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Don't miss 2 days in a row - Intend

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Not long ago I was coaching a woman who struggled to stick to any habit — I could definitely relate — and I was trying to understand the root of the problem. Sometimes she wouldn’t write back to me after failing, so I asked about this. It turns out that what would happen is any time she would miss a day (often for a good reason), that would trigger a downward spiral. She would feel bad about missing a day, and those bad feelings would actually make it more likely that she’d miss a second day, and then she’d be even more likely to miss a third day. Eventually she was feeling so bad about it she wouldn’t even open my emails checking on her. This downward spiral is what we want to avoid. What finally worked was getting her to commit to some big, embarrassing consequence — not if she missed a day of the habit, but if she missed two days in a row. Her rule was: it’s OK to miss one day, but never miss two days in a row. And the corollary was: when you miss one day, do everything you can to f

Don’t miss two days in a row (With minor edits to Leo Babauta's uncopyrighted original ) Not long ago I was coaching a woman who struggled to stick to any habit — I could definitely relate — and I was trying to understand the root of the problem. Sometimes she wouldn’t write back to me after failing, so I asked about this. It turns out that what would happen is any time she would miss a day (often for a good reason), that would trigger a downward spiral. She would feel bad about missing a day, and those bad feelings would actually make it more likely that she’d miss a second day, and then she’

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