PLAN
It takes a lot of focus to move your life forward toward personal happiness and the goals you have set. Lately I have felt like time is running through the hourglass a little too fast for me to catch up with it. To avert these set backs I had to commit to establishing some new daily habits. I had to determine what my 5 most important daily habits should be and set those as the guardrails for my day.
These are 5 things I do apart from my to-do list. These are essentials that need to become daily habits.
Determining what the most important things are is not always easy, however, if you sit down and take the time to do it, you will find that you feel life moving you forward each day, even when everything else may seem like it’s standing still. The things that give your life value and peace and strength and a sense of accomplishment will be done.
Ask yourself “what are the most important things I need to do every day to build the life I want?”. While you’re thinking about it, I’ll go ahead and share my top 5 with you.
My Top 5 Most Important Daily Habits
For me, it is of utmost importance to have quiet time alone with God and my thoughts every morning. To restore my soul and set my priorities right for the day. This daily habit adds to my overall spiritual health as well as physical wellness that will add years to my life so it’s my #1 Daily Habit. Many successful leaders site meditation as one of their number one daily disciplines as well. I highly recommend taking some time in the morning to breathe, reflect, pray or meditate.
My second daily habit is super simple and practical but also geared toward preserving my overall health, that is drinking water. So many health problems stem from dehydration and most of us, if we were to admit it, are walking around dehydrated most of the day. I set it as my daily habit to drink 64 ounces of water and scheduled it. First thing when I wake up I drink 16 ounces with lemon. After my workout another 16 ounces. 16 ounces with lunch and another 16 ounces with dinner. Done.
Notice what I did there? I didn’t just set the habit, but I implemented a process to make it easier for me to actually achieve it. This is a step many people don’t ever take the time to implement, but it is crucial to have a process if you want to actually accomplish what you set out to do.
My #3 daily habit is working out. This is an easy process for me when I have to take Luke to school because his school is literally two blocks away from my gym. If I don’t have time to workout in the morning, I’ll schedule a night class or do a workout DVD in my living room. Working out is my stress reliever so it saves me from lots of health problems as well.
My Daily habit #4 is to plan my day. My process is to do this habit over a cup of decaf coffee (I gave up caffeine 7 years ago). The process of writing down my tasks for the day and bucketing them into my spheres is so essential to my thought process and productivity that this is one of the habits I most look forward to. It gives me a roadmap for my day and helps to stimulate my thinking. I do much better when I have a plan to follow.
My #5 daily habit is to write for 90 minutes. This is to get into the habit of brainstorming and writing on a daily basis. Whether it be developing a new e-course, working on my editorial calendar or writing productivity posts like these, if I want to keep doing this as my full time job, I have to make the actual writing portion of my blogging job a daily habit. My process to get into the habit of this daily is to block 90 minutes on my calendar, somewhere in my day that makes sense.
Now You!
1) What are all the things that you need to do each day to maximize your life?
List them out.
2) Of that list, choose 5 that you cannot or should not do without.
These are your 5 most important daily habits.
But setting them as goals and actually doing them are two different things. Do you even remember what your 2017 New Years Resolutions were? Exactly. Likely you set them as goals but did not set a process to achieve them.
You need to actually set a process for how you will likely be able to do these daily habits. The way to do that is to think about how you can achieve each of your goals easiest. For example, in my water goal illustration above, the way I made a process to achieve it was to use bottled water. Each bottle is 16 oz, so I only needed 4 to hit my goal each day. I could easily grab them before breakfast, or on the way out the door for a workout, etc
The process for blogging each day involved setting up a time block on my calendar each day. You get the idea.
Once you have your 5 things and your process for achieving each set, then commit to yourself to doing them.
If you make your 5 most important things a daily habit, you will feel a sense of accomplishment each day, even if nothing else gets done. Establishing and doing these 5 things will bring you closer to achieving your life goals and one step closer to an abundant life.
I look forward to hearing how starting these new habits helps move you forward.
Welcome to Honey & Figs! I’m Lisa. I love helping people with practical ways to live more abundant lives based on my own experience. You can click here to find out more about me.
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