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my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my
Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take
me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st street and First
Avenue, where I workout for two hours. The ritual is not
the stretching and weight training I put my body through
each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The
moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the
ritual.
It’s a simple act, but doing it the same way each morning
habitualizes it — makes it repeatable, easy to do. It
reduces the chance that I would skip it or do it differently.
It is one more item in my arsenal of routines, and one less
thing to think about.
Let’s talk about what makes Tharp’s morning ritual so important and how we
can use it to master our own habits.
The Surprising Thing About Motivation
If you have trouble sticking to good habits or fall victim to bad ones, then it can
be easy to assume that you simply need to learn how to get motivated or that
you don’t understand how willpower works.
But here is the surprising thing about motivation: it often comes after starting a
new behavior, not before. Getting started is a form of active inspiration that
naturally produces momentum.
You have probably experienced this phenomenon before. For example, going