Two Simple Steps to Create Habits
Did you notice it’s so easy to develop a bad habit as opposed to a good one? At some point in our lives we all want to make a change, develop certain “good” habits like exercising on a regular basis or making healthier eating choices.
Recently, I was reading “Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones” by author James Clear. This book is gold! The author offers simple, doable steps anyone can do to form good habits and get rid of the bad ones. Honestly, if you’re looking to make changes to the way you do things, create good habits and get rid of the bad ones, I highly recommend you read this book.
It had so many good tips that it would be impossible to talk about them all in this one blog post.
However, I wanted to share with you 2 steps that you can easily implement today to develop good habits and you can use the same ones to stop bad habits.
So, usually we develop habits that are enjoyable and that don’t take a lot of time to do or create. For example, drinking wine after work. You come home after a long day at work, pour yourself a glass of wine and it’s enjoyable! Quick, easy and enjoyable - that’s what habits are. They’re so easy to do, we just keep doing them and the longer we do them, the easier it becomes, thus, creating a habit.
Not long ago, someone asked me if I diffused essential oils every night. I thought for a second, and realized yes, I do! It’s a habit of mine! So, based on everything I read in the book I asked myself - why and how did I develop a habit of diffusing every night? Regardless of how much we want to do something, we are motivated to do what is convenient. So, we need to MAKE IT convenient. How do we do that?
You have to prepare the environment.
Whatever we decide we want to do, it has to be easy and accessible. I have an essential oil diffuser next to my nightstand and my calming oils are in my bathroom - right where I fill up my diffuser with water every night. I prepared my environment for diffusing at night.
A few weeks ago, I joined a Pilates group called “The Balanced Life Sisterhood”. It’s a monthly membership program with simple 15 minute workouts that you can do daily. I love it! It’s only 15 minutes, I can do that, right?! Well, I realized I do it only when I prepare my environment. What do I mean by that? I placed my mat in the living room where I decided to do the workouts. The only time I miss the workouts is if I move the mat or clean it and then don’t put it back. It’s not convenient if I need to go upstairs and find my mat. I just think ok, I’ll do it later, except I actually don’t.
You have to decrease the number of steps between any habit you want to create to make it easy.
Whatever change you’re trying to make or habit you want to create:
make it easy
make it convenient
reduce the steps
make it visible
Likewise, to break a bad habit, make it more difficult, inconvenient, add steps, and make it invisible. For example, drinking wine nightly (ok, so maybe you don’t want to quit this habit, haha!). But if wine isn’t in your house, you would have to stop at the store, thus adding an inconvenience after work and adding steps to your evening and if you didn’t stop, you wouldn't have any stored at your house thus making wine “invisible”.
What is one good habit you would like to develop or one bad one you would like to eliminate? Let me know!