Have you ever heard it takes 60 days to form a habit, 30 days or maybe even 21 days. I have seen them all. The research is all over the place. Here is what we can be sure of when it comes to habits. Habits are actions and behaviors that we do without thinking. Thank goodness for them, otherwise we would have to think about every action we take.
During the great quarantine of 2020, I decided I wanted to stop doing some things and start doing some others. So, how was I going to get this going? Well, I am a list person. I love checklists. The satisfaction of marking through a task or marking it with a check mark once complete holds a special place in my heart. I believe I read somewhere that it has an impact on your brain. So the physical action of marking something off on a checklist actually makes us feel good. Who doesn’t want to feel good, right? I created the attached habit tracker. There are numerous trackers of this sort available. I just created something that made sense for me. Feel free to use it as well. Just a very simple, but very in your face effort to make some changes. Put it on your fridge. Laminate it. Just do something everyday that you can feel good about and mark it off the tracker. Hold yourself accountable. Maybe even ask someone else hold the power of the tracker and have them mark off your habits. Whatever works for you. Don’t forget bad habits. Use the tracker to try to get rid of those bad behaviors as well.
Here are a few behaviors that I have on my list to do every day in the hopes they become a habit:
- Move my body daily
- Find gratitude in not just the big things. Stop taking the small things for granted
- Fuel my body the right way
Here are a few behaviors I would like to stop doing:
- Needing everything to be in its place all the time. I need to not stress the mess sometimes
- Go to bed earlier
- Lessen my screen time to set a better example for my children
With much love,
Jamie, XO
I love this! I’ve been trying to do more with giving myself some grace and not adding too much to my plate. It can be really hard because I tend to say yes to projects as a knee jerk reaction. But cutting back has helped me a lot. It’s a habit I’m trying to do more of.
I can relate. I think many of us take on a lot more than we should. Thanks for visiting and commenting!
You sound so much like me, including the habits you want to stop doing! There is nothing more satisfying to me than to check something off of my to-do list. And I also make lists for EVERYTHING! My husband and I read a book about habits called The Power of Habit and it was so eye opening and it does in depth about how habits are formed and everything.