365 Days With Self-Discipline: 365 Life-Altering Thoughts on Self-Control, Mental Resilience, and Success

Day 104: On the Past Predicting the Future

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

—Phil McGraw

 

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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.

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