What do I mean by this?
Most people go about making habits all wrong. They think of what they can do on their best days. I say you should make your habit something you can do on your worst days.
For example, say you read an article about meditation and decide you are all in. You are going to start with an hour a day.
Yeah right, you will give up on the very first day. So let’s be realistic and start with 10 minutes. 5 would probably be better. I think 5 sounds easy, but if it doesn’t to you, go lower. Now, before we go any further, let’s add a second benchmark. The least amount that we can call a success. How about 3 deep breaths? No matter how late you are, you can stop and take 3 deep breaths. Believe it or not, that is enough to make a difference.
So what we’ve done here is to eliminate all excuses and make it easy. We have a plan for those days when things just aren’t going our way. We also have a goal that is still an easy win on our good days. If you feel like going longer on some days, go for it. Some days, everything will flow and it will seem easy. Use those days to your advantage. Other days it won’t, but we have planned for that.
The most important thing is not to break the streak. It’s okay to modify, but It’s not okay to skip.
More Important Tips for Starting Habits
Now that we have made our new habit easy to do, we need to make sure it’s not easy to forget. Time of day is important. Decide now when you are going to do it and stick to the same time every day. It’s even better if you can anchor it to another habit already strongly in place with an algorithm. For example. “I brushed my teeth, therefore, I will now go meditate for 5 minutes.”
In addition, It’s good to keep a scorecard. Mark down every time you succeed in the habit. Make sure when you do to pause and literally say to yourself, “That’s like me” or something similar. We all have way too much negative self-talk. Counter it by reinforcing the positive behaviors we want to instill.
That’s a quick look at a way to give your habits a better chance at success. If you like this, please subscribe, follow, and turn on notifications so you see all my posts. Also, only some of my content gets posted here. X is where everything is. That is the platform I’m trying to grow and where I’m most active. Find me there under @tenntrailblazer and start a conversation. Comments and sharing are what push my content out to more people. If you really don’t want to miss out, go to my webpage and sign up for my newsletter. The link is in my profile.