Why It's Time to Focus on Building Habits

Habits are the building blocks to progress.

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Transcript

Sara Miller: 0:10

Welcome to the Me, Myself and You podcast. My name is Sara and I'm your host. And if I'm being honest, this is like take four of this intro I keep getting interrupted by various sounds like the icemaker and the baby and the dog and the husband and all of the things. But, you know, that's what it's like recording your podcast at home, in quarantine in a one bedroom apartment. So, today, I want to talk about habit building and why it is so frigging important, and why now is the time to focus on it. So let's get started. Habit building habits, you know, or something that you do on autopilot typically something you do on a regular basis, I don't think it necessarily has to be daily. But I feel like the daily ones are more likely to stick if I'm being honest. But you generally have habits that you've picked up on over the years, whether that's there's the baby, we're just gonna keep going. Things like brushing your teeth, washing your face, maybe you are actually a good dental person and floss your teeth. I don't but you know, maybe that's a habit I need to work on. Let's see what else other habits you might have might be scrolling through TikTok for four hours in bed, because there's bad habits too. But all of these little tiny habits really add up to change, tiny steps can equal big change. And in the past, for me, making those tiny changes have been the most sustainable way for me to maintain those big changes for me to maintain and to work towards those big things on a regular basis. I feel like oftentimes goals get pushed aside because you're not focused on habit building you're focused on like pushing through, like you're cramming for a test or something like that. Instead of making it a part of your lifestyle, which really comes back down to I know I've talked about before self care being a lifestyle, self care, being a habit, self care being a part of your every day. And that's one of those habits that I really believe you should work on. But I also think certain habits that you might not think of is self care or self care and habit building can be self care, it's an endless cycle. A vicious vicious cycle, there we go. That's the term. So tiny steps for big change. That's how I want you to think about habit building. Because these habits that you're building shouldn't be something that's just because you want to pick habits that make you feel good. Or, and or help you move towards your goals. If you're doing a habit and you absolutely hate it, and it doesn't get you anywhere closer to any of your goals. Why are you doing it? Seriously, why are you doing something that doesn't make you happy, and that doesn't bring you closer to what you want? So that's an important piece to think about when you're working on building habits. The other piece of building out the other piece of building habits is when it comes to bad mental health days. And now you might be confused, because I'm not explaining this well. But having these habits in place, especially those self care habits, having that self care lifestyle is a great foundation for those tough mental health days. It's great to have something that you're relying on to keep you going. Whether that's literally jumping through the shower at the same time every day, or maybe it is prepping your coffee the night before so that when you get up, it's a little easier to get out of bed when you're having a tough day. Stuff like that. I think it's also something that gives you a sense of stability, having set habits having a set routine, not to say you can't stray from that routine at all. I mean, I'm personally someone that thrives on routine and I enjoy routine I like knowing what to expect, within reason, I you know I like to get out there do something different every once in a while. But, having a foundational like routine, I mean, that's that's the only word I can think of right now can be a really great sense of stability, that kind of words off some anxiety of not knowing what to expect. That being said, I don't want you get so caught up in your routine, that it's hard to relinquish control and cause anxiety that way. So it's a balance. And I also don't want you to be beating up on yourself if you miss a habit because you're having a bad mental health day. And that's where the concept of bookmark habit comes in. And I can't remember where I heard this, I read the book badass habits recently. And I feel like there was something about that in there. But I've also heard about bookmark habits from MuchelleB on YouTube, and I use her planner. So anyway, bookmark habits are basically micro versions of the habits that you want to implement. So to avoid losing that momentum, or that streak of like doing something every single day, you have some kind of bookmark habit version of that. So let's say, every single day, you want to write a page. And you know that, hey, sometimes I'm gonna have a really crappy day, it's gonna get really crazy, but I know that I need to do something to help that habit stick. Maybe that bookmark habit is writing a sentence, maybe it's reading the page, you wrote the night before, and making a note about what you want to write next, something like that. Something that is just taking it down to the like, smallest, smallest, smallest action you can take is a great way to bookmark a habit. So I really love that concept. I think it's a great way to think on building habits. And it's something I'm trying to integrate more into my habit building. Let me know if you try out bookmark habits. And let me know what yours are. Because I'm very curious as to how you implement those and how you make that work for you. I know there's definitely some habits that I've struggled more with thinking of a bookmark habit for, for example, getting up early. And I am not an early riser, at all, at least compared to my husband who gets up at

like 4: 7:37

30, 5 o'clock in the morning. But I still I you know, I need that extra time to do things like work out, to do things like work on my podcast, and work on my website, and branding and marketing and all of the things that I want to do outside of my full time job. I need to make a little more time for so let me know if you think of a bookmark habit for getting up early because that is one that I have struggled with, and I think would be really helpful, especially on the weekends when I don't necessarily have the desire to get up. And don't have, you know, a real timestamp that I have to get up by. So. Anyways, I think that's all for today's episode. Let me know what habits you're building. I would love to hear from you. You can DM me on Instagram. So I think that's it. If you liked this episode, I would really love if you could leave me a review. Follow and maybe if you really loved it, share this episode with a friend. You guys talking about my podcast really does help me a lot in getting the word out there and being able to share advice and insight and just general content with more people. So thank you so much for listening and I will talk at you again soon.