Creating New Habits – Update #1
August 11, 2009 by Marci
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Creating New Habits as inspired by The Power Of Less by Leo Babauta and Gracefully Creative. The premise of the book is much like Overcoming Busy – get rid of all the clutter in your life so you have time for what is really important. One of the sections in the book talked about creating new habits and the reasons it is so hard for us to make new habits stick. We might really want to exercise daily, but after a week or so, we can’t seem to find the time or the motivation. Part of the reason is that we choose too many habits to work on at once. We might want to exercise more, but we think we need to jump right into an entire new way of eating at the same time and while we are at it, we need to get some more sleep and we need to read more books and…. All those things are good and may work together to make you the person you want to be, but just like the rest of our lives, we can get too busy creating new habits. It can get overwhelming and we just give up. In The Power Of Less, the author suggests just working on one habit every 30 days. Choose the most important first. Choose the one that will make the biggest impact on your life and pave the way for other new habits you may want to incorporate later.
Well, I chose getting to bed by 10 pm as my new habit to work on. The first week, I did great. We even went out of town and I still managed to get to bed on time. Getting that extra sleep made such a difference! I got up earlier on my own. I was more rested. I got more accomplished in the morning. It was really good. Now, this week, I have been back to my old 11 pm habit. OK…maybe more like 11:30 pm. Anyway, I am tired and unmotivated this week and I hate it! Tonight, I am back to getting to bed by 10 pm!
As I think about why I swayed back to my old ways, it comes down to this. I didn’t create the opportunity to get to bed on time. I let the kids play outside too long or watch the discovery channel special. Instead of just going to bed and saving that last task for the morning, I stayed up and got it done and then found other stuff that just had to be done at 11 o’clock at night!!!
Now, I can see the benefits of my new habit. I have experienced them. I, also, see what can distract me and hold me back from my new habit. Tonight, it is 10 pm. Tomorrow, I will feel great!
What new habit can you create?
Comments (1)
Good for you for getting right back to it.
As for me, I’ve stuck to 9:30 every night except Wed, Thurs, Friday, and Saturday. Both Wednesday and Thursday I had too many things to get done –in anticipation of the bachelorette weekend– and Fri/Sat was the bach-weekend.
Sunday night, I collapsed into bed at 9 and promptly fell asleep.