Creating Better Habits That Last – A Check List

You become what you repeatedly do, say and think. It is as simple as this.

When I started this blog I used it as a place to share my thoughts about mental health and talked about some of my own struggles. But it began to evolve when I realised that the only way to get myself out of my rut was to create better habits and better routines.

I saw myself as a project that needed to be re-energised. Hence, Projectenergise.com.

And since then it’s become very obvious to me that we’re all ongoing projects. We’re never done. There’s always room to grow and learn new things and you can do that, but you just have to be consistent.

In this post, we’ll go over the Creating Better Habits checklist that has worked for me;

I began to dig myself out of a mental and physical rut by harnessing a new process, one that helped me to make positive changes. I started to look after myself in healthier ways and before I knew it, I had a whole string of new habits that were helping to make me feel a bit better.

I gave myself short-term and long-term goals. Working backwards, I figured out the things I would need to do on a consistent basis to reach them. Then it was simply a case of just doing them.

Since creating better habits in my life I have…

Am I perfect? No. But since taking on some new healthy habits and sticking to them I’ve felt much better within myself and learned that forward momentum is what this is all about. Sure I could do the things that make me feel good every now and again but what use is that? I want to have good habits that are sustainable. The whole aim of healthy habits for me is just to feel good.

Like most people, I want to feel healthy, happier, and more purpose in life.

So with that in mind, here is the process that has helped and is helping me to build better routines and I think it can help you too. It’s not overly complicated on the surface but in practice, it does take patience and the willingness to have setbacks.

• They keep me grounded and act like anchors
• They stop my mind from wandering and overthinking
• They help me to maintain more alertness throughout the day
• They give me the energy I feel I physically need to get through the day in a good manner
• They help me to build long-term discipline
• I want to focus on the positives as much as I can

All of these things are super important to me. They are all things I want to maintain forever.

But let’s say you want to lose weight…

It’s no good saying, “I want to lose a few pounds because it would be nice to be a bit slimmer.”

Believe change can happen

Focus your faith in on yourself. Believe that better version of yourself can exist and will exist in time and with a little commitment.

Whatever habit you’re trying to start, you first have to believe that you’re capable of becoming the person who has those habits. You have to have faith in the version of yourself that doesn’t exist yet.

If you don’t believe that person can exist, and if you fall off the wagon, you’ll be tempted to use the excuse of “I was never cut out for it anyway.” In fact, if you don’t have faith they can exist, you’ll never be able to become that person, it will be almost impossible.

I think everyone can change, it’s just difficult to see the other side when you’ve been living a certain way for a long time.

You can mould yourself, just like a child. You might have many more responsibilities and limiting beliefs than a child, but for as long as your heart is pumping there is always a chance to change even if that chance is 1%.

Children see the world through the lens of wonder and opportunity. Perhaps as adults, we become trapped through our experiences and expectations. We decide who we are and we stick to those ideas. But this is why having faith in yourself and the idea of a different you is so important.

Think about what you have faith in today. Why not extend that faith to yourself, a better version of yourself that has the habits you’re trying to build? Once you have faith that person can exist, it becomes much easier to become them.

Here’s a post explaining why having faith in the beginning is so important in the process.

Be willing to be uncomfortable at first

Change is always uncomfortable at first. Be willing to be uncomfortable and to question yourself. Become comfortable being percieved as weird and different.

Any change in routine and lifestyle is uncomfortable at first, and sometimes painful. When you first go into the gym you feel like the biggest one in the room, as if everyone is staring at you. It’s uncomfortable. When you finish your first set of leg presses your muscles hurt, not used to that kind of strain. It’s uncomfortable. And when you eat your first dinner with black beans, broccoli and chicken it’s uncomfortable and not particularly satisfying.

You tell yourself the same thing again; “This just isn’t me. I’m not cut out for this.”

But in my experience (and what I see from others) is that anything different to what you’re used to is uncomfortable at first. Anything worth doing isn’t easy, it’s usually not comfortable and makes you question yourself. But that feeling is temporary once you start to prove to yourself through small wins that it is possible.

For example, I was very uncomfortable when I;

But after several times, these things felt less uncomfortable. I felt more capable and realised I could keep doing them.

You have to tolerate the initial discomfort of things such as these if you’re going to keep doing them. From there you can normalise them and then eventually, in time, master them.

And in my experience, the period of feeling uncomfortable is very short. For example, if you’re trying to give up smoking, you only have to get through the first three days until your cravings dim down and you don’t feel like lighting up a cigarette.

Here’s a post where I talk about “getting over the hump,” overcoming the initial discomfort when creating new habits and routines.

When I gave up smoking many years ago, I was surprised at how easy it really was. There I was, smoking all day long, telling myself there was no way I could live without it. Little did I know, my freedom was only on the other side of three days.

Going back to your old habits is comfortable, the unknown is uncomfortable. Trust yourself that you’ll be okay in the discomfort.

You’ll also have to accept you might seem weird to your friends and family when you’re trying to make a lifestyle shift. People will think “you’re changing” and you’re acting “weird”. The truth is most people want you to stay exactly as you are. They know the current you. A new version of you might just be an idea as uncomfortable as it is for you at first.

Here’s a post explaining why you might have to become the weird one and how to overcome this.

Set yourself realistic goals

Give yourself the best chance of success from the offset. Be humble, be patient with yourself. Take on realistic goals in the beginning. From there you can scale up.

In my experience, setting unrealistic goals is the cause of all failed good habits. Biting off more than you can chew is bound to lead you back to your old habits. For example, if you decide you’re going to go to the gym five days a week after never setting foot inside of one, it might be hard to keep that routine up.

It could be more realistic to go for a run on the sidewalk once a week and use the gym once a week to begin with. If you spend your first week in the gym, day after day, you might find you’re incredibly sore and tired and you won’t feel like (or be able to) go the following week.

Similarly, if you’ve decided you’re going to give up sugar altogether from June 1st, you might struggle to go cold turkey. It could be more realistic for you to cut back to only eating sugar at the weekend, to begin with. From there, you can allow your taste buds to adjust making it much more easy to give it up fully.

At the same time, you may have other things in your weekly routine that will make sticking to your new habits difficult. For example, if you want to go to the gym several times a week but you have to take your children to clubs each evening, there may be little time for you to do this. Therefore, you might decide to go early in the morning. And this is when you really need to think about whether this is something you can stick to. After all, getting up at 5.30 am to get to the gym at 6 am is a big commitment if you’ve never done this before.

Again, it might be more realistic to go once or twice a week on a free evening to begin with. To find a good time in your daily routine you can download the free Better Habits Bundle which includes a daily routine planner so you can map out what a typical day looks like. You can then identify gaps in your schedule where you can realistically go to the gym, for example.

The Better Habits Bundle also includes a SMART goals worksheet so you can plan your goals and make sure they are not only realistic in your busy schedule but also measurable.

Ditch motivation, celebrate progress

Relying on when you feel inspired to get things done leaves too much room for procrastination. Allow the version of your better self waiting for you be the only motivation you need.

Motivation comes and goes. How many times have you put something off because you don’t feel motivated? I know I’ve been a victim of the illusion of motivation many, many times. Watching a motivational video can surge you forward but it’s fleeting. Hopefully your ‘why’ will be strong enough to surge you forward so you don’t need to rely on external motivation. If you have a burning furnace inside of you, you won’t need to be motivated in the first place. Your motivation comes from you, your personal mission.

And when you just keep doing something, you start to see tiny progress from your own actions, the actions you did when you didn’t feel like it but you kept going.

You lose a pound of weight and it makes you feel capable. You’re able to lift another pound of weight and you feel stronger. You run an extra mile without feeling as out of breath as last week.

You see these tiny wins and they’re motivating within themselves. It becomes a positive feedback loop. You begin to realise that everything you’re doing is improving because of your continued actions and that’s the moment you recognise the key to building meaningful, lasting habits that make you feel good and push you forward.

The secret is to just keep going.

Keep going when you wake up and don’t feel like it. Keep going when you’ve had a hard day. Do that thing before you go out because you know you should.

Celebrate every tiny bit of progress you see, be mindful of it and don’t brush it off as luck. Every win you have is because you trusted yourself to keep going. You did that thing every day or every week and now your hard work is revealing itself.

This is when you can take this difficult yet simple process and apply it to everything in your life. You start to see external motivation as a tool, a little add-on but not your go-to cue to keep going.

When I first started this blog, no one was listening. But I kept going, trusting it would reach a wider audience. I made a habit of writing every week, wanting to share a positive message with the world. Slowly but surely I had a few visitors here and there. Each week brought more and more eyeballs and it was another example that if I just kept going it could work.

So celebrate your progress. Change is difficult. You deserve to celebrate it.

Here’s a post about motivating yourself, instead of relying on external influence.

Create the right environment

Create the environment the version of yourself you’re aiming towards would work in. Do this and you’d be surprised how easy things become.

Creating better habits means creating a better environment. To make sticking to your new routines much easier, it’s important to keep your environment well-designed to make your life easier. For example, if you want to go for a run each morning, put your running shoes by the front door. If you want to take multivitamins every day, leave them by your kettle.

Likewise, if you’re trying to eat healthier foods, get rid of the junk in your kitchen. Put an exercise bike in your bedroom and keep your refrigerator topped up with fresh fruit and vegetables. If you can do this, you’ll find it much easier to keep to your healthy habits on the days when you feel sluggish and tired.

I have many days where I don’t feel like cooking but then I open my fridge and see all the food that needs to be used before it goes off. And if I’m really pushed for time for some reason, I’ll grab some fruit or some frozen fruit to eat.

Another example of how I create a better environment for better habits is with my laptop – I leave it next to my bed so when I need to write I can quickly grab it and get going.

And this part of my process isn’t exclusive to just my home. For example, I find it much easier to drink three large bottles of water a day when I leave my large water bottle on my desk at work and I find it much easier to ignore the vending machine when I take a freshly made lunch with me to work.

In my experience, if your environment is working against you, it’s incredibly difficult to make healthy changes that stick. This requires you to have a sense of discipline because there will be days when you don’t feel like shopping or days when you don’t feel like going to the gym. But if your cupboards are stocked and your exercise bike is in front of you, you’re much more likely to stay on track and at least perform a small action that keeps you going in the right direction.

So there’s some planning that needs to be done, for example;

Measure your progress

Measure your progress. Allow it to excite you and inspire you further. Have fun with it!

A 2009 study suggests that it can take between 18 to 254 days to make a new habit an automatic action. That’s quite a range. However, this makes sense because everyone is different. We are all unique with different circumstances so I don’t believe there is a certain amount of time it would take an individual to make something routine. I think you have to just keep going before something new begins to feel automated and less uncomfortable and this is where faith comes into play again.

But you can also help yourself by measuring your progress with a simple habit tracker. The Better Habits Bundle includes a simple monthly habit tracker printable so you can check off the days as you go with whatever new habit you’re trying to stick to.

In my experience, it’s extremely helpful to physically see your progress. And if you’re a fan of apps, here are the 25 best habit tracker apps I’ve personally found and recommend.

Bringing it all together

I want this post to be as helpful as possible. I think creating better habits comes down to option A or option B. Which one will you choose? I hope you choose the best one for you but I don’t just want to write a post about my experience and process. To make this even more helpful for you, I created the Better Habits Bundle so you can plan your new habits and routines out in a practical way. It’s easy to start something new but it can be much harder to keep doing it. That’s why the free 34-page printable PDF includes many habit-building worksheets and planner pages so you can get off to a good start and will hopefully help you keep going.