PRODUCTIVITY: How I’m Making Habits and Forgiving Myself
Everyone has a mental image of who they want to be and it’s very likely that this ideal person shares these characteristics:
- Gets up super early (I’m talking 5 to 6 am early)
- Goes to the Gym every day
- Eats Healthy
- Regularly posts or produces content.
It’s understandable to aspire to greatness, which makes failing to meet those expectations that much more painful in a way. Most of us tend to put ourselves in a much harsher judging light than our peers. At least I do. As I’ve discussed in other posts, I tend to compare myself with not just the people I follow on instagram but with my peers. I want to do it all and I chide myself when I fail at it. Habit building is one of those things that just keep falling on the wayside rather than the day to day work and home life. Sometimes life just gets so much that you come home and collapse. And that’s okay.
I do admit that posting this on the first day of the new month might be a tad on the nose for me, but trust me, this is a coincidence. I didn’t really plan my blog posts (and that’s not great if you want to be a content creator). But I do try to stick to a general schedule and go off from whatever topic comes to mind. This post won’t have a complete set of links like I usually have, with articles that explain this so much better than I ever could. This is a post on how it feels like to make a habit, and learning to forgive myself for not being consistent and learning.
Habits require planning and action. In my case, it means going to bed earlier, and accomplishing everything I need to do before a certain hour. It means hitting the hay around 11 pm or earlier. It also requires examining what changes can be done to either make the habit easier to accomplish or dissuading obstacles. In my case, it’s a two fold approach. I prep my morning as efficiently as possible like having my gym and yoga bags set, clothes and shoes set out, Kanken bag ready to head out, writing the goal for that early rise, making coffee, writing down what I want for breakfast et al. This is the Planning part and easily one of the more time consuming parts of the approaches. But knowing ahead of time really does ease my morning routine.
The next approach is the Dissuasion, or the part that prevents me from falling back into the behavior that I want to change. In this case, I put my phone far away from my bed, have a glass of water to wake me up, and setting a timer on my A/C unit. Nothing kills my morning productivity like an active A/C as it makes me want to go back to bed and “warm up”.
Yesterday morning, I had that struggle and instead of waking up at 6:15 am, I was up at 7 am. Why? Because the AC was on and I fooled myself in believing that I wouldn’t fall asleep the moment I wrapped myself in my comforter. But I didn’t punish myself: I learned. So the night before this post goes up, I made most of these changes and I added a new step: setting the timer to have the machine shut itself off after a certain amount of time. That way, the room has time to warm up with the morning sun and I feel less inclined to go back to bed.
Habits are about making little changes that then lead to the behavior that we want to achieve. And each new habit can help others succeed, if you think about it. In my case, by waking up early, I have more time during the day. That means I can hit the gym in the morning, get to work earlier and have a lot more energy during the waking times. I also feel less like a lump when I get home, and by eating at specific times, I avoid blood sugar drops more often.
Whatever the habit you may be hoping for, do keep in mind that if you fail, don’t be too harsh on yourself. See what you did and think about ways that you can change the outcome. I’m not saying drastic changes. Sometimes, all you need is just a little tweak and nudge from yourself.
Thank you for reading this far!
- SP
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