#386 The lifeline that keeps you afloat

Learning a foreign language is both a frustrating and liberating experience.

We can focus on the frustration of not understanding the words the way we understand our mother tongue. Or we can realize that without the words, we are free to fall back on other ways of capturing and understanding meaning.

A crying baby can be soothed by words it does not yet understand, because she senses what’s behind the sounds, lets the meaningless melody cradle her to sleep…

Similarly, we don’t always have to know what’s behind the words, as long as we make an effort to understand the meaning behind the sounds.

Hearing a foreign language brings us back to that wordless world the way we experienced it as a newborn, before we tried so hard to put everything within and around us into language.

It makes us remember, there’s more to life than our words will ever allow us to express. And somehow, that’s a soothing thought.

Some people think they can’t build habits because they’re lazy.

Maybe we all are – so we might as well make laziness the key to building habits.

I write only one short daily post because I know I won’t stick to writing long-form posts – and when I feel like writing long-form, it doesn’t feel like an obligation but a treat. Laziness built the writing habit, and laziness makes me feel good when I write more.

I do 5-minute daily meditations because I know I won’t stick to 30-minute meditation as a habit – yet when I DO meditate for 30 minutes, it feels like a treat. Laziness built the meditation habit, and laziness makes me feel good when I meditate more.

If you are so sure you won’t stick to anything overly ambitious, what’s the laziest way you could implement a behavior change? Can you use that as your starting point to build life-changing habits?

5 dead-simple steps to start writing – even if you’ve tried everything:

1. Set aside dedicated time tomorrow morning. From now on, this is your dedicated time every day.
2. Start with a Tiny Trust Builder; something that makes it easy for you to show up consistently. Write for one minute. Write one sentence. Write one word. If it feels hard to do every day, think smaller.
3. First build the habit, then build skill. Right now, you’re building a daily writing habit, not a “daily masterpiece” habit. That comes later.
4. If step 3 feels hard: write something bad on purpose.
5. If step 4 feels hard and you don’t feel motivated to write: write anyway. You don’t need motivation to write. You’re a writer. So you write.

Good luck!