The quality of your thoughts is determined by the quality of your reading. Spend more time thinking about the inputs. - James Clear

Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed.

The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.

Self-talk strategies:

If you need confidence, talk to yourself the way you would talk to a friend.

If you need persistence, talk to yourself the way you would talk to a student.

If you need patience, talk to yourself the way you would talk to a child.