THE BEAUTY OF SMALL HABITS
How to achieve your goals without overwhelm, one small habit at a time.
The beauty of small habits lies in their simplicity and their profound impact on our lives over time. Small habits are tiny, manageable actions or behaviors that we repeat consistently. While they may seem insignificant on their own, their cumulative effect can be transformative.
My Journey with achieving my goals through small habits
Intention: Every habit formation starts with intention
What I've found when it comes to building habits is that you have to be intentional. At the start of this year, I promised myself that I will be waking up at 5am every day and I've been able to accomplish this for most of the time because I set the intention and I gave it a name “I'll be waking up at 5 00 a.m every day.” This intention of waking up at 5 am has turned into a habit and I reaped numerous benefits from it. Here are some of the benefits of waking up at 5 am.
Waking up at 5am has given me time to fill my cup before the rest of my family members wake. I'm able to create a chunks of time to work on my writing (this newsletter), script and record videos for my YouTube channel, do my daily devotion and plan for my day. This intention has helped me carve out some time for myself before the day gets busy. Therefore, I would like to convince you to start waking up a bit earlier than everyone else in your home. Believe me, a fresh quiet and slow start to your morning can help you start your day at a good note, achieve your personal goals (fitness, creativity, business and career goals) with intention. You will be surprised by how spending at least 1 hour in the morning to work on your goals would move you ahead. Just try it.
Habit Tracker
If you want to build a habit, you need to have a way of tracking your progress when building that habit. You need to have a habit tracker. A habit tracker it's a visual item that's going to help me stay on course with that habit that. It's said that “what is not measured cannot be tracked.” If you can't measure progress of something, you're not going to be able to track it. A habit tracker helped me set goals for myself, see the progress that I've made/ make with those goals. It's helped me stay on course of my body recomposition. It's helped me create content for my YouTube channel, venture into writing, create a profitable side hustle and build a creative business while being a full-time scientist a mama and wife. I've created a morning routine that works for me that helps me learn something new everyday, that helps me take time to feed my soul with the word of God, that helps me plan out my day, that helps me go out and work out 5 times a week. As a result, I’ve lost close to 40 lbs (18 kg) since the start of 2023. All this has has only been possible because of using a habit tracker and a monthly reset routine I use.
Clarity :
Be clear on what habits you want to implement in your life. Clarity comes in in such a way that you will know what habits you need to put in and out of your life. I recall when I just started my graduate school, I had so many goals of what I would do when I was a graduate student. But most of the things I didn't get to do then because I wasn't clear on what I wanted to do/ achieve. For example, when I moved to Australia in 2015, I wanted to start a YouTube channel. I always wanted to do it but I didn't set the pace for creating the YouTube channel. I didn't carve out time to learn how to film videos. I was so intimidated because I didn't know what to do. But ever since I got clear on what goals I need to set for myself, and what intentions I want to implement in my life, I've been able to see myself achieve the goals I set. Clarity is a crucial step to building a habit. With clarity you're going to know what times will work best for you to create that habit. You're also going to know what times you'll have to implement that exact habit in your day-to-day life. Thats when habit stacking comes in.
Habit stacking
Habit stacking is when you have a habit that's already existing and on top of that habit, you add a new habit. For example, I wake up at 5 am everyday. I know that's a habit that I already have established in my life. So when I'm wake up at 5 am, I can decide to:
Film a YouTube video
Go to gym and workout
Script for my YouTube videos
Study since I'm studying project management at the moment.
Do my morning routine, which includes,journaling, praying and learning something new.
I already have the habit of waking up early and on top of that I've added another habit. This habit stacking system has transformed my life.
The inevitable up hill battle of habit development
I've seen many people that start every year with fitness as a priority goal. Everyone goes to gym everyone writes on their New Year's resolution and vision board the body they want to have at the end of the year. But if you don't pace yourself, you're going to burn out and abandon your goals all together. Inevitably, the motivation you have at the beginning of the year is going to fade. Regardless whether you're a pro or not a pro, life is going to get into the way and many aspects of life are going to pull you away. But if you decide to create these changes in small increments, you're going to see yourself make progress. You set yourself for success. Therefore, pace yourself.
Instead of saying you're going to write five pages in your journal every day, decide to write three sentences everyday.
Instead of you saying you're going to drink four litres of water or a gallon of water every day, decide to say I'll start with half a gallon or a litre a day.
Instead of you saying you're going to read 10 books at the end of the year, decide that you will read one page a day.
This way you're going to create the momentum to keep going and that confidence in yourself to know that you need to show up and incorporate these habits in your life.
Celebrate small wins.
When you've accomplished something, take time to enjoy it. Take time to reflect on that new habit that you’ve introduced. Take time to celebrate the progress you’ve made. Say, for this month of September, I'm doing a 30-day challenge. What's happening, I am ensuring that these habits that I want to incorporate in my life I'm doing them for 30 days. At the end of these 30 days, I'll sit down and evaluate my progress and celebrate my progress using my monthly reset routine system.
A celebration might be patting yourself on the back for the good work you've done, taking a progress picture if you're on a weight loss journey, buying yourself fitting leggings if you've lost weight, going out and eating something that you like or buying yourself something to celebrate the good work that you've done.
When you learn to celebrate small things, your heart fills with gratitude.
Practical steps: How to implement small habits in your life
You might be wondering how can I start implementing small habits in my life. If you want to start implementing small habits in your life you have to:
Be clear on what habits you want to introduce in your life.
Factor in a time that you're going to use to integrate these habits.
Find ways to habit stack. Add a new habit onto the habit that already have, think listening to your favourite podcast as you walk. watching your favourite TV show as you fold laundry, meal prep as you catch up with your family and friends over FaceTime.
Track your progress: You can use a good old note book, a notion template, a journal, white board etc. Whichever way you decide to track your progress. Think of these questions, What did I accomplish? How much progress am I making? what can I change? Whats not working? How do I feel about my progress? e.t.c.
Celebrate your progress: Keep it fun and throw in moments to celebrate your progress. Savour the moment and remember building good habits is a continual journey with no destination. You have to keep evolving and building on those already existing habits.
So, before I pen off, I want to ask you one question what new habits do you want to implement in your life?
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Rooting for you.
Faith Liz
Faith Liz’s Corner