In this lesson, we're going to talk about building habits that stick.
Now you have your list of objectives, and you're probably ready to start adding those to your routine.
We usually want to get started with things as soon as possible, but it's common to quickly lose interest or to give up before a new activity becomes a habit.
I will introduce a tool called habit stacking, which is a technique to ensure your routine will continue to be effective in the long-term.
Some people say that it takes 21 days to create a habit. And although there's some debate about this, and some habits may take months to be part of our lives, I think we can all agree that some habits come easily, and others don't.
We all brush our teeth in the morning without even thinking about it, but lots of people struggle with eating healthily.
A great tool to help you stick with your morning routine is habit stacking.
The idea is that you start with very small habits and slowly build on them.
For example, let's say your objective is to meditate for 20 minutes every day. So you can start your meditation habit by every day, after brushing your teeth, meditating for 2 min. So you add one habit on top of another.
Or if you want to drink 2L of water every day, you could say, after I get out of bed, I will have a glass of water.
Notice that these are very small at first, much smaller than the objective you set for yourself. And that is how it should be. Once you are comfortable with these small changes to your routine, you can improve.
So once you're comfortable with meditating for 5 minutes, you can make it 10. Once you're comfortable with 10 minutes, make it 15, and so on.
And every week, you can add just a little bit more.
By starting with these very small steps, you're allowing yourself to succeed, because it is very important in creating habits that you are able to follow these activities every time.
Let's practice it. Take the list of smart objectives you made in the previous lesson, and come up with even smaller habits that you can stack into your existing habits, and see how they fit into your morning.
Think about how you can start very small and add a little bit more every week. Over time, these habits will grow, and because you will start small, they're more likely to continue in the long-term.
You will end up with a list of small habits that you can start practicing.
In the next lesson, it's time to schedule it in! We will look at different methods to ensure that you create time for your morning routine in your calendar.
