Program Yourself to Persist! | The Probabilist . com

Program Yourself to Persist! February 2, 2007

Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Consciousness, Goals, Personal Growth, Productivity, Psychology, Blogging , trackback

The following methods that I suggest will add a sense of persistency to your behaviour no matter what kind of an endeavour you decide to apply them on.

But before you do so, make sure that you genuinely want to increase your willpower in achieving the goal you’ve set out to accomplish, or the journey you’ve decided to travel upon. If it’s something that undoubtedly empowers you on an overall and lasting level of life quality, your odds of succeeding are in your favour.

Add subtleties

This advice is aimed directly at your subconscious mind, but you have to consciously make the adaptation. Here are a few examples right off my blog. When I started running the carnival of improvement, I decided to number them 01, 02 and so on, instead of 1 and 2. It gives both yourself and your readers the subconscious message that you’re aiming for double digit entries, which is a sign of persistent behaviour. It may seem like a silly little detail, but it works like a charm for me as it delivers the correct perspective of me wanting to make it a tradition to host the carnival for several weeks ahead.

This is exactly the same method I used when I posted the statistics of this blog for January of this year. Since I named it ‘January, 2007′ instead of just ‘January’, it has the power to enhance my perseverance in posting a similar entry at the beginning of every single month, and beyond the year 2007. Surely, small subtleties like these go unnoticed by the majority of people since it may not be that obvious that you’re running a marathon here.

Make it more enjoyable

When I decided to live by a polyphasic sleep pattern and add a 30-minute exercising session after all 6 naps every single day I knew that I had to lure myself into it with a carrot.

I decided to stop listening to music altogether (I’m a big, big music junkie) and only allow myself to listen to music when exercising. Without this change it would have been far more difficult to get myself out on a stroll when it was raining, snowing and -15 degrees outside. That’s what my schedule looked like and I stuck to it long enough to know what it’s like to live that way.

Let others know about your plans

This advice does not fit all people and I’ve seen it backfire for those who haven’t first improved their own self esteem, aversion to procrastinate and their go-getter attitude to adequate levels. Notice how I blurted out a few goals I’ve set to accomplish for February in my previous post. It was no blurt, but a conscious decision to empower myself to keep the promise I’ve made to hundreds (or thousands) of readers.

Do not apply this method if you know you’ll crash and burn when you know that you don’t know anything about flying your proverbial airplane, or how hard or demanding it is! Keep the information to yourself then and make a list of things you want to consider adding persistency to. Pick the one that you would love to see yourself making a habit of and create your own form of penalty if you fail to persist. Choose carefully who you decide to tell your goals and dreams to.

Allow yourself to stop

Sometimes it’s just against healthy reasoning and logic to keep on doing what you set out to do because of changed circumstances, or simply because you’ve tried something new that just doesn’t make a positive impact in your life. I urge you to try lots of new things throughout your life, but never let your ego or pride hinder you from admitting that what you set out to do just doesn’t make sense to you any longer.