The best kept secret to creating successful habits
I’ll set a scene for you, maybe it’s one you are familiar with. You’ve finally reached the point where you are ready to create new habits to simplify your life and help you stress less. You’ve been thinking about this for a while and you know you can’t neglect yourself any longer. Maybe it’s a feeling or perhaps it’s because you aren’t feeling as well as you want to.
You set some new habits into play. You’re excited and motivated. Things are feeling good and you are making headway on your stress. You’re no longer just talking about change, you’re doing it. Life is good!
You’re in the flow, as they say, starting to see the impact of the changes you’ve made. You’ve got this! Excitement and motivation grow. You feel unstoppable!
But then something stops you in your tracks. Maybe it’s a big project at work that takes up all your time, an illness, an injury, family, or any of the many other things that can get in the way of your habits. You fall off track. One day bleeds into the next until your enthusiasm and motivation are gone, and you are scratching your head wondering what happened as your new habits become a thing of the past.
Recently, a client came to me wanting to figure out how to manage their stress better. They had started exercising every day. They had convinced themselves that they needed to work out for an hour every day to feel the way they wanted to feel.
While their intention was good, they hadn’t accounted for life. They had picked a goal that would only be attainable if all the conditions in life were perfect. How often does that happen?!?
In the first week, they had 4 days where they couldn’t work out for an hour. They immediately felt defeated and gave up on their habit.
Sustainability is built on the success we create daily. We have to learn to set goals that are achievable every day and not only on our best days.
If you are choosing habits that require you to be at 100% every day, you are going to have a hard time sticking to those habits. If you do stick to them, they are going to feel hard and unmanageable and not sustainable. When you choose to create habits that work with your life and require you to be at about 70% every day, you will find that not only are they manageable but they also become enjoyable and sustainable.
Creating habits that account for circumstances beyond your control gives you built-in adaptability. And if your habits don’t allow you to adapt to day-to-day life, they won’t last. Being adaptable allows you to see what works and what doesn’t so you can learn and grow. A little bit every day will make a bigger impact on you and your habits. It creates consistency and that is where you will continue to find the motivation to show up for yourself.
If you are looking to create a habit and have been having a hard time implementing it, see if you are working at 100% of your effort. What would happen if you cut that effort to 70%. Can you see success on your horizon?
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