A Sign of Something Wrong

Life often presents feedback to us regarding our life. It could be the ping of guilt to start budgeting money or the tiredness that tells us we need to start exercising.

While these are frequent, most miss the warning sign. They may notice them but through denial or indifference, they avoid taking action.

I admit that I was terrible at this when I was younger. I often knew what I should do, but couldn’t muster the courage to act. I would deny and defend my position. I would complain about the unfairness or find something to blame besides me.

None of this helped the situation. Sure, it may help convince me to keep taking the wrong steps without as much guilt but given some time the guilt always reappeared often with a vengeance.

Subtle signed, when ignored, turned into major warnings. It wasn’t until I learned how to build systems and habits did it dawn on me that the way for people to overcome this natural tendency is by making it easier to fix the problem.

Without knowing how to address the issue with a real solution, we remain adrift and aloof. We know we need to work and think we know how to do that. But then we don’t do anything.

There is an intermediary piece. Instead of knowing workout routines we have to know how to get our body to actually do it. In essence we need to be able to take the necessary steps. And this is often different from the “how” that most understand. It isn’t just how to do the workout, it is how to start and how to stick with it.

That is where the systems and habits approach to improvement shines. It gives us the ability to take almost any area of our life and make improvements. It highlights starting small so it is easy. It focuses on making progress over being perfect. It creates habits instead of relying on willpower and effort.

If you can learn how to unlock the principles of the systems and habits approach to improvement you gain power over your life. Those annoying signs that you need to change become prompts to make tweaks. It doesn’t require an overhaul, just a little adjustment. If you start making those adjustments at the first sign of trouble, you will avoid the major problem down the road.

Don’t stress when those signs appear and create mental misalignment. Instead learn how to adjust your behaviors using the systems and habits approach to improvement and begin following the path that is shown to you, instead of justifying why you can’t.