Old habits die hard

As I’m approaching the 50 coaching hour mark, I have been reflecting on my sessions and the progress my clients are making. I’ve also been reflecting on how I have grown since I started my journey to becoming a coach. If I had to summarize what I’ve learned in one phrase, I’d say:

Old habits die hard.

It can be difficult to know where to begin when it comes to replacing a behavior that is engrained into your life. If you are daydreaming of what your life would be like on the other side of your existing old habit, the first step is to be willing to change. Being willing is easy, but you may find yourself saying, “I am willing, but… (excuses, excuses)”. I think of those excuses as your old friend (the habit), telling you it’s not quite ready to be shown the door just yet.

Your excuses for not starting to change a behavior are not serving you.

You might be thinking if you start when the circumstances are not “just right”, you will fail. Try to get comfortable with this idea: you will probably fail a bunch of times at this. Whether it’s the same negative self-talk on repeat, a relationship that seems to be stuck in a vicious cycle, the diet or exercise routine you can’t seem to stick with or your tendency to put off your chores, old habits tend to die the longest and slowest deaths (often with a crazy scary-movie style resurrection right when you think they’re dead for good).

There isn’t much else that makes you feel as defeated as when you let yourself down.

What would it be like to lean into the failed attempt instead of beating yourself up over it? What I’m seeing now is that failing only means you were brave enough to try to begin with. The fact that you give a shit about failing only means that you’re doing something that’s important to you. If you didn’t care, it wouldn’t bother you to begin with and it certainly wouldn’t bother you if you failed at it.

Are you willing to dust yourself off and try again, no matter how many tries it takes?

It won’t be easy at first, it may never get easier, but you will be rewarded by the feeling you have when you demonstrate that you can do the new thing instead of the old.