Building good habits is an aspiration we all have.  However, sometimes just the thought of waking up everyday at 4:00 am, running daily, or eating healthier is stressful.  This stress is the result of the #1 fear of building good habits.  That fear is the fear of failure.  The fear of starting on a journey to build a good habit and then quitting. The fear of letting yourself down.

As a matter of fact, at one time I had this fear.  My fear was that if I was building a good habit and that habit did not become an addiction, I would not have enough will power to sustain it. As I continued to push through this fear even after failing multiple times, I had an “aha” moment.  I discovered that my motivation to keep trying came from tracking routine streaks.

Now I don’t worry about letting myself down if I let a good habit slip. Each time a habit streak ends, I have a new goal to beat when I restart.  Beating a new streak is a motivator for me, and pushes me to keep laying a stronger and stronger foundation for building good habits.

Successful People Are Not as Strict With Building Good Habits as it Appears

It turns out that research supports the idea of eliminating the fear of failure to build good habits.  Author Benjamin Spall interviewed 300 high achievers about their morning routines and found not being strict was part of their success.

Nearly everyone I’ve talked to said they don’t consider one, two or even three missed days of their morning routine a failure, so long as they get back to it as soon as they can,” Spall wrote. “They recognize that sometimes they’ll miss their routine, and that’s okay.

With that said, I believe the key to building good habits is in the famous quote: “success consist of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

It’s not about having a strict routine.  Furthermore, it’s definitely not about beating yourself up when you get off track for a few days.  Building good habits is all about your ability to keep trying to build good habits and not getting discouraged if you fail.