Webinar: Wake Early Habit Obstacles & Solutions
By Leo Babauta
In this webinar on the Wake Early Habit, I give a talk on why our ideals for our habit changes can cause us to want to quit … and how a simple toolset can be the antidote to these kinds of habit problems.
Main points of the talk:
- When we start a habit, we have a fantasy about how it will turn out, and we get excited about it – that’s why we take on a new habit
- Then we start doing the habit and it’s not how we idealized it — it never meets the fantasy
- This disappointment makes us want to stop; the discomfort makes us want to quit
- The waking early reality vs ideal; also reality vs. ideal of my flavorless challenge, and my 50-mile ultramarathon
- The problem isn’t that the reality of doing the habit sucks; it’s that the reality can never meet the ideal; the problem is the ideal
- So how can we create habits without ideals? we can replace ideals with curiosity, acceptance, gratitude, mindfulness
- Curiosity: want to see what it’s really like
- Acceptance: just accept each moment for what it is
- Gratitude: be grateful for what is
- Mindfulness: watch yourself and your ideals, be compassionate with your suffering, be mindful of your urges to quit, practice mindfulness throughout
- In the end, you’ll not only have a new habit (or not) … you’ll more importantly have a toolset that will help with anything: curiosity, acceptance, gratitude, mindfulness; you can overcome procrastination, urges to smoke or eat unhealthy food, etc.
The Talk on Ideals & Habits
Watch the video below of my talk (I put the questions & answers into a separate video below), or download the video or just the audio.
The Questions & Answers
In this longer video, I answer your questions on habit problems, including:
- When you don’t want to wake up because it’s not pleasurable
- When you’re only motivated to get up because you have an appointment
- Working in changing shifts
- When insomnia throws you off
- Getting on a sleep schedule, then getting thrown off
- When flu throws you off
- And more
Watch the video below of the questions & answers, or download the video or just the audio.