A Simple Glass of Water

There’s a glass of water I drink every morning. It’s the sole action in my life I’m most proud of doing. Not because of the health benefits, but because of the habit I formed.

It might be silly, but I couldn’t always be consistent with this. Somedays I’d wake up late and be in a rush, or sleep in far too long and lounging away my morning in bed. And in between, there were times I’d just flat-out forget. But eventually I got it down pat. Now, more often than not, I got that nice glass of water every morning.

What I find so great about this habit is twofold. For one, I’m definitely proud of my consistency with it. It’s not always consistent but now it’s something I know I’m doing more often than not. Not perfectly, but more often than not.

The second part is what really makes me beam with pride. This simple glass has allowed me to get a victory every day. Each time I take a few sips, I see a little tiny win against a foe we know all too well.

Distraction.

I find myself to be mostly optimistic, mostly hard-working, mostly kind, but also mostly distracted.

Distraction frustrates me to no end. It disrupts my workflow at work, it disrupted studying in school, it disrupts me when I’m building a lego, or even just hanging out with friends. Whether it’s a bing or a buzz from my phone, a task I suddenly remembered I needed to do, or just my mind going elsewhere, I get distracted a lot. Of course, it’s almost always to my own detriment too. But it’s also why I’m so proud of my morning water habit. It’s proof I can sustain conscious focus day in and day out, even if the time of focus is just a few seconds.

Distraction and interruption are synonymous. Whether for good or bad, they disrupt our lives from things we want to do. But this water habit I have? This water habit disrupts distraction. This habit interrupts the interruptions of my day and gives me a tiny little win in the best way possible. It’s truly a cheat code: I just drink my glass, and I win.

What’s most important is those tiny wins start to snowball. The idea of one habit creating momentum for others to form is real. Once I’ve seen myself be consistent with something once, why can’t I do it for something else? The belief I can do it starts to instill.

Now, I couldn’t have made it to this daily win if it weren’t for me starting so small. I didn’t start with something else that’s proven to be helpful but logistically isn’t at first. Meditation or journaling or something else similarly impressive, for me, were too disruptive of my current routines to expect I could implement one and stick with it.

For so so long, I fought distraction while I tried to form habits but to mostly no avail. Some I did. I work out, I brush my teeth, I meditate (now, lol), but they either took me years of effort or stemmed from values I grew up on. Looking back, there weren’t many habits I was forming that I stuck with out of choice. It made me realize I was either choosing the wrong habits or not being realistic with myself.

I want to do everything always, I don’t ever want to not try something because I don’t think I can do it. I don’t ever want to settle. And so it boiled down to me not being realistic with what I can implement into my life at the start.

A simple glass of water in the mornings changed the narrative. It was so simple, so easy to do, so quick, that distraction didn’t have a chance to strike. I could be running 20 minutes late, but what’s 20 seconds longer if it’s to chug a glass real quick? Lounging around all morning on a Saturday, but guess what? I’m gonna get thirsty at some point and bam! Two days in a row of water. We do it every day, so we don’t notice it as a win until we consciously acknowledge it as one. All of a sudden, it’s a habit we formed inversely, and one that we can stack. It’s realistic and easy to implement. You don’t have to interrupt your morning or fight distraction too hard.

We are all capable of so much. Yet, we settle in life because we can’t stay consistent. Drinking a glass of water every morning isn’t going to directly allow you to achieve all your dreams or make you a millionaire, but it will get you going down a path that reshapes your vision of yourself. And that could actually do those things. If you start to focus on what you’re doing right, the momentum will build. The resilience to distraction becomes present in other areas. Maybe you want to start meditating in the morning now because you now know what it takes to form a habit. And you now know you can form the habit because you just formed one.

Achieving your dreams takes time but it can be done. We just have to be realistic about where we need to start from.

Too often, we aim for the stars and give up because our rocket doesn’t fly. Well, none of us went to school for rocket science and even if we did, it took years to learn it all to make the bad boy go. It’s admirable most of us try again, but those sequential attempts can fall flat too. In our follow-up attempts is where I think we go wrong. Instead of starting in third grade math to learn rocket science, we try to start in freshman pre-calc. On the outside, it seems simple enough but as soon as there’s even a bit of friction we become that much more dejected. We think there shouldn’t be any friction because we’re taking it slow in our goal, but are we really? As soon as there’s friction, as soon as we can’t keep up our habit of journaling every night because work went long or we just wanted to watch TV, we get down on ourselves to the point where we don’t attempt it again for a while. This is where I feel we’ve been flawed. We shouldn’t give up. We shouldn’t settle for our current lives if they aren’t what we dreamed of. We should attempt again; but realistically and in a way that acknowledges the importance of building.

By starting with just a simple glass of water, that attempt can be sustained. You can start to build momentum towards bigger habits. You can start to have greater belief in your abilities. And honestly, you’ll be surprised how quickly you‘ll be launching your rocket.

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