It takes more than motivation to develop good habits.
Motivation is unreliable.
It comes and goes.
Good habits require discipline.
Discipline, unlike motivation, is a decision.
Good habits are difficult to form and easy to break.
Discipline is what keeps you on track when your motivation wanes.
DISCIPLINE IS A DECISION
By Robert Van Valkenburgh
Meditations of a Gentle Warrior
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Routines override excuses.
When you create a routine for yourself, you do not need a reason to do that which you have set out to do.
You do what you need to do because it is time to do that thing.
This removes the need for motivation as well as excuses.
You do not need to think about what needs to be done or whether or not you want to do it.
You do it because that is your routine.
This may sound boring or monotonous, but the truth is that routines free you up to do things that are fun or interesting because that which is necessary is already out of the way.
If you make them part of your routine, the difficult things take care of themselves and leave you room for everything else.
In this way, routines actually give you freedom.
Find a way to structure your life around that which is necessary and you will find that you have much more time for that which is desirable.
Not only that, you will feel lighter and freer knowing that the work is out of the way.
We often get set in our ways because they have seemed to work for us thus far.
They brought us to this point, after all.
We are blinded by our own perceived success.
We cannot see what we cannot see and we cannot see what others see.
So we do not know if another way is better than what we have been doing.
We keep going in our own direction until we get stuck.
Failure is sometimes the only thing that can make us change our minds and change our ways.
This is why challenging ourselves is so important.
If we are not putting ourselves into situations that are difficult, wherein our limits are being tested, we are much more likely to have ideas, opinions, and make all sorts of presumptions with no way of knowing if they are true or not.
Our attitudes and habits are tested with friction.
If we avoid friction, we are more likely to remain ignorant of our errors in judgement.
The best way, therefore, to get on the right side of truth is to be willing to be wrong and to put ourselves in a position to fail.
Healthy habits build healthy habits.
Start by making one healthy change today.
Make that change part of your daily routine.
Maintain this routine until it becomes a habit.
As you start to feel better from this healthy change in your life, you will begin to see other healthy changes you want to make.
Choose the behavior that will have the greatest impact on your life and your health, the one that will most positively affect all other aspects of your life and repeat this process.
Being healthier will naturally make you want to be healthier.
If you want to make progress toward your goals, you need to establish a routine.
Without a routine, you are merely hoping to improve.
But life will not conform to your hopes.
Life will not make your progress easy or convenient.
There are an infinite number of distractions, excuses, and opportunities that will get in the way of your goals and your progress unless you prioritize them.
This is what a routine is for.
A routine allows you to prioritize your goals so that you can both make progress and track that progress over time.
A routine is useless, however, if you do not have the discipline to stick to it.
You are ultimately responsible for your own progress.
These are your goals after all.
Meditations on God 