If you’re trying to lose weight or gain muscle, you can work really hard at it for a week … and see no change. The same goes for learning music or a language or creating meaningful change in the world.
It’s hard to stick to long-term changes when you don’t get very immediate results. Seeing progress quickly can be very encouraging – so how do we find encouragement when we don’t see that quick progress?
Over the years, I have been able to stick to some big long-term changes: losing weight, working out to gain strength, training for marathons, creating a blog audience, and much more. I still don’t find this stuff easy!
Let’s look at some of the things I’ve found helpful in sticking to long-term changes when we aren’t getting immediate results.
The Mindset
It’s important to recognize when we’re in a fragile mindset, which is something along the lines of, “If I don’t see progress right away, I give up!” This leads to fragility – which is a human thing, but it’s good to be aware that this is going on.
A more resilient mindset might be something like:
- I’m inspired by what I want to create
- I’m committed to this for the long term because I care about what I’m creating
- I also love the activity that I’m doing to lead to my long-term goal
- Getting stopped is a part of this growth process, and I simply need to start again
I should be clear that mindset takes practice. We don’t just decide to come from a new mindset, and it happens instantly. We will get stuck in the old mindset, and the practice is to recognize it, and practice the new one.
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