6) Persistence
Lastly, with your patience must come persistence. You gotta stay on the course. This also goes hand in hand with “planned” practice. If you schedule everyday at 7pm, then stick with everyday at 7pm because when you break the pattern, then your mind will tell you to break it again… and again. But something supernatural happens when you become more and more persistent. The mind almost does the opposite. For example, let’s say you’ve exercised nonstop for 100 days in a row without breaking one single day. I mean the same time (6:30 am) everyday… rain, sleet, or snow — what does the mind tell you when you have the slightest thought of not exercising the next day? It says, “You mean to tell me you’ve done this nonstop for 100 days and you want to ruin everything and start all over?” (maybe your brain doesn’t sound like that but mine does). So compounding persistence works for you where inconsistency works against you (the more you break commitments, the more your mind tells you that you’re not reliable and that you’ve broken tons in the past so why not this new one).