How Strong Is Your Resolve?

So, already making excuses for falling off the New Year resolution wagon? You needn’t be embarrassed, so are 80-90 percent of others who made resolutions. Instead, take heart it’s not completely your fault. You see, it’s not all about willpower, creating positive habits is equally important.

Do you ever wish you could develop your willpower? Well, you can. Willpower works a lot like a muscle. Exercise it regularly, and it becomes stronger. The key is to make using your willpower a daily habit, and that’s easier than you may think.

Willpower plus positive habits.

Having plenty of willpower is a good thing. While some people seem to have more of it than others, many people struggle from time to time with not having enough. Sure, you can get better at reaching your goals with practice and discipline. But, if that's all it took, everyone would be skinny, fit, and in good financial shape. That’s just not how the world works though, and at times, we all struggle with finding the willpower to reach our long-term goals. 

Luckily, there’s another strategy and skill set that’s just as important as willpower. It’s creating positive habits and routines as a support system for your willpower. Here’s how this works and what it has to do with willpower. Let’s say you want to make a positive change in your life. It doesn’t matter what that is. It could be to read more books specific to your career, so you can learn more and become better at what you do. Or it could be to journal to understand your behavior better.

Begin with a goal in mind.

The simplest way to make sure you are exercising your willpower daily is to work towards a goal. When you have a reason and a purpose, you don’t have to remember what to do to work out those exercise muscles. You just do something that positions you closer to your goal each day.

Consider what that should be. It helps to focus on a single goal at a time instead of trying to change too many things in your life. Pick one area, one thing you want to change or improve and set your goal. Make it a measurable goal with a deadline connected to it. Instead of saying that you want to lose weight, make your goal to lose 25lbs. By Easter, for example.

Alter your goal into a plan using a daily action item.

Once your goal is set, it’s time to come up with a plan for what you need to do to reach said goal. It’s just a matter of considering what you need to do daily to go from where you are today to where you want to be and thus achieve your goal. Let’s look at an example. Let’s say your goal is to get fit enough to run a 5K race in six months. To make that happen, you must work out daily, starting with brisk walks, then a mixture of walking and jogging, graduating to daily runs that get longer and longer until running 5K will be an easy task. 

The plan then is to begin week one with daily 30-minute walks, for example. Those are your daily action items. It gives you something specific to do to exercise your willpower and something measurable you can track.

Use strategies in addition to willpower to establish new habits.

Lastly, it’s time to turn this willpower exercise into a habit. The easiest way to do this is to establish new positive routines. Willpower and habits work together. You must pay attention to both and use them in tandem. Use your willpower to create new habits one at a time. Once that new behavior has become a real habit, you can focus on the next one. Going back to the earlier examples of reading and journaling, start with one of them.

At first, it takes a lot of willpower to make yourself read a few pages or go through 15 minutes of journaling. A better strategy would be to wake up, prepare your coffee, get comfortable in your favorite chair, or sit on the couch and do your reading there. Make sure your book is waiting for you there, and you have reading glasses and light to read by if needed. Add a fun pillow or throw to create a cozy reading spot that you look forward to using. Then begin to establish the habit by using your willpower to make it happen every morning, come rain or shine.

Stick to your new habit.

Follow this new habit until it becomes something you no longer even think about completing. Establishing this new routine can take anywhere from one to three months. Stick with it until it’s just what you do in the morning. Then begin adding the journaling to the mix using the same strategy of having a notebook and pens at the ready in a comfortable place to write until it has become a real habit.

If you use your willpower wisely and add strategies, it will become easier to make this happen every morning. Before you know it, your new task has become a habit and part of your overall routine. At that point, it doesn’t take willpower anymore. Just like you don’t need to remind yourself to brush your teeth.

My final thoughts.

It would be nice to have an extra boost of willpower when you need it most. So, make your plans to reach your goals, add strategies that can increase your success, and avoid the urge to quit.

Another trick to help you stick to your habit is to make it visual by adding it as a recurring event on your calendar.

For more information, read these posts.

New Year Resolution Statistics

Why We Fail To Achieve Our New Year Resolutions

Please share this post with someone you love.

Mindfulness Can Help Improve Or Change Your Mindset

Mindfulness in addition to mindset 

Don’t be afraid that mindfulness practice will make a hash of your established mindsets. They can play nicely together if you allow each some room to breathe.

What are the simple definitions of mindset and mindfulness?

Mindset: the established set of attitudes held by someone.

Mindfulness: a state of active, open attention to the present.

Your mindset along with a mindfulness practice are important frameworks that complement each other. Your awareness of how your perceptual structures work can help you form mindsets that are beneficial for the way you want to live.

Taking mindful action

Being mindful can be broken down into its main elements and the actions you can take on those main ideas. In many ways, it is like a mind map. Here are a few examples:

A) Mindful Movement Ideas-Yoga-Tai Chi-Walking in the Forest

B) Mental Mindfulness-Visualizing-Meditation

C) Creative Mindful Ideas-Journaling-Classical Music

D) Ritual Mindfulness-Silent Prayer-Contemplation in A Personal Space

When making mindfulness your daily routine, you are brought to a greater awareness of your inner self and surroundings. Knowing and loving yourself allows you to shift love and kindness to others. In this hectic world, people are losing a connection to themselves, others, and the surrounding world. Daily mindfulness is your way of reinforcing all those connections and the pathway to a happy life.

Choosing a mindful practice

People are unique individuals. This means that how you choose to practice mindfulness may not work for others. It becomes an experiment, where you test out an array of mindfulness exercises or practices and then take note of which ones benefit you the most.

The previously mentioned ritual movement and mindful movements are a few of the main branches in the list. To get started with mindfulness, try one or all the following basic mindful practices and build up from there. Boost your practice by turning it into a routine.

1.  Yoga is an excellent choice for physical health, and the mental health benefits are also outstanding. When you feel better physically, it reduces stress, depression, and anxiety. There are many yoga styles, including mindful yoga, where you are focusing less on the physical aspect and putting it more on the overall awareness of self. There are four poses you can try in Mindful yoga that will start you on your journey. They are Mountain Pose-Tree Pose-Low Lunge-Reclining Bound Angle Pose.

2.  Mindful writing will help you to move thoughts from your brain to paper. It is helpful to do it right after a meditation session. In mindful writing, you can close your eyes for a moment and let thoughts announce themselves. Then open your eyes and just let the words flow onto the paper. There is no structure in this, instead, you just use free flow and see where it takes you.

Write a sentence or two, then stop to breathe in deeply and exhale. Feel the warmth in your body and let gratitude and love enter when you breathe. Start writing again for a few moments and then take a break and breathe. While you are doing your writing and breathing, you will enter a new meditative state that gives you peace and happiness. Try mindful writing every day at the same time.

3.  The practice of daily mindful meditation is one of the most basic ways to add mindfulness to your day. Meditation can be done for 5 minutes or 30 if you prefer. As with mindful writing, try to do it at the same time of day and make sure to have a quiet space.

Mindful meditation has many health benefits, reducing depression, anxiety, and sleeping issues, for starters. It is also highly recommended for you to teach your children mindful mediation due to it being easy and great for calming them in stressful situations.

Mindful meditation has very few requirements. You need a comfortable place to sit by yourself. Close your eyes and begin to breathe. Focus on the air coming in and believe it has healing powers. Give your thought only to the air entering your lungs and then being slowly expelled.

Mindful meditation means being in the moment and not judging yourself or any added thoughts that enter your mind. When this happens, acknowledge them, and let them flow out while returning to focus on your breathing.

Linking mindfulness and your daily routine

Everyone should take stock of what their day is like. Your day is going to be different than the neighbor on the left and right of you. The neighbor on the left may have five kids, while the neighbor on the right is elderly but quite active.

What goes on in your day? Do you work outside the home and have a million things to do at work, before rushing to the grocery and then home to get the children fed and ready for homework? Once you can write out a typical day, you can then come up with a plan for making mindfulness part of your day. Here are daily tips to review and pick the right ones for you.

1.  Disconnect from your cellphone. It is a distraction in many forms. Unlike the phone of old which was attached to the wall with buttons to push, your cellphone with all the apps, emails, and notifications can be an overwhelming nuisance.

You want to incorporate mindfulness and stress relief into your life, but it is difficult when you are obsessed if the coffee shop you are visiting has Wi-Fi or not. At home, put your cell phone in a different room. Before you use it, ask yourself is it necessary to do so.

Spend the time without the phone, practicing mindfulness as you enjoy that fruit snack. Let the berry you are eating, squirt the tangy juice into your mouth, and hold it for a moment savoring the sweet flavor. Try sitting in a quiet room with a candle and just be mindful of the quiet surroundings and how the flame of the candle burns with orange, yellow and blue colors.

2.  It is highly recommended that you have several journals that to write in. Have a daily journal for the thoughts that come to mind. Pick up your gratitude journal and write what you are grateful for.

The mindful journal will help you to reduce stress and be clear about your life. In the mindful journal, you can write down whatever feelings come to your mind. Reflect on why you feel the way you do and what effect it has on your stress levels? Many people write from their heart into a mindful journal and use it as a brain dump to get all the thoughts out of their head and onto paper.

Another process is writing down what you regularly think about. Is there a series of thoughts that always run through your head when you are working on big projects or talking to a significant other? When you write these down and come back to them later, you can gain clarity on why you feel the way you do.

This will help you to mindfully solve any problems by not attaching a big weight to them. Instead, look at them, ponder how significant they are and whether you need to find a way to address them or just let them float away as a neutral feeling.

3.  Traveling to work often brings stress. There may be a long commute or delayed trains, subways, or buses. Take stock of how you feel during your commute as it may be something you have to do for a significant number of years. Do you become agitated at other passengers, noise, or cars cutting in and out of lanes? This is the time to be mindful and after doing a few calming breaths, ask yourself why you feel this way. Don’t allow emotion to enter into it. Instead, move outside yourself as if you have a twin in the seat next to you. You can hear them saying, “Yes but how does it make you feel? Does it serve you in any way to feel like that? How can you let it go?”

This is something you can practice on every workday, and you will start to notice that you no longer dread the alarm clock signaling that you must get up and head out on a commute.

My final thoughts

I happen to believe that the ability to get a better read on your thoughts and emotions in a nonjudgmental way is liberating. Regardless of why you decide to try a mindfulness practice, you will find plenty of benefits to make the effort worthwhile.

For more information on Mindfulness check out the links below.

6 Mindful Exercises You Can Try Today

Mindfulness Relationship Exercises

I hope you enjoyed this post and will share it with someone you love.

When Should You Change Your Mindset?

A change of mindset can change your life

Have you heard? Everyone is talking about changing your mindset to manifest what you desire. So, can a change of mindset change your life? After all, you’ve been thinking the same way for as long as you can remember.

Maybe you’re going through a rough patch and your attitude has gotten out of whack.

When you begin having more negative days than good ones, it’s time to change your mindset. While these are two good reasons you may want to change your mindset, there are plenty more.

Your mindset is what produces the thoughts you have. That is the attitude that shapes your thinking which controls your actions and how you feel about things.

If you have a negative attitude, then your thoughts start blaming and thinking the worst. When you have optimistic or healthy thoughts, you create a better environment for yourself and those around you.

Gram’s Wisdom 29: Think better act better

My Gram told me if you think good thoughts your actions will reflect them. She was also strongly in favor of changing things that are no longer beneficial to you. I believe she would have appreciated the following list.

Six signs it’s time to change your mindset

1.  You’re always focused on failure instead of success. You feel anger and disappointment over each failure without ever celebrating any of your successes. You regularly see yourself as a failure, unintentionally sending negative messages to your mind that you will always fail at everything you try to achieve.

Instead: Keep a daily success diary recognizing each success, no matter its size.

2.  You have a victim mentality. You’ve been the victim of a bad situation, sadly you’ve been let down and hurt by those you loved, or you were devastated by some incident. You’re still carrying the burden of the past. Stop that. NOW.

Instead: Forgive give yourself, forgive those events, and let go of the past.

3.  You’re mired in routine. Not all routine is bad. A good routine can get you more quickly through the necessary daily tasks. Food preparation, housework, and homework with the children. While a bad routine leaves no room for fun and spontaneity. You eat the same food, watch the same television shows, meet the same people in the same tired place. If your neighbor knows what time the pizza delivery person arrives each Wednesday, you need a change.

Instead: Break out. Get a new hobby. Meet people with different interests.

4.  You hate going to work. You constantly grumble about the job you have or feel like it’s an onerous task. Everyone else has a better position than yours or works in nicer conditions. You feel ill-used by your boss, your co-workers, life.

Instead: see your job as a way of delivering value to customers of the business you work for and as having an impact on you and others around you. Being able to work allows you to provide for your family and contribute to society.

5.  You obsess over things you can’t control. You’re critical about what you can’t control like the weather, government, traffic, and other people. Your mind is filled with everything you consider wrong about those things and you never see any of what is right about them.

Instead: identify those things that can be controlled, first of which is yourself. Pinpoint how you can change and control your actions and thoughts to make the experience more constructive. Stop griping and start taking positive actions that will bring you a greater sense of achievement and abundance.

6.  You lack gratitude for what you have. Your focus is on what everyone else has, what is wrong with things, or the world, or the faults in yourself and others. Your negativity prevents you from seeing and enjoying the good surrounding you.

Instead: accept that no life is perfect, but there are people whose life is worse than yours. Concentrate on finding positive things you can be grateful for every day. Begin small by being thankful for your health, or the air you breathe. Remember, the more you are grateful for, the more you have, to be grateful for.

My final thought

When you understand that the reason for rarely feeling happiness and contentment is due to a negative mindset, you will know when it’s time to change your mindset. This shift in your mindset will help you feel better about yourself and attract more abundance into your life.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post.

If you want to learn more, I have placed two links below.

Change Your Mindset and Change Your Life by Kath at The Life Spotters.

Mindset and How it Can Influence Your Self-Discipline from a past post.

Influences Of Mindset And Routine For Healthy Aging

How you can expand your mindset as you age

As people grow older, they are often consumed with how their bodies are changing physically. What they don’t pay enough attention to is the state of their minds. While you may notice that your memory is lacking, or that you tend to be more negative and pessimistic, there doesn’t seem to be the same urgent desire to find a remedy.

It’s important to improve your mindset as you grow older so that you can focus on the things that bring you happiness and joy. Here are some mindset ideas that can help.

Begin by letting go

This can be one of the toughest parts of changing your mindset, but it’s also an important one. You must let some things go. If you have a lot of demands in your life that create huge amounts of stress and negative thoughts, it’s time to determine if it’s worth keeping them in your life or not. This could mean you jettison some career demands by delegating certain tasks or saying no to people who ask too much of you.

Or perhaps letting go for you means removing pressure from yourself thus allowing more time to practice self-care.

Look for additional clarity

When you first begin improving your mindset and being a more positive, happy person, it sometimes takes a while to figure out what that means for you. If you are still puzzled about what needs to change in the way you think and understand things in your life, it’s time to find some clarity. If you don’t already, you may want to start a journal for this, since you can write with honesty about anything you are thinking about, and over time, begin observing the patterns of your thoughts. You recognize what your goals are, what you feel like you are missing, and what situations tend to cause your mindset to shift.

Express your gratitude

Being grateful for the blessings in your life is a simple way to begin shifting your mindset. It instantly helps you to think more positively about things and people in your life, and temporarily sets aside your negative thoughts. It’s difficult to think negatively when you are being grateful and thinking about the people in your life who bring blessings and wonderful things.

Your gratitude can be for your job or your home, your pets, people you love, or simple things like how comfy your bed is or that delicious morning cup of coffee.

Positive affirmations

One last tip for improving your mindset as you age is to use positive affirmations. These might seem silly, but when used on a routine basis, they hold a lot of power. A positive affirmation is a thought or phrase that is positive, uplifting, and hopeful. It can help you maintain a good mindset throughout the day.

Positive affirmations might be “I will have a great day” or “I can achieve anything”, but they can also be more specific with something you are dealing with, such as “I am strong enough to accomplish my goals/dreams”.

The value of your daily routine

Daily routines and habits are more popular than ever before, not because they are a new concept, but because of the benefits to your physical health and mental wellbeing. As you age, no matter what age you are now, it becomes even more important to have a daily routine with habits that are designed to keep you healthy and happy. Here are some advantages of having a good daily routine.

Routines stimulate enhanced mental health

You can have a daily routine that allows you to enhance your mental health. For example, you might include a session of meditation or adding mindfulness to your morning or nighttime routine. This helps you reduce stress and can help with mental health disorders like anxiety or depression. Remember that your mental health can decline rapidly if you aren’t vigilant.

You live a healthier lifestyle

When you maintain a set routine with habits you participate in daily, it can help balance out your life and ensure you are living a healthy lifestyle. Many people choose to add certain activities that help them improve their health, such as cooking breakfast, doing yoga in the morning, writing in their journal, or having a nighttime routine that allow them to get better sleep.

To be a healthy older adult, you need to begin immediately, regardless of your age at present.

Balanced living is happier

With a daily routine, you can concentrate more on balance in your life. It helps you to schedule certain events and activities along with your responsibilities. You decide what your priorities are. Making time for reading, relaxing, creative activities, getting enough exercise, and eating right. In other words, doing everything you need to do to improve your health and wellness.

Routines that increase your sleep

Sleep is crucial for everyone, but unfortunately, older adults find that they have more difficulty sleeping. There is a joke that older adults often sleep only a few hours a night, or that they wake up early for the “Early bird special”, but this isn’t because as you age, you need less sleep. It is more that you have a tougher time sleeping soundly throughout the night.

If you have a daily routine that includes exercise as well as a restful and relaxing nighttime routine, it helps a lot to increase your quality of sleep.

My final thought

We live at a time where most of us have access to the information we need to be healthy agers. It is up to us to use it or not. As for me, I do my best every day to stay healthy and to be happy. Shouldn’t you?

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it and will share it with the people you care about.

Better Mornings Begin The Night Before

Gram’s Wisdom Number 8

When I was a young girl and woke up out of sorts, tired, disorganized, or unready to meet my day on time, Gram said I should have thought of that the night before. She told me I would wake up in the morning in a better mood, less tired, and less frazzled if I would prepare for the following morning prior to going to bed each night.

Gram suggested I put homework and books in my book bag, lay out my clothes for the next day, and tidy my room before going to sleep. This, I was told, was so I’d have no worries about the coming day, and thus allow sleep to come easily.

If you have been following Gram’s Wisdom you will remember in a previous post, I said she was a firm believer in a fix it or forget it philosophy. (I have placed a link to this post at the bottom) So, I went along with the fix it and added 30 minutes reading time before lights out in addition to the suggestions she made.

It has been more than fifty odd years since those days and I still adhere to a nightly routine. Yes, my routine has changed with the seasons of my life many times over. A good routine needs to work with you and for you. And yes, I still believe it is the best way to achieve a good morning.

“The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine”

— Mike Murdock

Achieve your good morning

The cornerstone of a good nightly routine is to get the sleep your body needs to recharge and repair itself. You know you wake up feeling more refreshed and ready to tackle your day when you’ve slept well. You also know it’s easier to work when you aren’t fighting cobwebs in your head or the lethargy of your body.  

Finding a routine that works for you

Here are 11 suggestions for you to try:

·         Read something, anything for 30 to 60 minutes. Your choices are limitless, and you can access your books in a variety of formats.

·         Take a warm bath.

·         Listen to music that puts you in a relaxed frame of mind.

·         Tidy up your kitchen before going to bed. Dishes washed and put away, sink and counters wiped clean.

·         Reflect on what your victories were today and celebrate those wins.

·         Set your goals for tomorrow, start with 3 important ones and add a couple less important for good measure.

·         Meditate for 15 to 20 minutes.

·         Write in your journal for 15 to 20 minutes.

·         Spend some time visualizing what you want your life to be like next year or 3 years from now.

·         Lay your clothes and accessories out for tomorrow.

·         Prepare your bedroom for optimal sleep. It should be dark, somewhat cool, no distracting clutter or technology. Keep your linens clean. After a week or so your sheets are a breeding ground of germs comprised of sloughed off skin cells, airborne allergens, and pet dander.

These suggestions are designed to help you 1 sleep better and 2 wake up feeling more organized. Begin with 2 or 3 of the suggestions to create your routine and add or change them as you like. Give yourself time to adjust to what you have chosen, say 3 or 4 months, and make changes as needed.

I would love hearing what your nightly routine is and what makes it work for you.

Resource Reading from Previous Posts

Happiness Begins Within You Gram’s Wisdom Number 5

Five Reasons You Need To Keep A Gratitude Journal

I don’t doubt you've often been told to be thankful for what you have when something awful happens. But, it’s not easy. Research shows that being thankful is a beneficial habit. When you are in the habit of being grateful it’s easier to focus on the good in your life rather than dwelling on the bad. Keeping a gratitude journal is an increasingly popular tool being used by those seeking to improve themselves.

And The Five Reasons Are:

1|   Changing Thought Patterns: studies have shown a strong mind-body connection. When we feel stressed, anxious or any other negative emotion it can have a negative effect on our physical health. By considering those things, events or people you are thankful for you create positive thoughts and feelings which help reduce your stress levels. It also reminds you that whatever happens to you there is always something to feel thankful for.

Your commitment to your gratitude journal focuses your mind on positive events, conversations, relationships, and the gifts each new day brings. Enabling you to see more than just those negative ones that tend to fill your mind and dominate your thoughts when they happen.

Another way your thought patterns change is that you find you begin to push boundaries and remove limiting beliefs. This happens as you not only keep your gratitude journal but as you review it. You find that your mind opens to new possibilities and you gain in self-confidence and knowledge.

2|   Improve Your Health: the fact that there is a mind-body connection means that by focusing on positive thoughts and feelings in your gratitude journal you are helping to improve your physical and mental health. Studies have shown that regular gratitude journaling can:

    Relieve stress and anxiety

    Improve sleep

    Gain perspective

3|   Create Optimism: some days it's just too hard to see the forest for the trees. You find yourself focused on something that has upset you and that troublesome thought nags away at you constantly. Taking some time to sit quietly and think about something you are grateful for helps reduce negative thoughts and feelings and replace them with positive ones.

4|   Improved Sleep: regardless of whether you feel the need for eight hours sleep each night your body and mind do require a regular amount of sleep each night for optimal mental and physical health. Keeping a gratitude journal is fun, calming, and a positive activity that promotes happy thoughts and feelings. By replacing worry and stress, you can sleep more peacefully and have happier dreams.

5|   It's Fun: keeping a gratitude journal should be a fun enjoyable experience; something you look forward to. Choose a time of day that works best for you.  It doesn't matter whether you use a plain notebook, a really fancy one, or a digital method. Your entries can be as simple as I am grateful for today’s sunshine (or a more descriptive) that warms my patio where I drink my morning coffee. Get as creative as you like. Jazz it up by using different colored pens or pencils, or stickers to decorate the pages.

If you want to create a positive change in yourself and your life, then keeping a gratitude journal might be the tool you are looking for. It's cheap, easy and very beneficial to your physical and mental health.

Side-note: I found the following posts to be full of good information and I plan to incorporate an idea or two into my gratitude journal. I hope that you will also find them helpful.

Research Proves a Gratitude Journal (Strongly Boosts Productivity

The Ultimate Guide to Keeping a Gratitude Journal

Gratitude Journal:67 Templates, Ideas, and Apps for Your Diary

I hope you found this post to be useful. I would love it if you let me know your thoughts on this subject.

How You Can Create A Daily Routine That Works

I am such a big fan of having to do lists and a calendar for my work, and my personal life. Like a friend told me not long ago "if it ain't on the list, it don't get done". Yes, this might be how we get big shit done, but it does nothing for the everyday minutia of our lives. Seriously, it's our routines that make those things quicker and easier to manage and without 'em your life and list becomes a hot mess.

Does Your Routine Work For You

Honestly, I could never accomplish a thing in my working day if it were not for the daily routines I have in place to speed me along. They are the If This Than That of my life. The trigger of one thing or habit that leads to the next and the next. You know what I mean. The unthinking, frequently auto pilot portion of our lives.

For example, you wake in the morning roll out of bed and turn the coffee pot on, or brush your teeth, or wake the kids, or let the dogs out. Whatever they are, these habits, are likely the beginning of your day, every day. And these habits strung together become our daily routines.

Now the best routines work for us and not the other way around and that is powerful. So they need to be purposeful as much as possible yet with an understanding that its need and necessity that forms them. For many people, the 9-5 workaday world is what provides the need of their routines. Change your job and it is likely you will be changing your routine.

Change A Habit And Change Your Routine

But that doesn't mean we are mere robots who are slaves to our routine, no way. Our brains are facile enough that we can have a different routine ever day and it will keep us on track. In fact, we all make subtle changes as the seasons change and barely notice it. We are able to add or subtract from a routine and hardly miss a beat.

So this is huge. Slip in that new habit you want to accomplish, like exercise that you have been either resistant or even lazy about doing. It may be difficult at first because it isn't part of your routine yet. Schedule it for 21-28 days which is what it takes to form a new habit and whatever you choose becomes part of your now, new routine.

Sure, you had to set yourself a reminder for the last 3 weeks that you wanted to exercise in the evening. But what makes it stick is that you chose Monday Tuesday, and Thursday after you walk your dog. Now your walk with Spot is the trigger for the addition of that habit into your routine. When you arrive home you're ready for your work out, and if you and Spot did more than just stroll maybe you don't need the warm up time before you begin.

So Why Am I So Charged Up About Routines

It is the auto pilot part. If you have no routine or a poor one, you constantly backtrack your steps or think what do I need to do now. When you have good routines in place for the mundane but necessary, you don't think about them. Your brain is free as a bird in flight while your hands and feet go about the tasks at hand. This can be some extra your time. Maybe you have ideas to brainstorm or a new audio book you have been meaning to find time for. Whatever you want that time for, claim it by making your routines work for you.

I want to challenge you to alter or streamline some part of your routine and make it work better for you.

If you liked this post please share it with your Buds.

  ~~Joyce