One of the hardest things about learning something new is to manage ourselves – to manage our psychology and teach an old dogs new tricks. The most difficult aspect of learning a new behaviour or skill is often the ‘unlearning’ of an old behaviour or habit that is counterproductive to what we want to achieve. 
Our psychology plays havoc especially when we’re creating new habits that challenge our core needs (certainty, significance, love/connection, variety, growth and contribution, adapted from Tony Robbins). So in most cases the theory of doing something new (like practicing swimming on dry land), will in no way compare to actually doing this new thing (actually swimming in water) – there are just too many variables in the reality that theory can’t predict.
Just do it!
The best advice anyone can give is to simply start doing something. Prepare for it by reading and researching a little if you want – but the longer you wait to DO, the more difficult it will be come. Everything that is normal for you today, was probably once difficult and scary. You can only make something more normal by tackling your fear and just doing it.
Rewarding Good Behaviour and Punishing Bad Behaviour
One of the best ways to support the creation of new habits, is to manipulate yourself. You need to reward good behaviour and punish bad behaviour. This way you will quickly gravitate towards what you like (your reward which is a result of good behaviour) and move away from what you don’t like (your punishment resulting from bad behaviour).
An example could be cleaning – if you’ve stuck to your good behaviour that supports creating new habits (whether these are health habits, productivity habits, business habits, or anything else) you can pay someone else to clean your house.
If you’ve indulged in bad behaviour (say you slept in when you should have gone for a bike ride) you’ll have to clean your house yourself.
A friend of mine, who is a very successful forex trader, has used these techniques to reinforce the right trading behaviour – he is now a millionaire.
Make sure you share your rewards and punishments with someone who can check whether you’re sticking to your plan – cheating the plan would mean cheating yourself.
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