The 'Creating New Habits' 7 Day Challenge: Habit-filled Days
Updated: Jul 28, 2020
The other day we spoke about the incredible value of routines to help you form new habits. Routines are behaviors and activities that are repeated daily to bring about a certain results. When you want to form a new health habit, making the habit part of your existing daily routines is a simple way to help the new behaviors really stick. Today we are looking at ways to insert new habits into our usual routine.
The 'Creating New Habits' 7 Day Challenge
New here? Welcome to the Blog Challenge series, where we challenge ourselves once a month to improve our health or lifestyle in some way. If you are new to following my Blog Challenge series, it's super easy peasy to participate. Just tune into the blog each day through the website or my app and follow along. Read the challenge post with a journal or pretty notebook handy. Write down any "ah-ha moments", ideas or inspiration and follow the prompts to complete the challenge. I highly recommend using a pretty journal for this.
The Benefit Of A Routine & Habit Filled Day
Do you have notice that it gets harder to make decisions toward the end of the day? You’re too tried to figure out what to have for dinner or if you should go to the gym. That’s because we all have a finite amount of decisions that we can make in any given day. After a long work day or chasing toddlers, we're spent.
Knowing that can help you prioritise. You can cut out a lot of decision making by implementing new habits into your usual routines. That way you save your energy for the important stuff. Creating a habit-filled day frees up your brain space up for more creative and productive thinking. Let's explore . . .
Your Morning Routine
Chances are you already have a fairly busy morning routine. You leap out of bed (well I do), nudge your kids to get up--or nag, grab your coffee or tea, check Facebook or listen to a podcast while fixing lunchboxes, let the dog out to scratch around, and then make breakfast before heading into the shower. All these activities and behaviors are automatic and often done with little effort. You just do them.
Having a morning routine sets you up for the day. Just think of those mornings when you stub your toe two steps from bed, spill your coffee, baby vomits up and now you need to change--again. It throws your whole morning off doesn't it? That is the beauty of a routine, it ensures your day runs smoothly and you can meet your responsibilities.
Marrying New Habits With Routine
If you created a “uniform” for yourself like gym gear, you wouldn't even have to think about what to wear every day. You'd just grab a pair of gym tights and a crop shirt, and off you'd go. Because you have already pre-planned what to wear every day, this makes your morning routine run smoother. The same can be said for adding new habits.
When you marry your new habits and routines, they will seem smaller and easier to acheive. Bite-sized pieces inserted here and there is the secret sauce here.
For example, if you want to lose weight by eating less takeaway, meal planning will help you eat healthier at home. If you meal prep while fixing the family's dinner, something you are likely doing any way, you'll be bulletproofing tomorrow's clean eating efforts. The more you add this step to what you are already doing, the faster it will become habit.
Suppose you want to start doing some self development. If you are up early to let the dog out, a well established routine already, pop in some earbuds and listen to a motivating podcast while you wait for Ginger to sniff every leaf he tagged the night before. Take advantage of the pockets of time you have to slip the new habits you desire into your day.
Your routines are generally constant. Use this to your advantage and marry your habits and routine together.
TASK: sit down with a pen and notebook and think about what parts of your day and week you can turn into routines. Where can your desired new habits fit in? Create an updated daily to-do list for yourself to help you establish these new habits and routines.
Spending a little bit of time creating routines and habits will make your day so much smoother. You might just find yourself less stressed and able to get more done during your productive hours. And that’s a beautiful thing. It allows you to save plenty of decision making for the fun stuff like figuring out what park to go to, what family movie to watch or what board game to play.
Here's today's recap: using routines to form new habits can make life so much easier and your desired habits formed faster. Make it your task today to see where you can make some powerful additions to what you're already doing each day and form some habit-filled days.
Tune in tomorrow for Day 6 where we'll wrap up what we covered this week. See you then!
Health + happiness,
Emma
xoxo
Ok, lovely, time to get busy! What did you learn today?
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