How to Start (or Restart) Any Kind of Habit
Don’t let a scarcity mindset kill your dreams.
I spent years doing yoga for 90 minutes every day. When life got busy, I stopped practicing altogether and lost both the physical and mental limberness I had been used to. I have the tools, but I stopped using them. It takes a constant effort to remind myself that I can pick up those tools and start again.
Your health, happiness, and dreams for the future always deserve to exist no matter how little time you feel you have. Just five minutes a day can keep them alive.
“Life got busy” is an excuse that many of us use to explain all kinds of dropped habits or abandoned goals. And life certainly does get busy.
But, in fact, letting the stress of life destroy your progress is an example of living in a scarcity mindset. Life’s busyness may require you to adjust your habits or dreams, but never abandon them.
Your health, happiness, and dreams for the future always deserve to exist no matter how little time you feel you have. Just five minutes a day can keep them alive.
How to Maintain or Restart Any Kind of Habit
1) Identify Your Roadblocks
And try to remove them systematically. Is it hard to work on your art because you don’t have a dedicated space to keep your supplies accessible? Try to create a dedicated space or create a better system that makes it easier to get out and put away your tools.
Is it hard to get into a workout routine because there isn’t a gym or studio near your home or office? Learn an exercise routine you can do at home without any special equipment—YouTube is great for this.
2) Set Outcome Goals
When getting back into the swing of a habit, it is important to have a goal that is bigger than just “do __ every day.” Because if you fail to meet even one day, the feeling of failure can make it hard to get started again.
Instead, make your goal an outcome:
- “I want to be able to do a handstand by May.”
- “I want to write 500 pages of a book this year.”
- “I want to run two miles without stopping.”
Consistency of practice is necessary to meet these goals, but missing a day or two won’t damage your ability to get there. And once you reach your goal, you will be more motivated to set a new goal.
3) Have an Accountability Partner
There are a lot of different ways this could look. It can be as simple as a friend or family member who knows that you have set this goal for yourself and promises to check in once in a while to see how it is going. Or maybe it is a partner in the goal—someone who is going to call and ask where you are when you ditched them at the gym at 6 a.m.
Whichever method is best for you, it is important that someone knows you have this dream so they can support you and celebrate with you when you achieve it.
4) The Five-Minute Rule: Start Small to Build Momentum
Every day (or as often as you want to consistently do the thing) set a timer for five minutes and just start. Get out the yoga mat, sit in your meditation space, or open your paint kit. If after five minutes it is too hard or you are too distracted to continue, then stop.
You already accomplished your goal for the day, congratulations! But know that often people are able to continue easily once they are over the hump of getting started.
The tips in this article are modified from the Access Abundance Tool Kit from Unity Books. If you want to learn more about getting out of the scarcity mindset, setting goals, and living your best life, this tool kit is for you.