If you’re trying to lose weight or gain muscle, you can work really hard at it for a week … and see no change. The same goes for learning music or a language, or creating meaningful change in the world.

It’s hard to stick to long-term changes when you don’t get very immediate results. Seeing progress quickly can be very encouraging — so how do we find encouragement when we don’t see that quick progress?

Over the years, I have been able to stick to some big long-term changes: losing weight, working out to gain strength, training for marathons, creating a blog audience, and much more. I still don’t find this stuff easy!

Let’s look at some of the things I’ve found helpful in sticking to long-term changes when we aren’t getting immediate results.

The Mindset

It’s important to recognize when we’re in a fragile mindset, which is something along the lines of, “If I don’t see progress right away, I give up!” This leads to fragility — which is a human thing, but it’s good to be aware that this is going on.

A more resilient mindset might be something like: