Because bad habits provide some type of benefit in your life, it's very difficult to simply eliminate them. (This is why simplistic advice like “just stop doing it” rarely works.)Instead, you need to replace a bad habit with a new habit that provides a similar benefit.
Emotions really do work like sets of spectacles. Your “fear goggles” might sharpen and magnify images of future trouble and pain, while images of future joy and relief become faint, or don’t appear at all. Your “admiration goggles” might give a particular person and their ideas a blinding glow, and obscure the appearance of their faults.
Kindness isn’t always easy or obvious, because the urgent race to the bottom, to easily measured metrics and to scarcity, can distract us. But bending the arc toward justice, toward dignity and toward connection is our best way forward.
Nobody wakes up feeling great and ready to get after it every day. The work is accepting your feelings and taking them along for the ride. It requires equal parts grace and grit, self-discipline and self-compassion.
Keep showing up.
Visual cues can have an additive effect on motivation. As the visual evidence of your progress mounts, it is natural to become more motivated to continue the habit.
Keeping aware of dollars actually spent, hours actually worked, miles actually run—changes what you want to do. You can easily spot the places where it’s easy to make progress, and where it’s too difficult to force things right now. The high cost of certain habits becomes too obvious for them to remain very tempting.