Day 104 On the Past Predicting the Future (186 words)

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

--Phil McGraw

If yet again you’re telling yourself that you’ll do something once X or Y happens, stop fooling yourself; the pop psychology maxim of past behavior being the best predictor of future behavior is absolutely correct for that situation.

This cynical rule isn’t always right. If it were, nobody would ever be able to change. However, it holds true whenever you’ve been thinking of doing something for years and always ended up by putting it off, thinking that when the conditions would change, you’d certainly do it.

There’s only one way to get out of this trap: when you catch yourself making a list of the right conditions before you act on your goal, tear the list up and take action now.

If you’re telling yourself that once the conditions are right, you’ll surely do it, count how many times you told yourself the same thing before (and didn’t ever do it at all) and add one more instance – because that’s what most certainly will happen this time, too.

This article is an excerpt from the book 365 DAYS WITH SELF-DISCIPKINE, written by Martin Meadows, and the copyright belongs to the author and the publisher.