Consistency: The Last Piece

After a lot of hours of thought, you finally decide to change your life. Change that messy routine to a proper one, give time to your studies and focus on yourself. Stop the endless scrolling and mindless watching of reels. You clean your room, set out the table to study and you do study....but after the first week...bam your back to normal....so what went wrong ?

I am sure many of you must have experienced this coming back of old habits and completely overpowering the good ones. But why does the peak motivation, that seems limitless in the beginning completely fade away in the end ? Why does the human brain not comprehend the simple fact that, "Preparation for tomorrow is hard work today". And what has all this got to do with evolution ?

Habits are built based on a particular cue, or a deeper purpose. And once built, the brain roots its familiar territory around it. Once rooted, its quite difficult for the brain to move one, to change again. And as the time progresses, we tend to repeat these actions, further strengthening  them and making it harder to break. This process can be related to gratification. Whenever our brain feels happy or secure it releases a hormone, which I am sure you all are familiar with - dopamine. Other than this, there are also other hormones like oxytocin. These are called "happiness hormones". They are what that causes you to be happy and give you a purpose in life. Yes, your happiness is a seemingly simple cause of a complication chemical reaction. Nothing more. So basically each time you try to change, the brain is getting out of its comfort zone of "instant gratification" and is netted back to the old track. 

Now, consider evolution - the great process of life that caused all forms of organisms you see today. In those paleolithic era, humans were in dire need of resources. Less food, less people to mate with, and yea less of everything. So what was needed to ensure survival ? Bingo, instant gratification. And then, the jump from that to the modern man was so fats the brain did not get neither the time nor the ability to adapt to the newer system. Hence, they still follow the instant gratification one which completely results in a opposite result in this modern world where resources are plenty. 

But what do we do about it ? Here are a few things I found that you can embrace to be consistent:

1. Cold Showers. Wanna get the feeling of laziness go away, cold shower and face wash. Nope, warm water does not work.

2. Track your habits. Use notion, its easy. Or even better, get a small tiny desk calendar and circle the days whenever you go off track. 

3. Use your friends wisely. Copyrighting from Jeethu Bhaiya, these guys are the people you meet every day. Boast to them about your habit, and let it be your ego vs the habit. You will win, cuz you just made it personal. 

4. Choose your system. If you don't calibrate your environment in accordance to your habits, you cannot possible try to make it stick.

Yea that's it. These 4 tips ought to make this transitions a bit more easier. If you guys have any suggestions or tips that you follow yourself comment it below.

"The ants win not because they are big,

the tiny baby walks not because its skilled.

the caterpillar does not magically become a butterfly winged,

these are results of work working harder than lazing,

these are results of a overwhelming consistency hazing"

Thank you✌❤