Our potential in life is greatly determined by the quality of our habits.

This is especially true for homeschool students who, for the most part, have to organize and plan out their day in
order to balance school, friends, family, and the craziness of life.

Without consistent habits to
ground your day, life can often spin into chaos leaving us feeling stressed and out-of-control.
With this in mind, I wanted to give y’all a few tried and true methods to develop consistent
habits!

Awareness is key!

In order to build healthy habits, you have to gain awareness of the
ones you already have, which is very simple but oftentimes completely overlooked. I think too
often we get motivated to start good habits, but we never stop and realize the habits (good or
otherwise!) that already define our everyday lives. Much less do we take the time to eliminate
the bad habits from our routine.

My favorite way to analyze my day is a simple process called a “habit scorecard”.

It works like this: make a list of your everyday habits and mark each one with
a “+” for a positive habit, a “=” for a neutral habit, and a “-” for a negative habit. If your days are
crazy busy and unpredictable like mine, it might be helpful to just chart a part of your day that’s
routine, like morning or night.

Create clear goals.

Sometimes when we think we lack motivation, we actually lack
clarity. It’s not always clear when and where to act, slowing our progress drastically.

A good trick for this to create habit statements.

Take time to think about what you need to do, and when you need to do it.

Then make a habit statement that looks like the one in the picture (ex. I will *habit*
at *time* in/at *location*).

This creates a clear goal, making success or failure obvious.

Take baby steps.

It’s all too common to take a hypothetical 180 when it comes to habits.
We get inspired by a motivating book, movie, article, or podcast, and then try to change our
whole life at once – something that leaves us feeling discouraged and disappointed.

When trying to build good habits, take it one step at a time. Like literally only working on one habit at a
time. And start with an easy habit. Set yourself up for success!

For example, when I was trying to build more good habits, the first thing I did was make a cup of tea every morning. This is
something that is very simple and enjoyable. When that became routine and effortless, I moved
on to the next habit. I felt accomplished and was able to move on to a harder habit with ease
and confidence.

Control your environment.

Environment is key to creating new habits, so take control of your environment in order to promote a certain habit. This tip can be helpful to eliminate
forgetfulness by intentionally designing your environment to remind you of the habits you want
to start. For example, if you want to start journaling about your day, leave your journal and
some cute pens in the middle of your desk or on your bed. Or if you want to start running, put
your running shoes in plain sight.

This trick can also be inverted to stop bad habits. If you want to stop eating junk food, maybe
put all the candy in your house out of sight. If you want to get to bed earlier, don’t sleep with
your phone near you. The point of this whole trick is to design your environment to make good
habits easy, and bad habits hard.

Make bad decisions impossible!

One of the most effective ways to force a good habit
is using a “commitment device” which is a decision which restricts future decisions.
This concept makes good habits easy by making bad decisions impossible (or at least really
really really inconvenient).

It’s pretty simple, if a bad habit keeps stopping you from doing good
habits, brainstorm a way to make that bad habit impossible. For example, if you spend way too
much time on social media, which is preventing you from studying, ask your parents to set up
screen time on your phone that only allows you one hour of social media a day.

If you are trying to spend less money, leave your card/cash at home when you don’t absolutely need it (ei. Going
to daily mass, going to a friend’s house etc). If you want to stop biting your nails, maybe invest
in getting acrylics for a few months to break the habit. You definitely have to get creative with
this one, but it really does make things easier!

Never miss… twice. Guys, I’m about to blow your mind.

If you miss a habit one day, it’s
no big deal. Life happens. It only becomes a big deal when you break a habit twice, because
you just started a new habit, which is not doing your good habit. See how it works? So instead
of your goal being to never miss, make it to never miss twice!

Pray about it!

(No, don’t skip this one!! I know it sounds cheesy, but please keep
reading…) God knows you WAY better than you know yourself. Have you counted the hairs on
your head?? Probably not. But God has!

God knows everything about you, and he’s also the only one who knows your full potential, the only one who knows what “the best version of
yourself” looks like. And the best part is that he wants you to live up to your potential, to be your
best-self.

So instead of trying to do it on your own (and this goes for everything, not just making
good habits!), allow God to journey right besides you. Take it to prayer and trust him with your
life. If you ask him, he will provide the grace you need to grow. Prayer is not an excuse not to
act, it’s the source of strength to act.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”. – Aristotle
Bibliography
Clear, James. Atomic Habits. New York. Penguin Random House. 2018. Print.