Building Your Best Habits - glow & grow by FindingKeren

When thinking of habits, we often think of a list, composed of what we think we need to work on. But what if I told you that it doesn’t start there?

Building your best habits starts with knowing what you want to accomplish and how you can get there. See, we often get caught up on listing how to be our best selves, that we forget who we want to become, and how to get there.

When thinking of a goal, you need to know your ‘why’. Why are you desiring to reach this goal, why do you think this is the best choice? This is essential because along the way you will find reasons to quit, or go back on your goal, but if your why is clear, it will be the thing that drives you.

After you note your goal and your why, you then have to write how to get there. It’s the steps that help you climb up, little by little, to get there. Those won’t look like long term steps, but the mundane, everyday habits. If my goal is to loose weight or tone up, I won’t add cutting 5 lbs a week to my list. That’s unrealistic for the everyday person, but I would add something like eating whole foods, or eating in a calorie deficit to lose one to two lbs a week. Not that losing 5 lbs a week is not attainable, but it will burn you out and get you to quit faster. Your habits have to be realistic.

See, the thing we often don’t realize is that our habits are the building blocks for our goals. They are the foundation in which your journey to reaching certain goals will be built on. A shaky foundation won’t last, however, something built over time will. When working on yourself, and building habits, you have to keep in mind that you’re playing the long game.

Often times, I want to do the easy thing and go back on my habits. Why? Because it’s the easy choice. But the easy choice won’t get me where I want to be. The easy choice won’t fuel me, and it also won’t set me apart. You choose your hard, and going back on your habits will in turn be harder than sticking to them to begin with.

Please hear me out when I say it’s okay to mess up, but don’t get used to being in that mentality. It’s okay to fail, you can try again tomorrow. And that’s the thing about habits, it’s what you do repeatedly. No one expects you to be perfect. Being consistent with your goals is about getting closer to where you want to be.

If you work at it and stick to your habits 90% of the time, guess what? That 10% is still 10%, but it’s nothing compared to the 90% that you did stick to your goals. Be consistent, but be gentle with yourself.

Another tip on building your best habits is to have accountability. It’s easy to slip up or make excuses when you have hard days, but if you have accountability, you’re less likely to cheat yourself out of your habits. Think about running (for those of you who like running). If you think about going for a run, chances are, the days you’re not feeling it, you most likely won’t go for a run. But if you have an accountability partner or a run club to keep you accountable, you’re more likely to stick to it. And at the end, you will be glad you did it.

That’s how habits work. Your brain will tell you to take the shortcut when you’re tired, but if you stick to them, you will be so thankful that you did afterwards.

Don’t work at being perfect, work at being better. Have a concise plan, and a clear why. Once you do, it will be clear what you need to do and how you will get there. Give yourself grace, but never, ever give up on yourself and your why. I believe in you.