Time For Change

” We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit” – Aristotle

Everyone’s path is riddled with change. If there is no change, there is no growth or moving forward. This is where we get stuck. Stuck in old routines that we may have set some time ago that do not serve us anymore. Or maybe we are still struggling to reach a goal we set.

If you feel stuck or heavy, it’s time to reevaluate every aspect of your life, and its time to start building a new routine that helps align you with your current situation, which is constantly changing.

Feeling stuck, unhappy, not content, find yourself with a negative attitude? These are cues that it's time for habit change. Changing a habit is hard, creating a new habit is hard. It’s all hard, but what is more difficult and taxing on us are bad habits and decisions that drag us down like gravity. Drowning us in a sense. If you have feelings like this you know it's time to clean out the clutter of bad habits.

We all know what habits are. The good and the bad. Habits are the small decisions we make and actions we take every day. As the years go by our bad habits build up and start to take a toll (e.g. Sugar, skipping breakfast, multitasking, sleep deprivation, overeating, etc.); cluttering our minds and our life with excess stress. These bad habits cause weight gain, poor financial situations, strained relationships…the list goes on.

Listed below are a few simple steps to get you on your way to successfully cleaning out the clutter.

Mindfulness – get to know yourself and your habits

The first step before change can occur is acknowledging that unwanted habits exist. Get to know your habits and their deepest darkest secrets. Pinpoint your triggers and the ways these bad habits negatively affect you. Understanding your relationship with your habit will empower you to conquer it. Let’s say that every time you find yourself super stressed out you find comfort in polishing off a bag of chips-this is pretty typical. A habit that only leaves you feeling guilty with a bad case of gut rot. Acknowledging this trigger and becoming aware of the consequences will help you make a better decision next time you find yourself in that situation.

Slow Down

Take your time. Don’t try and overhaul your entire life all at once. Focus on one habit at a time. Keeping it simple leads to small victories that create a momentum that will grow into big results! If you set the goal too big, your critter brain will rebel. It literally hates change. Creating changes so small that they seem trivial will help avoid this. A classic example, if you want to start going to bed earlier because your 12 am bedtime leaves you with sloth-like energy in the morning, start with setting your bedtime 15 minutes earlier then increase it by an additional 15 minutes each week until you’re hitting the sheets at your ideal bedtime. If you are a 12:00am YouTube junkie and your ideal bedtime is 9:00pm, your brain isn’t going to be too open to a 3 hour transition right from the start. Ease into it.

Be Accountable

Remember start with a simple habit. You want to be successful when you commit to change. Success happens when you are accountable for your actions or lack of action. Hold yourself accountable by:

Investing in a coach. Professional help to keep you on track and support you along your journey is a solid way to secure your end goal. Click here if you are interested.
Join a community or Facebook group.
Recruit an accountability buddy who wants to rock this with you. You can keep each other on track.
Reward yourself. Celebrate the small wins and things that have gone well. Pay yourself each time you achieve your goal.
Write yourself a contract and sign it. List the details of your goals, how you plan to achieve them. Set dates. Get a loved-one to witness and sign it with you.