First of all, you don’t HAVE to do anything!
You don’t have to use this time sensibly, read that amount of books, workout every day, clean your apartment completely and above all you don’t have to be in a good mood and motivated every day!
This time is also a phase of retreat. You’ve been given the opportunity to get back to the essentials. Who doesn’t appreciate their family and friends during this time? Their health? Their freedom?
However, you now also have the time to question yourself, to reflect, perhaps to reorient your course.
Maybe the following questions will help you:
‘Is what I’m doing getting me closer to what I want?’
‘What do I really want?’
‘If money doesn’t matter, what would I do?’
Have you ever heard the saying:
‘As you do the little things, you do everything in your life’?
It’s all about the little things, to be more precise, about what you do every day. Because, to be honest, our whole life takes place only today, not tomorrow or next week, but TODAY. So what you do daily is what counts.
Habits are very helpful and urgently necessary to make our everyday life easier.
For example, we don’t have to think about how to brush our teeth or how to make our bed.
Habits determine our whole life.
–> 40% of our actions are habits and repetitions firmly anchored from the past years
Think of it as a trail, broken in, trampled. No one would give themselves are hard time and create a new path when there’s already one given.
But sometimes we trample on paths that are just not good for us and hide our true potential.
These could be paths that lead to laziness, bad eating habits, excess weight, constant complaining or any other destructive habits.
I am not talking about addictions like smoking or other serious conditions. More time and maybe professional help is needed for this. Still, it’s totally doable! 🙂
The good thing is that you can actually turn everything you want into a habit and that – if you succeed – you will have more energy left for other things.
The first step of any habit literally starts with taking the first step. Make up your mind. Start your path, patiently, step by step.
It’s important to know that it’ll take some time for the new path to manifest. How long this takes depends on you personally; on your willingness and your tactics.
The following tips will help you to remember your MOTIV-ation and to stick to it. Because at some point you’ll link a very good feeling to that new habit, so you actually don’t want to go back to how it was!
TIPS:
- Do it for you.
Stay with what is good for YOU and not for others - Find your MOTIVATION, your motive.
Who do you want to be with this new habit? - Try this method:
‚When I’m dying, will I be happy or regretful that I spent so much energy on this?’
This helped me personally, for example, to let go of the constant self-criticism - Make up your mind and then stick to it!
Make a contract with yourself (maybe even in writing?) without asking you to make everything perfect from now on. Commit yourself with your name, the date and your WHY.
From today _(date)_ on I _(name)_ get up every day at 7 am to have more time to start the day consciously. - Go step by step.
If you want to adopt several habits, start with one first. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Lovingly give yourself the time you need to get used to the new habits. If you find that you get along very well with the first one, then try the next one - Create a morning and evening routine.
The quality of your day manifests in the 1st hour after getting up and how well you sleep depends largely on how you spend the last hours before going to bed. - Develop STACKING HABITS.
In doing so, you connect a new habit to an already existing one. By attaching a new habit to a habit that already has a strong connection in our brain, we increase the chances that we will stick to it.
Examples:
- After I get up, I immediately make my bed
- After making my bed I immediately drink a glass of water
- After brushing my teeth, I immediately slip into my sports clothes and get to move my body (It helps a lot to put the sports clothes next to the bed the day before).
Even if we often don’t notice, our habits regulate our everyday life and thus our life. They also determine how quickly we reach our goals.
I know that it’s often not so easy to develop a completely new habit when you’ve been used to something else for so long. That’s why it’s so important that we really give ourselves the time we need and still ambitiously train the habit muscle every new day. If you keep up, it grows with every day. It’s worth it, believe me 🙂
Good luck!
Tara