Evaluating Habits in Your Life

Today\’s blog post is brought to you by Habits = Life by Brandy Tanner (that\’s me!) as a means to help you learn more ways to evaluate your life to find habits that might be controlling you. While we all have habits, some are developed earlier on in life and stay in autopilot mode rather than being something that inspires or compels us to grow into a wiser person.

If you are struggling with some habits, or feeling heavier in life these days, I want you to read this with an open mind and open heart to see if you can learn to evaluate the habits in your life using my Habits = Life approach.

Does this habit cause stress or anxiety?

The first place to start is to make a list of all of your routines or habits you have in the day. Here are some questions that I ask myself each time I start to evaluate my life for habit changes:

• What am I eating for my meals during the day?
• How much caffeine or alcohol am I having?
• What do I do during the day, from morning to night; first thing when I wake up, in the middle of the day, and before bed?
• What are some hobbies I spend my time doing?

This is a good place to start, and I often revisit this list to help me understand not only the habits but also how I feel about them.

You see, even as a Goal Success Life Coach who knows how to adjust habits and work through mindset scenarios, I am also just a human being like you trying to live this life imperfectly. That is why I have to check in with myself, and often try to surround myself with people who don\’t aim to keep me happy; rather, they are fine saying the harder things to help me grow and learn where perhaps I have more room to change or learn.

I am grateful for the connections that remind me how I can show up and be better in my everyday life.

Now that you have a simple list of habits and routines in your life, it is time to check in and be honest about how you feel regularly. If you\’re struggling with this, consider buying a MOOD JOURNAL to track your moods. I have a gratitude and love journal that you could use for this.

Simply buy it today, download it, and print it. This is an excellent way to learn more about how your emotions fluctuate throughout the day based on what you\’re thinking and doing.

Once you realize how this habit is making you feel, it is easier to know whether it should be replaced with something else. I enjoy replacing a habit with a new one; this helps us feel like we are GAINING something, rather than LOSING something.

For example, if you want to eat healthier, simply replace one meal option with a side salad or something like that. Or maybe a crackers or chips snack with a healthier all-natural meat stick, or maybe celery sticks with PB or cashew butter on them (my favorite).

Now that you know more about how each habit makes you feel, and what you are doing during the day, it is time to pick one of your habits to replace or adjust. While many of the habits on your list may leave you feeling stressed or anxious or some heavy emotion, it\’s important to take ONE STEP AT A TIME for long-term success.

It\’s so easy for us to get into the New Year\’s Resolution style of thinking and want to change all of the things at once, but that is not going to be successful for most people.

Another tip to help you choose just one habit to adjust is to create a pros and cons list. Look at your list of habits, and make a list of pros and cons to see which one has the most cons as a means to help you select this one habit that you will change. Consider starting with something small.

I once simply added a garden salad to my day. This helped me naturally stop craving snacks, because my belly was full without high-calorie snacks. The other thing I changed was buying a water bottle like this one, and committing to drinking 2 of them a day. This served two purposes: I was more hydrated, and I was full for longer because the water kept my belly full. This salad and water combo allowed me to naturally let weight fall off so I could get closer to a healthier weight.

Once you know which habit you will work on right now, it is time to find a way to set yourself up for success. I do this by thinking about the following facts:

• What parts of my life do I associate with this habit? For example, almost 5 years ago, when I quit smoking cigarettes, I needed to pause drinking alcohol before stopping the cigs because I associated alcohol with smoking.
• Once you know the above, it is time to make a reasonable plan to remove or pause the things that may trigger you to want to do the \”habit\” (whatever it is). You could be trying to stop eating chips, so consider not having ANY chips in the house during this transition of removing them and replacing them with something else.
• Make sure that you allow yourself a reasonable time to transition from old you to new you. I removed alcohol at least a month before my smoking quit date. This was to allow me to have a higher risk of success with my ultimate goal to quit smoking for good.

This is just the start of something amazing! Once you realize that you can do the hard thing – like changing a habit for the better – you will soon become addicted to this growth process, and want to keep getting that healthy rush of changing habits one step at a time.

If you\’d like to dive deeper into this process, we can schedule a 1:1 Goal Mapping Session, CLICK HERE, or you can buy Habits = Life on Amazon or through my discounted page here.