Prompt #16 - What's up with your habits?

Keeping up with the good stuff

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

A lot has been said about the power of habits. Entire books are written about the benefit of atomic habits, tiny habits, 7 habits, big habits, small habits, mini habits. You get the idea. Habits - generally - a good thing (unless they are bad habits of course).

No matter their angle, the books all agree that we mostly form our habits, good or bad, unintentionally. We just do stuff and then repeat doing said stuff until we no longer think about it and just continue doing it. And now the stuff is a habit. From brushing your teeth in the morning to having that glass of wine with dinner to listening to true crime podcasts to fall asleep to (don't get in the car, Jane!).

If we want to change our habits, because in truth we know some things are much better for us than others, we need to consciously work on those. Unfortunately, the things that are bad for our mental and physical health are often a lot more fun than those that are beneficial to us. So we need a bit of willpower to get those positive habits going and to keep them rolling until we no longer have to think about them anymore.

Personally, I'm crap at this. I love starting new things. I get bored of things after a while, and then I move on to the next shiny new thing. I guess startingnewthngs is one of my habits. And I also very easily fall into my more-comfortable-but-not-so-good habits when I'm tired or stressed, bingeing brainless rom-coms, eating junk, and staying up way too late.

So today, we'll create ourselves a tool to kick those positive habits into gear and hold ourselves accountable.

The Activity: Create a Habit Tracker

If you're at all into bullet journaling or self-helpy type content, you might already be familiar with habit trackers. The idea is to note down the habits you want to cultivate and mark the tracker each time you have engaged in the habit. This provides you with an accountability tool (I said I'd do it so I gotta), and it also gives you that awesome feeling you get every time you check an item off a to-do list. And as an added bonus, you can make them super shiny and fun to let out your creative side.

A habit tracker is best drawn on graph paper or dotted paper in a journal. But anything will do that allows you to keep it within reach so you can update it frequently.

Step 1 - What habits?

What are the habits you would like to cultivate? The things you know deep down will make you happier, healthier, and your life all around more awesome. Remember we're not a self-improvement club. We don't care about getting more productive, efficient, or successful, whatever that means. We're looking for those habits that are good for your mental health, your physical health, your relationships, your creativity, and your joy.

Here are some examples for inspiration: be active / do a workout (a classic), meditate, draw, read a book, take a bath, call your family, call a friend, learn something new, tell somebody you love them, go to bed early, eat an apple, drink enough water.

They can also be things you no longer want to do, for example not drinking or not smoking.

Step 2 - Draw the trackers

Most habit trackers you'll see are layed out on a monthly basis, with little squares for each day of the month that you can cross off when you've done the habit. With one little calendar for each habit.

But there are no real rules here, so feel free to get creative. You can have little bubbles to colour in, a line graph, or a giant checkerboard. It only needs to make sense to you.

The important thing is that you can document what you want to do and then gloriously note it down when you did it.

Check out this hashtag for different examples.

Step 3 - Make it shiny

Now that you have noted down the habits and created the tracker, it's time for my favourite part - decorating! Draw around your trackers, use stickers, washi tape, whatever you with. Make it fun, make it shiny, make it colourful, make it whatever you want.

If you're short on time or inspiration, I have a whole bunch of free habit trackers here that you can download, print and colour.

My Example

Here is my Habit Tracker for the next 4 weeks. Instead of doing a square for each day of the week or month, I decided to draw a square for each time I aim to do each habit in a week. My trackers are on the right, my daughter's creative contribution on the left.

The habits I want to make sure I engage in more intentionally each week are:

• 1x going to the pool

• 2x going to the gym or working out at home

• 3x drawing

• 4x reading

• 5x doing my Swedish lessons

• 6x ending the day by noting down 3 things that went well that day

I used a black pen and acrylic markers in my kraft paper bullet journal. Because colours on kraft paper are just *chef's kiss*. Now I just gotta go do it.

How about you, which habits are you going to cultivate?

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