zenhabits By Leo Babauta
Many times when we try to make a good change in our lives, it gets derailed early on by something out of our control.
Let’s say you start a diet, and your daughter makes some great vegan cupcakes and you want to support her efforts, and so you eat some … and this exception causes you to say, “screw it” and you eat some other unhealthy foods later in the day, and then the next day.
Or you’re trying to think positively, and so you go out of your way to be nice to someone with whom you’re not on good terms … and they snub you, causing you to go down a spiral of negative thoughts.
How do you stop the negative spiral? How do you stop the slippery slope?
By having a more flexible idea of what your habit change is.
The problem is that we often have an ideal habit change: we’re going to start this new diet and be perfect at it and all will go well and we’ll be healthy and trim and sexy.