When I was 16, I wanted to conduct this experiment where I would tell the exact day my niece grew up. I made this observation about how you never really notice anyone growing up: you just look at them one day and they’re all grown up. So everyday when I woke up, I made sure to take a look a good look at her to see if any changes were happening on her face. Unfortunately, the time I made this decision was also just around when I began preparing for my WASSCE, and so had to go back to school. I was away for months and by the time I came back home, my niece had grown significantly taller. I was very disappointed, but I just accepted that you don’t notice things like growth overnight. At the time, I was talking about growth from a physical context, but I would learn later in my life that this transcends the physical meaning of growth. It applies to all growth in general.
I’m trying to figure out what type of stuff I’m interested in reading these days, so I’ve been reading very random books just to get a sense of my book preferences. I’ve been reading personal development, self help, and financial literacy books. Something that was mentioned in one of the books I read recently was how consistency and change are related, and I haven’t seen things the same after that read.
When people try to make positive changes in their lives, they tend to revert back to their old habits sometimes out of frustration of the lack of results – which is interesting because you would assume that we’re intelligent enough to know that results take time. Positive results at that.
So what you see is that someone that just started hitting the gym 2 weeks ago is already contemplating quitting because he’s not getting the abs he signed up, or it’s not making him feel great like the promise he was sold. Or in my case, they want to quit reading cos they’re just not seeing how it helps them. YET. These types of things take time.
In Atomic Habits, (the book I was talking about), the relationship between consistency and progress is likened to applying heat to an ice cube and watching it melt at 0 degrees. Do you say that all the heat you applied to the ice before it started melting was wasted? Of course. That heat was just being stored and the storage of it is NOW what is melting the ice cube.
The point at which this ice cube melts into liquid is like a transition point, and the state where it is melting is what I call the transition state. This is how I see change and progress now. A slow and maybe painful process, with every effort made towards it even though not yielding immediate results, contributes to reaching that tipping/transition point. And this transition point is the result or change you want to see.
The age to be able to vote in most countries is 18. You will not be allowed to vote if elections falls on a day before your birthday. That one day would be your transition state, but until you actually transition, you’re not old enough to vote.
Take these examples as a sign to keep doing what you’re doing and not relent, because for all you know, you’re just one click away, one presentation away, one post away, one workout away, or one email away from your transition. It’ll be a waste to have built all that momentum only to give up at your transition state.
Images are mine
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