Not to become disciplined — but to stop lying to myself
I love the idea of habits.
I’m terrible at keeping them.
That sentence alone should tell you this isn’t a success story.
It’s a survival one.
For years, I started habits with confidence and ended them with silence.
No dramatic quitting.
Just… forgetting.
Pretending they never existed.
And every time, I’d quietly think,
What’s wrong with me?
This one moment keeps coming back to me.
Late night.
Past midnight.
The room half-lit by my phone.
I was scrolling through an old notes app where I used to track habits.
Pages and pages of optimism.
“Day 1: Feeling great.”
“Day 3: Going strong.”
And then nothing.
No closure.
No reflection.
Just abandonment.
I didn’t feel inspired to improve.
I felt tired of disappointing myself.
That’s when it hit me — not as wisdom, but as relief.
Maybe I wasn’t bad at habits.
Maybe I was bad at forcing them.
Takeaway: Repeated quitting doesn’t always mean weakness. Sometimes it means misfit.
I used to believe habits were about discipline.
Strong people stick to them.
Weak people don’t.
That belief sounded clean.
Simple.
Almost comforting.
It gave me someone to blame.
Me.
So when a habit broke — waking early, journaling daily, exercising consistently — I didn’t ask why.
I judged.
I told myself I lacked mindset.
That I wasn’t serious enough about personal growth.
That productivity just didn’t come naturally to me.
Have you ever done that?
Turned a small habit miss into a character flaw?
That belief didn’t make me better.
It made me careful.
Takeaway: When habits become moral tests, curiosity disappears.
The shift didn’t come from a book.
Or a framework.
Or a productivity video.
It came from burnout.
I remember sitting alone one afternoon, window open, city noise drifting in.
I hadn’t done anything productive that day.
No checklist.
No tracking.
And strangely… I felt okay.
Not accomplished.
But calm.
That calm made me uncomfortable.
It made me ask a question I’d avoided for years:
What if habits aren’t meant to be permanent?
Takeaway: The questions we avoid often hold the relief we need.
That’s when I stopped calling them habits.
I started calling them trials.
I’d tell myself,
Let me try this for a week.
Not a month.
Not a lifetime.
Just long enough to notice something.
No promises.
No identity attached.
If I stopped, I stopped.
If I continued, great.
That single change removed pressure I didn’t know I was carrying.
I wasn’t trying to become disciplined.
I was trying to understand how I actually function.
Takeaway: Lower stakes invite honest effort.
Here’s how I test habits now — quietly, imperfectly.
I pick one thing.
One.
Not “fix my routine.”
Not “be consistent.”
Something small enough to do on a bad day.
One glass of water after waking up.
One sentence written before sleep.
Two minutes of stretching.
If it requires motivation, I don’t choose it.
Because motivation disappears faster than plans.
I run the test for five to seven days.
No extension by default.
And instead of asking, Did I do it?
I ask, What did it feel like to try?
Takeaway: Small tests reveal real friction.
Tracking used to be my downfall.
I tracked like I was building evidence against myself.
Streaks.
Missed days circled in red.
Silent guilt.
Now, tracking looks different.
Messier.
Some days I write:
“Did it. Felt rushed.”
“Skipped. Needed rest.”
“Did it. Helped more than expected.”
No scores.
No streak obsession.
Just notes.
Because habits don’t fail in isolation.
They fail inside tired bodies, noisy minds, heavy days.
Takeaway: Tracking becomes useful when it records context, not judgment.
One uncomfortable truth took time to accept.
Some habits don’t fail because they’re hard.
They fail because they don’t belong to this season.
I once forced myself into early mornings because they sounded productive.
But during a phase where nights were mentally heavy, mornings felt cruel.
The habit wasn’t wrong.
The timing was.
Letting go felt like failure at first.
Then it felt like relief.
Takeaway: Timing decides more than intention.
Another thing surprised me.
I was loyal to habits that drained me.
And inconsistent with ones that energized me.
Because draining habits looked serious.
They matched my idea of self-improvement.
The energizing ones felt too simple to count.
That realization hurt.
I wasn’t chasing growth.
I was chasing the image of growth.
Takeaway: Effort means nothing without return.
Over time, this changed my mindset.
I stopped asking,
How do I stay consistent?
I started asking,
What actually supports me?
Some habits stayed.
Some quietly left.
And for the first time, I didn’t feel broken.
I felt informed.
Takeaway: Awareness builds better systems than discipline alone.
If you want to try this today, do this.
Pick one habit you’ve been avoiding.
Shrink it until it feels almost too easy.
Try it for five days.
No extensions.
No pressure.
Each day, write one honest line:
How did this feel today?
At the end, decide freely.
Keep it.
Change it.
Or let it go.
Takeaway: Trust grows when stopping is allowed.
I still lose habits.
I still pause experiments.
I still change my mind.
But I don’t feel like I’m failing anymore.
I feel like someone learning how they work.
If this felt uncomfortably familiar, you’ll probably feel at home exploring more posts on Prosnic.
Not as someone trying to fix themselves.
But as someone learning — slowly, honestly — how to live better.
