Show up everyday. Especially on the bad days

"It took me years to become an overnight success." - Unknown

One of the most important lessons I learned in James Clear's best seller Atomic Habits is that it's far more important to become someone that shows up everyday as opposed to someone that gets results.

Constantly trying to have one moment of brilliance is overwhelming, tiring, and unsustainable as opposed to getting multiple small wins that add up over time which is far more realistic and sustainable.

Think of it like building a house: Let's say a good day will have you contribute to laying 10 bricks and a bad day a single brick. Even if you lay one brick a day, the house will still eventually get built (albeit a bit slower) as opposed to if you sacked off trying to lay bricks completely if you couldn't have a good day of laying 10 bricks. And a combination of showing up on the good and bad days will provide astounding results.

I've also learned throughout my journey that it's completely normal to fall off and have bad days. Everyone, including the most driven people you know, has them (and will continue to do so). Plus if you think about it, falling off just means you were actually doing something in the first place.

Time and time again I've seen that having bad days is inevitable. However it's the time it takes between falling off and getting back up that determines the damage done.

I saw this firsthand where the longer it took me to get back on track with working out, making music, cleaning my flat, or even something as small as playing FIFA, the longer it took me to get back to where I was before I fell off.

You see, it's not that we don't like the idea of doing the thing, it's just that we don't want to leave our current comfort zones in order to do it. For example, we know that working out/exercising is a good idea (and we're not opposed to it) but there's a part of us that doesn't want to get up to do it and would rather stay in our current comfort zone. In Steven Pressfield's best seller The War of Art, this idea is represented as a conflict between the feelings of resistance and desire we so often feel when faced with a decision to act.

So with that being said, what are some things we can do to help us start showing up when we don't feel like it? I've had my fair share of days where even getting up off the sofa has been hard. Below are some methods that I always turn to in moments like these, and have yet to fail me in getting over the initial hump of starting:

The Small Start - When faced with something you don't want to do, whether it be cleaning your room, working out, or washing the dishes, tell yourself that you'll do it for just 5 minutes, one set, or a few dishes, and then you'll stop. The idea with this is to simply get the ball rolling down the hill to the point where the momentum built makes it hard to stop.

This is why you may find that after you've reached your agreed time to stop, it's not only hard to stop, but it doesn't make sense to stop right in the middle of it when you've already gone through the effort of starting and making progress. Sure enough whenever I do this myself, I end up seeing the particular activity all the way through till the end.

Another added benefit to this method is that you may even notice that once you push past the initial hurdle of starting, the task, for which at first seemed daunting and difficult, was actually a lot easier and less stressful than initially thought.

3-2-1 Go - Count down from 3 and when you get to 1, spring into action without thought or hesitation. The idea with this is that by acting straight away, you don't give yourself the chance to back out or procrastinate.

I personally like using this whenever I find it hard to get out of bed, off the sofa, or if I catch myself doomscrolling. But of course, as with the other two methods above and below, this can be used to stop/start anything in your day-to-day life.

What's Next? - This method is extremely useful for large tasks such as projects, cleaning jobs, and organising parties and events. Whilst it's important to have a clear view of the entire task at hand before taking it on, it can become overbearing and daunting if we continue looking at the task as a whole instead of breaking it down into manageable pieces. This causes us to waste precious time that should otherwise be spent doing what we need to as we end up standing there, twiddling our thumbs, and not getting anything useful done.

With this method, approach large tasks by placing all of your focus on what needs to be done next and nothing else.

Sure enough, when I applied this to a massive cleaning job in my flat, only focusing on what needed to be done next and nothing else helped prevent me from not only feeling overwhelmed by the task, but it also helped me get it done quicker.

Sometimes the hardest part is just starting. Get into the habit of getting over this initial hump and the houses you are building—whether that be in the form of skills, habits, knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, behaviours, relationships, businesses, or even actual houses—will be built in no time.

Additionally, one thing I've noticed is that the more you get back up, the more you build a habit of it. And the more you build a habit of it, the quicker and better you get at doing it. As a result, the time between falling off and getting back up reduces over time to the point where getting back up feels effortless.