My biggest personal growth tool that has helped me immensely with building new habits and maintaining
them over time is my habit tracker. My habit tracker is the reason I have made huge leaps
in my personal growth journey over the last two years. in these two years, i have consistently
stuck to my habits of meditation, journaling, yoga, exercise and eating healthy, thanks to my
habit tracker. but i want to warn you that there is a potential pitfall with using a habit tracker,
that is pretty much guaranteed to set you up for failure with your habits. please make sure
to watch this video till the end where i tell you more about this pitfall. in the past i would start
a new habit, let's say exercise, continue it for two weeks, three weeks, a month at maximum,
and then begin to lose motivation, start skipping one day, then two days, then a whole week, and
then not do any exercise for months. same thing with meditation. same thing with eating healthy.
but my habit tracker has been the missing link for me which completely changed my game! it gives me
the motivation to exercise or meditate or eat healthy, even on the days when i absolutely
do not feel like doing these things. there are lots of digital habit tracking apps but
i didn't want to download yet another app and increase my screen time. so i just made a diy
habit tracker on the last page of my journal. but you might be the kind of person who prefers
digital apps and that's perfectly fine. if you use a digital habit tracker, please share which
one in the comments below. it will help other people who might be looking for recommendations.
so let me show you how i make my habit tracker. it is super simple. on the last page of my journal,
i simply write down which habits i want to track. so M stands for meditation, J is for journaling,
Y is for yoga, E is exercise, G is for green smoothie and EW stands for eating window.
and then on the left hand column, i write down the dates. so the day this video was recorded
was march 29th, then march 30th, april 1 and so on. and on that day march 29th,
i did my meditation, so i put a check mark there. i did my journaling so that got a check mark.
yoga and exercise also got check marks. i had not had my green smoothie so did not put a check mark
there. and in eating window i simply write down the time i started eating and ended eating on
that day, because i try to track my intermittent fasting. so this is how i make my habit tracker!
as you can see, it is super simple! my habit tracker is like an accountability buddy for me.
the dopamine hit that i get by putting a check mark under a habit is huge! research suggests
that... research on habits says that an instant reward right after you complete a task
is very helpful in sticking to new habits. so this check mark acts as my instant reward.
as you can see, there are some days where i didn't meditate or exercise or have my green smoothie
and that's okay! i am not too hard on myself. i try not to be too hard on myself. as long as
i have been doing these habits 80 to 90 percent of the time, i'm happy. i like to look at this
page at the end of the month to see how i did that month. It is like a report card i have for myself.
the best part about this habit tracker is that i can customize it and track whatever
habits i want to track. when i used to care about waking up at 5:00 am about 2 years ago,
i would track that. now i don't care so much about the exact time i wake up, as long as i
wake up within a decent time range, like before 6:30. my personal growth journey is a constant
act of experimenting, learning and adjusting. so i am no longer attached to waking up at 5:00 am.
it's more about the quantity and the quality of sleep. there is no use in being too rigid and too
serious with your personal growth. there has to be a balance. otherwise self-improvement can become
toxic. so here's the word of warning i mentioned at the beginning of the video. please note that
i have been doing most of these activities for a year or more. so for me the purpose of the
habit tracker is to maintain them. without the tracker, i tend to slip and become lazy. but if
you are using the habit tracker to add new habits, please start with only one new habit at a time.
otherwise you will end up overwhelming yourself and not being able to sustain them. been there
done that! but if you're using your habit tracker just for maintaining your already existing habits,
then you can have multiple habits just like i do. my second biggest personal growth advice would be
to balance self-improvement with self-compassion. if you want to learn how to do that,
watch this video. see you soon, keep growing! there are lots of digital tracking apps but i did
not want to download yet another app uh okay... there are lots of digital tracking apps nope... as
you can see there are some days where i did not meditate or exercise or have my groomed smooth