If you’re anything like me, you’ll know how difficult it is to make new habits stick, and not through want of trying! Perhaps you want to exercise more often, or make time to read or write, start a daily meditation or yoga practice or simply start eating better. We all start with good intentions, perhaps managing a week or two before our shiny new commitment begins to slide away, buried by our day-to-day.
The thing is, our normal daily lives are already a culmination of all of our long established habits, for better or worse! And long established habits are difficult to change. So how can you make time for the new things you want to bring into your life? It’s well known that it can take over 30 days of consistency before a new habit is fully established, which is why there are so many 30 day challenges out there for almost anything you can think of. I’m sure many of you have taken part in 30 day fitness or meditation challenges and either made it all the way to the end before never doing it again, or even giving up within the first week or two.
Making new habits is hard. And it requires some serious determination and commitment, and probably a little bit of stubbornness too! But once you’ve found the best way that works for you, you’ll easily be able to form new habits and, most importantly, keep them.
Learning to keep yourself accountable goes a long way towards helping you to establish and stick to newly formed habits. Start by writing out what you wish to achieve, following the SMART framework:
Specific: Be as specific as you can. Rather than saying “I want to save money.” State exactly how much you want to save.
Measurable: How will you be able to measure your progress? Do you have a tracker or somewhere to cross off your steps or actions?
Achievable: Make sure your goal is attainable. Lofty and ambitious goals are great, but if you find that you are struggling to hit them, your motivation will start to wane.
Relevant: Is this goal relevant to your life and where you are right now?
Timely: Set an achievable deadline and stick to it.
Once you have your goals written down, think about the steps you need to take to achieve them. If you wish to get fitter you might plan to sign up to a class and commit to showing up every week, or go for a run every morning before work. All of these little steps add up, but they are often the first and easiest to drop when life gets in the way. And it will! If you can, find yourself an accountability partner. This could be a close friend or family member or even a total stranger you meet at a class. Having someone who has your back and keeps you motivated will really help you to stay on task, and it’s always so much easier when someone is working through the same thing.
Another great way to keep yourself accountable and maintain consistency is to habit stack. Habit stacking, coined by James Clear in his book, Atomic Habits follows the principle of using existing habits to build new ones. The formula is simple: “Before or after I [existing habit], I will [new habit].” For example, “After I have had my morning coffee, I will put on my workout clothes.” Over time you can build these stacked habits into fully fledged routines. Habit stacking is one of my favourite methods for making habits and sticking to them, and you can learn more here.
An important thing to note is that, whilst you are establishing new habits and new routines, it’s highly likely that you are going to mess up. And this is completely normal. As I’ve mentioned, life happens and there’s absolutely no way you’ll ever be able to maintain a perfect streak no matter how hard you try. But perfection is never something we should be striving for as it simply doesn’t exist. The key to maintaining consistent habits and holding yourself to account is to graciously accept that you missed a day and not beat yourself up about it. Yes it can be frustrating, but real growth happens when you pick back up where you left off. The ability to do this easily means you have successfully established a new habit.
If you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. There are so many tried and trusted techniques that you can use to create new habits and achieve your goals.