Develop good habits performatively
In recent times, society has developed a disliking or ostracizing towards performative actions. However, I think doing something performatively is crucial to developing habits, especially maintaining hard habits against our own will and training discipline.
Here is a small anecdote. Ever since coming back from my trip to China where I indulged in at least two milk teas a day and an almost unlimited source of unhealthy snacks, I came back home with a strong determination to cut weight. I decided to dive into a strict diet. The diet was essentially: coffee for breakfast; simple fruits and yogurt for lunch and then go hard on proteins and greens for dinner.
For unrelated reasons, I ended up spending a lot of time with a certain group of friends after I came back from my trip. Oftentimes I would have to spend dinner time together with them. And naturally they came to experience, just in time, my strict diet. And because this is also the first time I'm spending dinner with them so frequently, suddenly they thought that this kind of strict diet was my norm, or was how I usually operated (which definitely wasn't the case).
It wasn't long before I've developed a sort of personality in their impression of me where each dinner I would carry two hard boiled eggs, and uh, get a veggie-heavy wrap from Subway or a convenience store and the most iconic one -- always choosing the salad combo in McDonald's.
"Damn, too healthy," they would say.
"I thought you would show up with 2 boiled eggs again," a friend would tease, when showing up to a lunch meeting at a restaurant.
The friendly teasing continued even after my initial passion and drive in trying to maintain this hardcore diet had worn off. And here's the neat part. Their teasing actually helped with maintaining a kind of discipline in me and triggering me or inducing me more towards trying to maintain this diet that I was starting to struggle to maintain.
Among them, I've already started to develop this kind of impression in them. It's become a part of my personality or my identity. Something that differentiates me from the rest of them. Naturally as I do not want to be a hypocrite, I tried to maintain that personality and identity. Because c'mon, we all love attention. If this kind of special personality and special kind of habit is driving me attention, then my natural instinct would be to maintain that elevated levels of attention by continuing to do those actions.
Thereafter, a theory formed: being performative helps in developing good habits, hard habits.
Here's how to develop hard habits performatively. Take my unsolicited advice with a large grain of salt (not too large though, too much sodium in a diet is bad for you).
First, you must do it loudly, do it performatively. Surround yourself with people with, not quite strictly opposite opinions, but ones who don't do the same thing as well as you do. Ones where if you "perform" in front of them, you will stand out. Surround yourself with them and do your actions and habits as performatively as socially acceptable. Then, it becomes a part of your personality. Wait for them to notice it. Wait for them to let this side of you sink into their impression of them. And finally, they'll start the friendly teasing.
Soon your initial drive of trying to maintain this habit will die off. Don't worry, it's human nature. It'll drain the last bit of adrenaline and enthusiasm and passion in you. Your ability to keep up with your discipline will be depleted. However, you've already developed this kind of impression in people. And you don't want to be a hypocrite, do you? You don't want to let people down. And what was previously performative of you doing this habit and beyond social norm now becomes the norm. And not doing such a thing would then be beyond social expectations. Of course, as human beings we usually want to operate within social expectations, do we not? And so you are hopefully then forced by social expectations to maintain your good habit. And that, hopefully, eventually, becomes a self-sustaining cycle, a positive cycle, like perpetual motion that perpetually fuels your motivation and drive into continuing this good habit, which contributes to your identity, which comes back in a cycle to fuel your motivation to maintain that identity.
And the most ironic part of it all is that the socially friendly teasing they have that point out your actions that contributes to good habits as eccentric, coincidentally and ironically actually becomes something that compels you to do that eccentric action even more. Isn't that ironic?
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PS: This post was written for two purposes: one is to record and share my anecdote summarized into a theory that was slightly exaggerated in its explanation for exemplifying the irony, and two is to try out writing with speech-to-text! The entire most is written with my speech, transcribed by a speech-to-text tool.