The 2 Minutes That Will Transform Your Life
Have you ever tried to start a new habit, but you quickly fall off the wagon?
You know how the habit can benefit you, and you want to improve your life. You want to make this change, but it seems like life is working against you.
It happens to all of us.
It’s not because we don’t want the outcome of the habit bad enough. It’s because we make doing the habit too difficult for ourselves.
Starting any new habit is difficult in of itself. But we make it harder on ourselves than it needs to be. We go all in before we even establish the habit into our daily routine.
We get too focused on the goal itself and forget how we are going to get there.
We need to crawl before we can walk.
There’s an inner resistance from our brains that tries to prevent us from making the change and continuing with the new habit.
We crave routine as a way of having stability in our lives.
We either give up on the habit before we establish it into our routine completely, or we don’t even start it.
So how do we solve this?
When starting any new habit, the goal is to make it as easy as possible to do.
In the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, he states that when starting any new habit, it needs to take less than 2 minutes for you to do.
You have to be able to stick to the habit for you to reap the benefits of it.
Simply showing up is crucial to making the habit stick.
Spending 2 minutes a day will feel easy. Maybe even too easy.
But that’s the key to getting the habit to stick.
If it’s easy to do and easy to stick to, then you are more likely to continue doing it.
You need to establish your habit before you can perfect it.
This 2-minute rule is the foundation to starting any habit.
In the beginning, start with two minutes and stop. Even if you want to continue doing the habit in the moment. Stop. Then repeat this process again the next day. And then the next day. And so on…
Stopping after 2 minutes will help you avoid working yourself too hard too quickly and burning out. Instead, by stopping when you want to do more, you are building energy within you.
You’re building your desire to continue this habit.
You’ll be energized to do the habit the next day, and you’ll build up momentum. Those 2-minutes will soon become even easier and easier to do.
After spending 2 minutes per day feels like second nature, then you can build your habit into something more time-consuming.
Start spending 3 minutes per day. Then 5 minutes. Then 10 minutes. And so on…
Pretty quickly, you’ll be able to build up to a more significant chunk of time spent doing this habit.
And then you’ll have a good habit locked in!
All it takes to build a habit is starting it. And that’s what the 2-minute rule will do for you.