Habit of the Week - Small Changes, Big Results!

“It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It's what we do consistently.” ― Anthony Robbins

How are your daily habits? Are you as fit as a race horse, oozing with high energy and good health, making time to nurture healthy relationships, learning new things, hitting your financial goals, and enjoying a healthy spiritual life? If you're not doing all or even any of that, well, you're in good company. Most people aren't. However, you don't have to be like most people. You can move your life toward the most extraordinary version of yourself through steady improvements in each of those areas by implementing simple changes throughout the year that form a new set of habits.

I made some simple incremental changes last year, which enabled me to: lose 10 pounds, start a regular exercise habit that vastly increased my energy and gave me more mental clarity, make huge progress in beating back a lifelong sugar addiction, start reading the Bible daily, add in a daily rosary habit, join a book club and a bunco group (thereby making some wonderful new friends), read several books, start this blog, and play music at my church for the Christmas Mass again after an eight year hiatus! I also made progress on some financial goals and even went on a couple of vacations. I am excited to continue on this path this year of bitesize goals and continue to improve even more!

What I didn't do last year is try to change everything at once; I have done that in the past, gotten frustrated, and given up. Instead, I worked on one thing at a time, making very simple changes to my daily routines in a slow, incremental fashion. By the end of the year, all those little things added up to a lot! A really good book to give you more background on why adding small habits works is Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results

If you don't already have a planner, I would suggest that you get one. I like a physical copy as opposed to a digital planner (although I use one of those, too) because you can put it somewhere that you will see it every day and be reminded of what you are working on. I like to pick a style with a few journal pages in it at the beginning of each month so that I can make some notes and observations as I go. A book that I found full of helpful planning strategies is The Perfect Day Formula: How to Own the Day and Control Your Life.

A great planner will make it easy to track your goals and new mini-habits

Write down your Habit of the Week at the beginning of each week, and focus on it throughout the week. If you add a simple new habit each week, you will have accomplished 52 changes toward a better you by the end of the year!

If you would like to jump ahead and see the whole list of 52 changes to work on this year, click here.

We are going to start super simple! Here is this week's habit to work on:

Drink more water!

Drink a glass of water before every meal to start with; shoot for eventually drinking from 6-8 glasses of water per day. Get yourself a water bottle and carry it with you everywhere. Eight glasses of water is 64 ounces, so figure out how much water your water bottle holds and how many times you will have to fill it in order to drink 64 ounces of water.

My awesomely huge water bottle keeps me on track to make sure I'm drinking enough water every day

Water is critical to optimal health. It flushes toxins out of your body, helps your digestion, improves your skin, helps prevent cramps while working out, relieves headaches, helps you sleep better, improves your concentration, and even helps you lose weight if that's something you need to do!

My daughter Dani keeping up with her water consumption

If you're not a fan of water, try adding a squeeze of lemon or a few cucumber slices, but don't add anything sugary. As you add more water to your daily regimen, observe how you feel. Next week we'll add another simple change....stay tuned and follow along for the transformation into an extraordinary new you!

Click here to get your free copy of "52 Simple Changes That Will Transform Your Life"!