Habits make up 40% of our lifestyle.
Habits are things that you do every day without thinking.
You just do it as if you're on auto-pilot.
Your habits shape your life whether you realize it or not.
You could be doing something beneficial or something destructive to your life.
The power of knowing this is recognizing that you can choose
to break old habits and build new ones.
All it takes is time, patience, and a lot of persistence.
So ask yourself: What are some ideal habits that I want to add into my life, and why?
In today's video, I'll share some tips on how you can build a new habit and stick to it.
First things first: You have to start small,
so pick one habit that means the most to you and start with that.
You want to build up your new habits slowly.
Start with once or twice a week, even if that feels like it's too little.
If you do more than that, then that's just a bonus.
But start small, and then eventually build up to daily.
I know a lot of us are ambitious and we want to pack 10-15 positive habits in our day,
but to not overwhelm yourself, what you want to do is
pick two non-negotiable habits that you do each day.
And anything more than that, just do it weekly or bi-weekly.
Don't put that pressure yourself to do everything every single day.
Pick the two that are most important to you, and start with that.
Next is something called the "five second rule".
You want to physically act on your habit within 5 seconds, without even thinking about it.
The idea is: If you give yourself too much time to think about
whether you should do your habit or not,
then you're just going to talk yourself out of it and make excuses.
But if you just start doing the action, without even thinking about it,
then you're not likely to talk yourself out of it.
Just get to the action within five seconds.
You also want to make it super easy and convenient to do your new habit.
Set up some "might as well" conditions to reduce the amount of mental
and physical energy it takes for you to do your habit.
For example, if your habit is to drink more water,
then you'll want to have a water bottle at your desk at all times
so that you might as well drink from it as often as you can.
And if you're trying to build a habit of reading more,
then you can put your book in your bag
so that you can take it out and read a few pages
whenever you have some downtime.
You can also leave your book on your nightstand
so that you read a few pages before bed.
The point is, you want to make it really easy and convenient to do your habit.
You want to remove all obstacles or any excuses and set your life up for success.
If you're a visual person, or you like crossing things off on paper like I do,
then I highly recommend using a habit tracker to keep track of the habits that you're doing.
You can do this on a regular calendar
where you cross off the dates that you're doing your habit.
Or what I like to do is use the Artist of Life Workbook, which I created.
And inside, there is a habit tracker to track your habits for the month.
I usually write down more habits than I want to do daily, just because I want to track more.
But I will just focus on crossing off the most important ones,
and getting those done in my day.
And then the other ones, if I do them, great.
But if I don't, that's okay.
What really matters is that you stay consistent
before scaling up how frequently you do your habits.
Instead of doing it every single day, you can tell yourself,
"Okay, let's start with once a week," or twice a week.
And then move up to 3 or 4 times a week, and eventually maybe daily.
But if you think daily is too much, you can always fall back
and have less requirements for yourself.
To stay motivated and consistent with your new habits,
you have to constantly remind yourself why you started in the first place.
What is the reason you chose this habit?
Why is it important to you?
What's it going to bring to your life?
How is it going to add value?
Make sure you always know the reason why, and that's how you're going to stay motivated.
Don't forget, you can always reevaluate your habits
and readjust how your habit fits into your life.
It starts with trial and error.
You can start asking yourself,
"What's working? What's not working?
How can I make this habit fit?
What can I let go? What can I move around?"
You just kind of work it out from there.
Remember that everything is flexible and fluid.
Your lifestyle is completely up to you.
Don't be so hard on yourself if you're not super consistent,
hitting every single day, because life is life, and it's okay.
Having an accountability buddy will also help you stay motivated to keep your habit.
So you can commit to doing your habit with a friend or announce it on social media.
Just put it out there that you are building this new habit and it will hold you accountable.
I think when other people know that you want to do something,
then you feel obligated, like "Oh my god, I have to do it."
Another bonus tip is to identify yourself as the type of person that does this habit.
It's kind of law of attraction, manifestation-style.
It all starts in your mind.
For example, what I've been doing lately is: I wake up and I wear workout clothes.
I got my workout pants on because I tell myself,
"I'm the type of person that works out daily."
The self-talk will go from, "I'm trying to run a mile every morning,"
to "I'm the type of person that runs a mile every morning."
You see, you see?
Sometimes I'll wear workout clothes and not work out,
but I'll still feel like a workout type of person.
The basic idea is: Step into the mindset, and the behavior will follow.
In my case, I think this is "step into the behavior".
This is step 1, and then the habit will follow more easily.
And of course, with all things, sometimes we fall.
Sometimes we get tired, lazy, unmotivated, and we feel like, "Ugh, why? Why?"
You're disappointed in yourself.
It happens.
So if you do fall off, let me just say this:
You only fail when you stop trying, okay?
You can have a little dip, but if you pick yourself back up and you try again,
then you can really change your trajectory and move back up in a positive motion.
And what you can also do is ask yourself,
"Why did I fall off? Was I too hard on myself?
Did I have unrealistic expectations?
Did I have any obstacles or blocks?"
This is your opportunity to reflect and reassess:
How can I make this habit work for me realistically?
How can I do it better?
Life is all about reflection and learning about what works and what doesn't, right?
Alright, the last thing that I want to say is: Be gentle with yourself.
I know we all want to build amazing habits.
It just takes some time and patience.
And you might fall off – you probably will –
but it's okay as long as you pick yourself back up and keep trying.
So I wish you the best of luck on building new habits to build your new lifestyle.
Sending you so much love.
If you're new to this channel, subscribe and leave your comments down below
on what your main habit is that you want to build this month.
Let's start with this month.
Let's pick one, and let's work on that low consistency:
once a week, and then build up to twice a week and then three times a week.
Let me know!
My #1 non-negotiable habit is journaling because that's how I brain-dump
and get all my ideas, clarify what I want, where I'm going.
So that's something that I really make a point to do every single morning,
even if I just journal one page or half a page.
I think anything is better than nothing.
By the way, I recently shared some journal prompts to refresh and reset your life,
so I'll link that video up here and down below.
And if you haven't noticed, I'm going to try to do mini-series on certain topics.
So I did a spring refresh series, and then this is the start of my habits series.
So a series of 3-4 videos on a certain topic.
So we'll do habits and then after that, I'll let you know, or you can find out.
So that's it for today.
Love you so much.
See you next time.
Bye!