On routine...

I was just thinking about this, following on from the previous blog.

So often, routine can be used as an excuse for giving up. When circumstances, be they 3rd party actions, time constraints or a simple failure of will-power, make you break a pre-determined routine, it is all too easy to adopt a mindset of "Oh well, the routine is already broken, so I don't need to follow it any more..." This has got to be one of the greatest causes of broken new year's resolutions, Lenten fasts, diets and "giving-up-smoking" campaigns that ever exist - and it's just a load of defeatist bollox.

Everyone fails in their resolutions every now and then - and using that to give up is just an excuse. If you fail, you fail - ONCE! So what? Move on and try harder. If you are on a diet and you succumb to the attractions of a cream cake – or, indeed, a curry – then this doe not mean that because the routine is broken you don’t need to bother with it any more. You have just broken it once. You can still adhere to it thereafter. The routine is still there and it can still be followed.

In fact, coming to think about it, “broken” itself is a defeatist word to use. It carries within it it’s own in-built excuse for further failure. It implies a sense of finality. “I have broken my diet”, “I have broken my routine”. It’s so easy to turn this into programming for failure. If it’s broken then I can’t follow it any more, can I? I’ve broken it… No you have not. The diet is not broken, you merely veered away from it briefly. The routine is still there, unbroken, intact and attainable, it just requires you to get back on course.

Losing weight is, I believe and hope, much like giving us smoking – true success comes not from gizmos, gimmicks and gadgets, it comes from a genuine decision on your behalf to make that change happen.

Genuine decisions include refusing to give up the journey just because you stumble along the way….