Leo Babauta, a blogger who lives on Guam, writes Zen Habits, a great little blog about achieving goals, productivity, being healthier, and more. He has created a lot of positive change in his life recently and blogged about things to avoid when you’re trying to change your habits. In part, it reads:
I’ve not only learned a lot about what you should do when changing habits, but through my failures, I’ve learned about what not to do.
And trust me, I’ve had lots of failures.
I’ve found failures to be just as important as successes when trying to learn how to improve, especially when it comes to changing habits. It’s not an easy task, and I’m sure every one of us has tried to quit something and failed, or tried to do something positive and failed. The key, of course, is to not just give up after failure, but to reset your resolve, to analyze what went wrong and why, and to plan to overcome those obstacles the next time.
Failure often is our best teacher, even if it stings at the time. For example, it takes a typical cigarette smoker an average of eight attempts to stay quit. And each time you might feel like a complete failure, only to have that time you are successful be that much sweeter.
Read up on Leo’s suggestions for how to change habits. They may help you successful a bit sooner as you are striving to create change in your life.
Discussion Question: What helps you be more successful when you are trying to change a habit?
I’ve heard it said that no one truly learns anything from success, but only through their failures. I’d say there’s a lot of truth in this…
Thanks for the link. I think failures are success in disguise. If you learn from your failures and move ahead, then you are bound to be successful. Many famous and successful people didn’t taste the fruit of success right away, they failed many times; but each time they bounced back with more strength and determination, and achieved success eventually. By the way, you have a very interesting blog.