But as far as personal projects go, I feel stagnant. I’ll look at person X’s github page and see that they have written tens of projects over the same timespan. Sure I did some cool projects, but it was all for school. I’ve started many projects but it’ll usually be a night of fun and that’s it. Revisiting the project will not happen. I seem to prefer to just play video games or watch YouTube videos. The easy route is the one I tend to take. There are things I want to do. I tell myself all the time how I want to write videos games, read a ton of books, learn how to draw, and much much more. Perhaps that’s my problem. It could be that I’m interested in too many things.

Focused Interest

I don’t know how to let go. I play the same games that I have played for years because I love them and they are nostalgic to me. I’ll hold on to things that I probably should’ve just thrown away a long time ago simply because it reminds me of someone. Then my house fills us with junk and I get stressed and how disorganized and messy it gets. With projects its the same: I’ll keep a project in my mind for years thinking that someday will eventually come and I’ll need to be ready for it. Does someday really come? Priorities changes, understanding of what I want changes too. Malleability is something that should be welcome in my life. In some regards, its good that I refuse to give up on something so quickly, but the problem is that I’m not even slowly progressing in my projects. They still stagnant in my mind for years.

Being focused on one or two things should be a priority to me, especially at one time. I’ve gone through the exercise of creating a vision board and thinking about where I want to end up. One would think that I now need to focus on that. Here’s the thing: My vision board had me doing one thousand things at the same time. It’s not like it was saying that I want to the President of the United States while being the first man on Mars and discovering the cure for cancer, but goals that I wanted to have accomplished would stretch me so thin that I would become a jack of literally all trades and probably wouldn’t be proud of much of it.

I think it’s time for some hard decisions.

Hard Decisions

My main priorities is to my God and my family. I want to be the best disciple that I can be. I also want to be the best father and husband I can be. These will not change. But in the realm of personal hobbies and projects I need to focus and make things smaller. I won’t reveal my goals here quite yet. Just know that I am taking smaller steps and being content with smaller results, in hope that this attitude (just as was taught in “The Slight Edge”) will allow me to reach larger goals without being overwhelmed. Some of the things I want I’m not just putting on the back burner: they are cut. They are forgotten and lost, and that’s okay. Perhaps I’ll allow them back one day, but for now I don’t even know what they are anymore.

It can be easy to stay in the planning mode of life. I love that mode so much. In the end, it doesn’t matter. You can plan for all the things in the world. No one will care what your planner said. They just care what you did. It’s time to take action.

Tags: habitsgoalsself-help.