How many times have you said, “I’ll start tomorrow” even though you were supposed to start today?

Yup, we’ve all been there.

You probably even told yourself “I am going to start working out in January” next thing you know it’s April.

Today I am going to tell you how to break the habit but first you need to know why you’re doing it.

So you want to know why you’re being such a lazy ass?

Well it might not be because you’re lazy… well actually it is. BUT the reason you keep telling yourself you’re going to start tomorrow is because you think you will be a different person tomorrow.

More specifically, your brain thinks this. You think to yourself that “today will just be a lazy day and tomorrow I’ll start to work hard”. Pfft, so you think all of a sudden you’re going to stop being lazy and completely change in one day?

Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. It won’t be sustainable. We got to take a different approach.

Willpower also plays a role as well. A recent study shows that it takes 66 days to break a habit. Do you have enough willpower to last 66 days?

This means, after those 66 days your brain will think of going to the gym as an automatic habit. Instead of you having to consciously tell yourself you need to go to the gym today.

That’s when your willpower starts to slowly degrade. It takes effort to always tell yourself that “I need to go to the gym today”.

Here is a proven approach for making you stick with a new habit.

Make It Hurt

No, I don’t mean cut yourself if you don’t go to the gym. This could mean making it hurt financially or taking away something you really love doing. Here is an example of myself.

When I was in high school, I hardly showed up for class. I never took one class seriously. I failed so many courses that I had to take an extra year to graduate. I knew I wanted a future so I decided to go into college

Now I barely got through high school. How the hell was I supposed to graduate from college?

I made it hurt. I paid every dollar out of my own pocket. There was absolutely no assistance from a loan or family.

If you know me, you know I am pretty cheap guy. There was NO WAY I was not going to graduate with that kind of money on the line.

So what was the result of making it hurt so bad? I graduated with honors and at the top of my class.

So what’s you’re “make it hurt”?

Do you need to put a lot of money down on a gym membership? Pay for training? Sacrifice sleep by waking up earlier in the morning to get your work in?

Now if you’re cheap like me, then financial might be the way to go. But another great way to make it hurt is by putting yourself in a position to be embarrassed or guilt.

You can do this by telling everyone your goals and make them keep you to it. Just imagine how stupid you would feel if you tell someone “I am going to start going to the gym 3x a week for the next 66 days”. If you end up not doing it and when you get called out on it, you’re going to feel pretty dumb.

On the other hand, when you get praised for your hard efforts, you’re going to feel accomplished. Next thing you know, you’ll have this habit down.

Another way of setting accountability is by working out with a friend or other people. Get yourself a workout partner to keep yourself on track. There’s a reason why group exercise classes are so popular. If you don’t show up, people are going to ask where the hell you were. On top of that, you get the praise of others when the results start to show.

Don’t have anyone to keep you accountable? Shoot me an email and I would be more than happy to keep you on track. Just to warn you, I will be a bit of a hard ass when you need to get your shit done.

This doesn’t have to be just about going to the gym. It can be anything from progressing in your career, starting a new business, to getting higher grades in school.

So just ask yourself this: What am I going to do to make it hurt?

If you make it hurt bad enough, there is no way you won’t be able to accomplish what you want.

You can use SMART goal setting all you want but if you don’t make it hurt then you’re not going to get shit done.

Share this post so we can start breaking that habit of leaving it to tomorrow.

Thank you for reading,

Andrew Raposo

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