Recently, my sister and I have been talking about habits. I know of people who have made it such a habit to go to the gym that they haven’t missed a day in years. This seems wild to me because I ebb and flow A LOT with my gym/exercise attendance. I will go 4-6 months super good then about 1-3 months I will kind of just give up for a bit.

Some of these things I attribute to burning myself out from the get-go, which I will discuss and address at another time. But today, I am talking about how to get into the habit, or rather, how I hope to get into the habit.

My sister read a book recently, and most likely it was Atomic Habits by James Clear. Anyway, what she gleaned from it was that if you want to have a habit of something, just do the thing, even if it isn’t for as long or as difficult as you wanted to do. For instance, going to the gym, she has made it a goal recently to at least just go to the gym, even if she gets there and then doesn’t do anything.

My day started at around 6:30 this morning, and I got home about 6:00 this evening after work. I took my dog on a walk, had to go to the store, ate some dinner, took my dog on another walk, and by that point it was about 9:10pm. I did NOT want to work out. (In addition to everything I was sore from my wimpy workout I did yesterday and I didn’t want to be more sore).

However, I took my sister’s experience to heart and remembered what she had told me about this book. I decided that instead of the original hour of yoga I had set a goal of, I would just do something. As the evening went on that went from 1 hour to 40 mins, and finally down to 20 mins. But, I got up and I did it and you can too!