I hope you have all had a great week and that maybe you have eaten a few frogs or tried arranging your days to make the most of your peak productivity periods when your willpower is at its best. This week I have some snippets to share from a book I read at the start of the year when I was looking for inspiration to help me introduce good habits and replace some bad ones.

The book Habit by Ace McCloud lists his top 100 suggested ideas to build good habits. The habits are grouped into themes ranging from improving your physical and mental health, personal growth, work and home productivity levels through to setting good financial habits and good eating habits.

I wrote down all 100 and highlighted just a few that I wanted to work on so that it didn’t become overwhelming. I often refer back to my list to refresh myself and see if there any others on the list that I want to work on.

Some of my favourites include:

• Get better sleep (a work in progress)
• Spend time outside
• Remember to laugh
• Be optimistic
• Reward yourself (more on this later)
• Practice goal setting
• Keep an ideas notebook
• Take naps
• Don’t gossip
• Resist fear
• Avoid the news (no brainier)
• Declutter

Ace suggests that we should start small and take the time to reflect, he suggests creating a habit journal to track your progress each day and make a note of any feelings or observations. In other materials I have read it is suggested that if you can introduce a new routine every day then after as little as 21 days you will have formed a new habit.

Interestingly, I have also found out that the way our brains work we don’t actually delete old bad habits but instead we need to find new good habits to replace them with. We should be very specific about our intentions and use other resources for support, for example using social media for inspiration and to share progress with friends and family to stay motivated and to stay on track.

One of my favourite aspects of the book is the section on setting rewards, I can’t help but think of Muttley from the Wacky Races…”where’s my medal?”….I loved that programme! The idea is that if you set yourself a new challenge, to adopt a new habit, you should set yourself a reward. If you track your progress, over say the course of a month, and succeed you get to reward yourself with something specific. I did this earlier in the year I set a new morning routine (this will feature over a series of future posts) and after 30 days I treated myself to a couple of small things, after 60 days I bought myself an Apple Watch! It was extravagant but I figured I had earned it and the motivation of earning it kept me going every day.

So that’s it for this week, I am writing this from a hotel room in Windermere, ticking off another of my favourite intentional habits…spending time with the family. So what new habits do you want to introduce? Remember to start small, set yourself a reward and take the time to reflect….good luck, be awesome and have a great week x