The Patience Required for Change
Breaking old or bad habits is certainly difficult, but it is not impossible.
It’s similar to healing an old wound you received years ago. You still remember the pain and the exact event, but you are no longer bothered by it because you’ve chosen to care for yourself and move past it. The same principle applies to habits: to successfully drop an old behavior and learn a new one, you require patience and conscious effort.
The Mindset for Success
Before anything else, you must realize that your effort will bring change.
No matter how hard you push toward a goal, success won’t happen unless your thought process is developed first. Understand that the beginning will be difficult. Thoughts like, “This isn’t possible for me,” or “I’m not made for this,” will definitely appear. However, patience and discipline will bring about change, for sure.
And the final key—the cherry on top—is your belief system. That unshakeable confidence that says, “Yes, I will achieve something.” That spirit is what you need to keep moving forward.
The 21-Day Principle: Engineering Change
There is a widely discussed psychological parameter for adapting new habits or initiating significant change: the 21-day cycle.
The conclusion is simple: if you work consistently without failure for 21 consecutive days, your mind and body will begin to accept the change. This 21-day period won’t be easy—it might feel challenging—but it is the crucial period where you will clearly observe the shifts happening within your body and mindset.
Many famous personalities, including A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, B. R. Ambedkar, and Andrew Carnegie, achieved their greatness not just by designing plans for change, but by utilizing this kind of focused, consistent technique to fundamentally transform themselves.
The Practical Challenge: Mastering Your Time
Here, the challenge is not solely about mindset; time is an equally big concern.
If you can manage your time well alongside adapting your new learning and habits, things will come under control quickly.
Again, this journey demands patience and consistency. It might sound like simple motivation, but to be honest, managing these aspects is the one fundamental thing a human can do that no external force can ever snatch away.
Remember this: Your vision, your time, your discipline, and your life. You are the sole owner of these resources.
The Ultimate Reality: Accountability and Failure
If, after implementing all these strategies, you are still unable to make changes, the fault lies in your preparation, not the process.
Never make the mistake of believing you did everything perfectly and that the bad result is simply unfair. If you truly execute everything well, the results must be good. Failure simply means something went wrong in your execution—something “fishy” happened. You must learn to rectify those mistakes.
This doesn’t mean you will achieve success in a single attempt. Mark this well: you will definitely encounter failures on the path to your desired goal. This is because any success that requires genuine change or hard work must be earned. As in any job, you only get paid for the actual work you do. That’s the simple, non-negotiable concept.
The Ultimate Competition: Racing Against Yourself
As mentioned earlier, you must first provoke the thought of a change; only then will things move accordingly. Your mind has to tell you, “Yes, I’m ready. Let’s move.” When that happens, you become a cheetah in the race. Before any action, the idea or the thought must come first.
One crucial principle to remember once you start your journey of self-improvement, change, or learning new habits: Your only real competitor is yourself.
If you constantly measure yourself against someone else in your league, you will fail to focus on making necessary internal changes. Instead, you will only create the concept of jealousy. There is a huge difference. You must keep this in mind at all times: The day you choose yourself for competition, you will be the greatest of all. It’s a simple, yet highly effective concept.
