6 Tips to Reignite Good Habits

A former client of mine sent me a note the other day saying she'd been burning the candle at both ends, had fallen out of her meditation practice, and was wondering if I had any tips for how to restart great practices and get back into good habits.

(A fantastic question to explore with New Year Resolution season upon us.)

The first response in my head was simple.

Yah, I've got one tip: The way you restart good habits is to restart good habits.

But of course it (both is and) isn't quite so simple.

Why do we fall out of good habits? In a word? Life.

Or Humanness.

Our brains are constantly shifting focus, and life is constantly throwing new potential points of focus at us.

So there's nothing weird in the slightest in our finding it challenging to pick a practice and stick to it unwaveringly and indefinitely, even if it feels great while we're doing it.

Also, our needs and priorities shift.

Our inner circumstances (physical, mental, emotional, chemical) are constantly changing, and our outer circumstances are constantly in flux and exerting influence on us too.

So it makes total sense that sometimes you'll wander away from a habit that used to really serve you but just doesn't hit the sweet spot anymore. In which case you could take that as a cue it's time to create some healthy new habits and do that, no sweat.

But there's this other piece that's also often true when it comes to wandering away from habits we know work for us:

We can rationalize our way out of committing and sticking to the work (whatever the important and necessary work to be the kind of person we want to be may be in our lives) like nobody's business.

So when you hear all the reasons in your head why you just can't figure out how to get back into that habit you say you want to get back into, those reasons can feel so convincing/true, can't they?!

But you don't fall out of good habits because you're a glutton for punishment.

You fall out of them because some (less than conscious) part of you is likely choosing a different — and more instantaneous — reward than the good habit seems to offer.

Anything we do repeatedly we keep doing because we get some kind of reward from it.

That doesn't meant the reward is something that's actually good for you. It just means it's something that feels good to you for at least (although often just) a moment.

So if you want to reignite a healthy habit and reap its longterm rewards (daily morning meditation makes you feel clearer and calmer throughout your day), you'll have to override the lure of your current less healthy habit's instant gratification (not meditating gives you 20 more minutes to putter around on social media and get a few of those little bursts of dopamine from seeing who liked your latest post).

You'll have to consciously decide in the moment you're about to crack open that beer on the couch at 5pm, Which is truly going to make me feel more the way I want to feel overall? This beer, or that half an hour walk through the park?

So, what do you do if you:

a) Know what practices make you feel better in whatever ways you'd like to feel better

b) See clearly that you've fallen out of those practices

c) Feel badly about it but…

d) Just can't seem to get back on track?

Here are a few tips to reignite a wellbeing-nourishing habit.

Reassess your "Why".

What's motivating you to restart this good habit now? What motivated you the last time you were consistent with this habit may not motivate you anymore – especially if the motivation was external.

(Sure you felt that fire in your belly to hit the gym five days a week in the months leading up to your wedding, but what's your motivation now that the wedding's over?)

Turn that motivation inside out.

Is the motivation you listed above something external (temporary and changeable)? If so, ask yourself how restarting this great habit will make you feel.

When you plug into your inner motivation, hitting the outer goals starts to feel easy.

Ask yourself: What does my not restarting this nourishing habit give me? 

There's some kind of reward you're getting from not doing the thing you say you want to be doing. That's why you're not doing it yet. So your task is to determine …

Is it more important to me to feel how I feel from not doing the habit, or to feel how I know sticking with the habit will make me feel? 

There are no have-to's here. You get to decide what your priorities are. If a habit has fallen by the wayside because you actually just don't care enough about it to keep doing it right now, that's fine.

But if that's the case, you can fee up a ton of energy by acknowledging that it's just not a true priority for yourself right now and taking it off your guilt-drenched to-do list.

And when it all boils down, it still comes back to...

Just do it.

There's no magic way to bypass this one. If you want to restart a healthy habit, you Just. Have. To. START. And if you want to do that, you'll need to...

Ditch the excuses.

We both know you're smart enough to convince yourself of a hundred reasons why doing X isn't really important to you, or why that long list of excuses are actually true this time.

But you're in charge of your habits and the life they shape for you. That healthy habit and the great feelings associated with it are yours for the nurturing.

But you do have to decide you want the rewards badly enough to recommit to this practice again and again. And you do have to start.

So, what whole-being-nourishing habit are you ready to nudge over the hump and (re)start?

Cheers to setting yourself up with some great — and sustainable — new habits to kick off the new year.

Lots of Love,  

Melissa

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