7 Legit Strategies for Forming a New Habit

With so many people working from home right now, the internet is SWARMING with ideas of how to focus on self care.  There is an endless list of things people want more of in their lives: reading, meditation, core exercises, regular routine of running, journaling and meal prepping, just to name a few!  While there is no shortage of things we WANT to bring into our lives, few people are talking about how to create habits to KEEP them in our lives regularly.  

An excellent book on the topic is Atomic Habits by James Clear.  In this book, clear discusses strategies for how to make things part of our lives AND how to get bad habits out of our lives.  If you want to add a new habit into your life, one of the best ways to do so is through HABIT COUPLING.

Here’s how you are going to do it:

1.  Identify something that you want to do more of in your life.  Let’s say it’s “start a daily meditation practice”.
2. Make a list of all habits you do every day.  This could include: brush teeth, make coffee and do dishes to name a few.
3. Notice which current habit you could spare 5 MINUTES after.  If you are rushed in the morning, but not at night, it could be “after I brush my teeth at night”, rather than “after I brush my teeth in the morning”.
4. Start doing your new habit in the time slot you have identified that you both have a regular habit already identified AND the time after to fit in your new one.
5. Celebrate each time you complete your new habit!  Don’t be afraid to try again the day after you fail to complete your habit!  
6. Even if your goal was 5 minutes and you only have time/energy for 1 minute, DO IT FOR ONE MINUTE!  It is the habit of doing that thing everyday that you are trying to first solidify, not the total amount of time.
7. Continue to add time on to your new habit until you reach your desired length of time (i.e. my goal is 20 minutes of meditation, so I’ll do 5 minutes the first week and add a minute each week until I get to that).

That’s it!  Now we want to hear from YOU.  What new habit were you able to bring into your life with the info above?  Tag @runsheisbeautiful in your pictures so we can all learn from each other.
Need more motivation for bringing new habits into your life?  Join the She.Is.Beautiful Mileage Club for community, swag and more surrounding the idea that when you move your body, you create movement in the rest of your life as well.