How to start, continue, and keep any new habit

How to start, continue and keep any new habit:

1. Pick ONE thing: remember, you're building the SKILL of learning how to create a habit. Kind of like once you know how to make a cake, you can make any cake flavor you want. It doesn't matter which flavor you start with and you don't need to make all of the flavors now. Learn the skill, and you'll be limitless in the future. 

2. Make it one step from where you are now: just like you wouldn't start with a Gateau (arguably the hardest cake to make) for your first cake, don't start with 60 minutes of weight lifting, 6 times a week when the only thing you've been exercising is your thumb scrolling through Instagram for the last 5 years.

3. Make it so clear: Have you ever seen The Great British Bake-Off? If you have, you know for "The Technical" they're given a super pared down recipe - sometimes with ONLY the ingredients. No measurements. And no step-by-step plan. Can you imagine learning how to make something with that kind of "recipe"? But that's what you're doing when you decide to "move your body more." Just like you'd pick the recipe that's THE most clear, the most helpful, that includes every single step imaginable and uses really normal, easy to follow language when baking your first cake, you need to do the same for your habit. Be so explicitly clear: walk one mile, one time a day, for 30 days straight.

4. Check in with your commitment level - Are you "try this 100 times until I can figure out how to bake a dang cake" committed? Or if at the first sign of your cake falling you're going to abandon this desire and go back to using boxed cake mix? Be honest! Remember, it doesn't matter what you pick - you're looking to build a skill. It'll be 400x easier to learn how to build a habit if you pick something you actually want to do! 

5. Set your time frame. Imagine on your first cake the recipe didn't tell you how long to bake the cake for and just said, "you'll know when it's done." You'd be like, WHAT?! I don't even know what to look for! How would I know? And you'd feel super uncertain and unsure. VERSUS, bake the cake for 30 minutes, you'll know it's done when it starts to pull away from the pan, it springs back when you gently push on it, and when you listen to it, it has a faint, slow sizzle. Keep the time frame short and specific: 30 days is typically my recommendation!

Happy habit creating!