The Valley of Disappointment – Meaning & Graph | Atomic Habits

The New Year is here and like every year many of you would have resolved to make this year a more productive one than the previous. There must be a list of things to do, goals to achieve, and habits to inculcate. As you gear up with your resolutions, it is important to learn about The Valley of Disappointment as stated by James Clear to avoid this year being another year when your resolutions didn’t take off.

1. Things do not always go as planned

Things do not go always as planned. Look back to your December last year and you would realize that a lot of that resolution from the previous year stood at a standstill. The few resolutions which took off died in a month or two. For a few lucky ones among you, you would have successfully achieved things that you aimed for at the beginning of the year.

Now when we enter a new year with new hopes it’s high time we acknowledge by now is that not everything goes as expected, well at least it doesn’t follow a linear progression. While you kick start your resolution this year expecting a gradual constant improvement in the skill you want to learn or the physique that you have been dreaming of, nature and psychology and the world around you have different plans.

2. Change doesn’t come overnight

Firstly, transformation into anything doesn’t come overnight. It is compounded effect of the effort put in day in and day out. e.g. If you expect that you will be hitting the gym every day and you will see a daily transformation in yourself, you will not. If you think you will be able to constantly improve on a musical instrument that you have been wanting to play every day, you will be certainly disappointed and might end not seeing any improvement over weeks. If your motivation is seeing a daily change, then your efforts are set to die in a month. The key is to continue putting effort when you don’t see results.

3. Perseverance is the key to surpassing the valley the disappointment

In a personal take, one key skill to practice before trying to achieve anything new in life is Perseverance. Perseverance helps you continue during those dim times i.e. The Valley of Disappointment when it would look like your actions are not leading to results. The results of your efforts towards learning or achieving anything new are not linear. Instead, it’s a curve with minimal visible results in the initial days and then a sudden explosion in an exponential fashion surpassing all your expectations of what you could have achieved.

One needs to sustain the valley of disappointment, which is a lengthy phase where you do not see results as expected, where you do not think that it’s not going as per plan, where you think there is something wrong and start doubting your efforts. Perseverance during this phase is what will make your New Year resolution in December look different from others. Probably 90% of people will not cross the valley of disappointment and will have the same resolution next year. Be the 5%, Because once you pass through this valley, you will see results you never even thought of.

Good Luck with this year’s resolutions and hope you come out with flying colors.

The Valley Of Disappointment is coined by James Clear in his book Atomic Habits. You may read more about this or on building a new habit in his book Atomic Habits.