James Lim explains why drastic life changes fail: people see small steps as beneath them, then feel shame when they relapse. Real change comes from tiny, consistent actions that compound over time, not from big overhauls.
Chapters
Most people make the mistake of trying to make drastic or big changes in their life, only for it to run out of steam or cause overwhelmed paralysis, resulting in returning to your old ways. You end up feeling dejected and useless. For many, deep down, we do this because we believe doing anything less is beneath us, embarrassing even. How can such a small change be a worthy goal of who I want to become? This creates a duality in your mind as you convince yourself that you can do more, causing you to set higher expectations, while simultaneously recognizing through your experience that you cannot actually manage it. This is all, then encoded into your unconscious. Shift this mindset to a compounding one. Compounding works by starting very small but crucially, taking action relentlessly and consistently, adding a small percentage each iteration over a long period of time.