On a trip to the moon, a space shuttle requires two huge
rocket boosters to power it out of the earth’s atmosphere and into space. After
about two minutes, the rockets burn out and are released, leaving the shuttle
to rely on its three main engines for the remainder of the journey to the moon
and returning it safely to earth.
Out of the one-week round trip expedition, the rockets are
used for merely 120 seconds. Here’s what’s even more amazing though, in that
two minutes, the rockets provide over 70% of the total power required to get to
the moon and back! The round- trip distance traveled by the shuttle during that
excursion will be about half a million miles, but well over two thirds of the
energy is spent over the initial 27 miles.
Changing your own behavior is similar in that a huge percentage
of the effort must be spent in the very early stages of “lift off.” Whether it’s
breaking old, bad habits or creating new, positive ones, changing your behavior
relies on a tremendous amount of willpower to overcome “psychological gravity” –
those forces pulling you back to your old way of doing things. However, once
you break through that initial stage, maintaining the new behavior is not
nearly as grueling. You just have to expend enough effort to push you out of
your normal processes and thought patterns, the atmosphere of your current state
of being.
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