Today is Monday. I’ll bet you’re thinking about starting a new diet or beginning a new habit, right?
Well, unless you are a master at achieving your goals, don’t start today!
Most people begin a new habit, like diets, or time management or not smoking or going to the gym more regularly, on a Monday morning. They wake up and say “right, this is the best time to put this new goal into place.”
Wrong!
Monday mornings are the worst time to start anything new? Why? Because unless you are really skilled at it, you will start today and by tomorrow morning or Wednesday at the latest, you will have given up on it.
What’s more, if you do fall off the new habit wagon within a few hours, you will tell yourself that the whole week is shot and you’ll try again next Monday.
That cycle becomes a known, learned pattern. A pattern that doesn’t work for you. You have a history of starting something on Monday that ultimately doesn’t work out. And so it’s like shooting yourself in the foot every time you say you’ll start on a Monday morning.
You’re inadvertently setting yourself up for failure.
Action – Implementing a new behavior can start at any time of the day or week.
Want to get to the gym more regularly? Start on Wednesday. Want to get better at being prompt for meetings? Begin Thursday at 2pm. How about that new diet? Give yourself permission to load up the fridge with veggies and start on Saturday.
Use different days and times to start any new habit and stay away from building a pattern that might defeat you.
(How often have you started, but not successfully completed, a new goal on a Monday? Please leave your reply in the comments box.)