Building habits is really hard as an adult, but sticking to them is even harder. I personally do believe that variety is the spice of life, but having a part-time routine can remove some overwhelm that comes with being an adult. I have read several self-help books and one has really helped me build habits that are healthy for me, and to stick to them. This was Atomic Habits by James Clear.
Why build a habit and stick to routines?
Habits are annoying at first, but humans are creatures of habit. It’s just that when you want to change or update your life a bit, you have to change your current routine, to then create your new one. That’s the part that’s a pain, because you’ve gotten comfortable. You may think that you don’t have a routine, but that’s because the habit has already formed and it comes to you naturally.
Think! You move to a new situation, whether it’s a job or house and you start to settle down. Then you maybe decide to do a weekly clean on a Saturday night, hoover on a Wednesday after work. You hang out with your friends on a Thursday for drinks, and do laundry on a Tuesday. These repetitive events are you forming your routine. It then comes to a point where something new is added, maybe you join a sports club, maybe you want to start meal prepping, and it requires you to change your current lifestyle/timetable. Because it’s something new, it feels odd and difficult to implement the first few times, but after 3-5 times, it becomes a little more natural until before you know it, it’s completely normal life.
What’s a healthy habit?
I believe this is dependent on what you view as your healthy lifestyle. Maybe you want to run more, or eat more fruit or vegetables, I’m not going to impose on what you should do. But I will summarise the outcomes of the atomic habits book, plus what I have learnt from the past 5 months of implementing habits that are healthy for me, and how I stick to my routines.
How to build a habit
Atomic habits describe setting habits in 4 simple steps. It’s not easy to set a habit, but when is adulting ever easy? The steps are: Make it obvious. Make it attractive; Make it easy; Make it satisfying. There are also 4 steps to break a habit that you don’t want to keep (but that can be another post). These are all applicable to building any habits and routines in your life, and breaking the ones that you don’t want.
Make it obvious – Building a habit
Humans are easily distracted by what’s in front of us. Have you ever started doing something, and then you deviate a little, because that task introduced you to something else? And you think “This won’t take me long, let me do that, and then get back to the original task”. Then you find time has passed, you won’t be able to finish the original task, so you leave it for another day. This happens with our habits and routines, unless you have a reminder in place to do it, you will very quickly forget about it.
I stopped working out due to time constraints for a while, so I decided in January 2023, that I will stretch every night before going to bed. To remind me, I had my yoga mat right outside my bedroom door, so I walk past it before going to bed. This reminded and encouraged me to stretch before I even reached my bed. 4 months on and it’s May 2023, I am still stretching before bed, even though I started back at the gym a month ago. Why I have kept going is because of the next 3 steps.
Make it attractive- Build a habit
When it comes to forming habits and routines, we look for an attractive reward to incentivise us to do something, especially repetitively. Getting a dopamine spike, makes you enjoy something, and repeating the frequency will make your brain get excited at the thought of doing it. That’s when the habit becomes attractive to you, making you do it.
I do my stretches every night because I enjoy seeing my flexibility improve. I compared my flexibility to a lot of people when I was younger, and I wished that my body could do what theirs could. I’ll admit it still doesn’t, but because I keep at it, I am always getting better than myself. There is no one to compare to, other than me. My progress is my own and I love that, especially since I don’t feel self-conscious at all, because I do it alone. I get excited to see how far I reach, how far I can stretch and it’s fun.
Make it easy – Build a habit
If someone was to time you to complete simple maths questions, compared it to you completing rocket science questions; I’m sure you would give up with rocket science without finishing the questions. You might attempt it, and even continue trying for a long time, but you will reach a point where you just give up. That’s because it’s hard to keep at something that is constantly challenging you. I look back at school and the reason I loved the STEM subjects was because I understood them, I found them relatively easy. But English and languages was so hard, and I hated them. It meant I didn’t put as much effort in them and didn’t care about the grade. Whereas, the STEM subjects were my identity, and anything less than an A, was the end of the world.
If something is easy at the start, you are more likely to continue at it, and not notice the difficulty increasing that much. This means you actually make more progress, and can achieve a lot more. With my stretches I started off with 5 stretches which addressed different body parts from head to toe, and it took me 2-3 minutes to do. Now I have 13 stretches and it takes me 10 – 15 minutes, and they are deeper stretches as well. I gradually added a new stretch when I felt like it, and then increased the time I was holding them. That increase in difficulty came from my confidence of starting off easy.
Make it satisfying – Build a habit
If you do something and you feel anger, or sadness or defeat, are you going to do it again? I answer for myself here and say, “Hell No!”. I believe life is too short to spend it suffering. Knowing full well that my school years weren’t fun, and corporate life won’t be that much better, then the remaining moments are where I want to be my happiest. If I finish something and I absolutely love it, I’m at least going to do it one more time, to make sure that it wasn’t a beginner’s luck kind of thing.
I have so many examples of this, but I will keep with my night-time stretches for consistency. I listen to classical music as I do my stretches. This makes me enjoy them even more and makes me feel like I am in a yoga class. I then also have the endorphin release for the stretches, and the pride I feel for improving my flexibility and completing the stretches. So I have this big release in positive energy. This makes me look forward to going to bed the next night, because I get to do that again, and I find it so satisfying.
Sticking to a routine
Ensuring these 4 steps are in place can increase your chances of taking up a new habit. Now how do you keep to a routine? A routine is essentially a group of habits that lead one into another. This is called Habit stacking and a whole stack is your routine. Before you can habit stack, you should first establish the habits, even at their simplest stages. Having them at their simplest, will make it easier to habit stack. As you make them more complicated, it won’t be so overwhelming on the first time you stack. For me, an example is my bedtime routine.
It’s a matter of trying out what works for you. When I started these stretches, I was meant to do some in the morning and some before bed. The morning ones didn’t stick. I am not a morning stretch person, but I am a morning gym person. As much as you try to be “that person”, that will never be the true you. Use habits to your advantage, and become a better you, not “that person”. You’ve got this.
Bedtime routine – Sticking to a routine
1 hour before bed, my phone turns to do not disturb, and night mode. There is also a little message that tells me this.
Because of this stimulus, I close up what I am doing, start the habit stack:
- Turn on classical music playlist, and turn off unnecessary lights and check locked door.
- Brush my teeth
- Perform skin care routine (it’s own mini habit stack)
- Get hot water running and make face cloth damp
- Rinse face and lather on Simple moisturising face wash
- Rinse lather and dry face
- Moisturise Hyaluronic acid and Niacinamide
- Top with face moisturiser
- Lay down yoga mat.
- Perform sequence of stretches from head to toe (another mini stack)
Bedtime routine complete.
It took me 2 months to establish the whole stack, doing this every night. That seems long but looking back it’s a miniscule amount of time. I find my bedtime routine very rewarding and thanks to Atomic Habits, I have been experimenting with habits and routines in my day-to-day life. This makes it more manageable to make changes in your life, because they improve you by 1 %. By the end of a year, you will be 365 % better, than when you started, and you won’t have noticed it. Even better.
Moral of my story:
- 4 simple steps to build a habit – Make it obvious. Make it attractive; Make it easy; Make it satisfying.
- Pace yourself to success – Push yourself too fast, can lead to frustration and you will throw in the towel too soon. Be patient.
- Habit stacking leads to routine – By stacking on habits that you have established, your routine is already way easier, increasing your chances of sticking to it.
- Atomic habits was a helpful book – I am conscious of the kind of habits I want to form, and I really think about how I want them to benefit me
- Habits are natural, just personalise them – The book and this post are advice, and you need to personalise your practise to make it work for you. We are unique human beings, so this routine that works for me may not work for you and that’s fine.
