When you’re struggling to create a new habit within climbing, start by focusing on the days when things go well and feel easy, rather than those days when you can’t seem to do anything right.

Our natural inclination is to dwell on the times when things go wrong or don’t happen according to plan. You leave the gym and realize you spent your entire session aimlessly wandering around and never really tried hard or focused. Instead of going to your default reaction, which might be, “Why can’t I just focus and do what I know I should? I want to get better, and this isn’t helping,”, think about the sessions when things have gone well effortlessly.

On the days when you went in, were super focused, and tried really hard, why was it so easy on that day? Did you have a plan for what you wanted to do before you went in? Were there specific people you climbed around? Was it a different time of day? Had you slept well the night before? Were there boulders you were excited about at that time? Search out the factors that make habits and routines feel easy and focus on replicating them.

When things go poorly, instead of beating yourself up for it, reframe the problem. You’ll get more value out of replicating the times that things go well than you will from dwelling on the bad days. Bad sessions don’t make you a failure, they’re just data points getting you closer to a solution. It isn’t magic, it’s a process.