Hello everyone it’s Zainab, welcome or welcome back to the blog! I hope everyone is having a lovely summer break – I know some people are actually coming to the end of it, but I hope you’re making the most out of it. Back in January, I wrote a post about creating new habits for 2022.
Today’s post is kind of going to be an update post, in which I’ll be sharing how I want to maintain consistencies with these habits (because midway through the year, a few of them are starting to be a bit inconsistent – I hope that’s not just me). Let’s jump into it!
Reflect On How You Were In The Past
If you think you have a few habits that are starting to slip, now might be the best time for reflection. This is sort of like how you would use ‘Before’ and ‘After’ pictures. I want you to look back at yourself before you began this habit and look at yourself now. Even though this habit hasn’t been as consistent recently, I’m sure you can still notice some changes.
Now, look at the benefits that these changes have brought to your life. For example, if you’ve started reading books more and you’ve noticed you’ve adopted a new range of vocabulary, this benefits your writing and your eloquence while speaking!
The key is to just look at the changes this habit has brought to your life, to remind you of what it can do for you, and hopefully this will motivate you to ease yourself back into your habit. This has been the biggest help for me.
Reevaluate Your Original Desired Outcome
When you began this habit, you were most likely to have been motivated by a certain result. For example, you decided to start exercising in order to lose weight. Now that you’ve been practiscing this habit for a long time, you’ve probably either achieved this result or you’re realising it’s not working in some way, leading to you not regularly performing the habit.
In this case, I would try and think of a new desired outcome of this habit. Something that you know is achievable and that you really want so you’ll be motivated to restart the habit. For example, you now might exercise in order to to build upper body strength for sports. A little tweak like that will give you something new to work towards and fuel you with more motivation.
You also may be prompted to try doing this habit in new ways after this change. For example, you may switch from squats to push-ups in your workout routine. This is great as you’re now reengaged in the habit and are able to keep going!
Be Real With Yourself & Others
This final tip is so vital – it’s keeping real with yourself. You’re not going to be truly able to try new practices and habits if you aren’t telling yourself the truth – that will just demotivate you! So, in order to maintain consistency, make sure you know yourself, more specifically your limits.
An example is, if I say I’ll do a HIIT workout 5X a week but I know my body can’t handle that, this simply won’t work. Because eventually, I’ll be burnt out and the habit will become an inconsistency!
Therefore, it is key to know when you have to be real. So feel free to alter your habit’s goal to make it more realistic. And be sure to let other people know how you’re truly getting on with this habit. You don’t want to falsely say you’re getting through everything if you’re not, because you’ll eventually feel bad about yourself.
Honesty will allow you to continue to keep going.
Thank you all so much for reading, I’m going through the problem of inconsistent habits right now, so this post was really helpful for me to reevaluate too!
And if you’d like to read my first post about new habits at the start of the year, I’ve linked it below.
If you have any advice for me, or would like to share anything then leave a comment down below!
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Have a lovely day everyone!
Zainab Chats 
Be real is so important. Often we are hampered by our own magical thinking that we don’t see reality as it is.
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Yes that’s definitely true – I’m definitely trying to practice more positive realism in my habits!
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Love the phrase “positive realism”.
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That’s a good point to be realistic about your goals. Great post! 🙂
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Thank you so much Sara!
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Have you heard of the book Atomic Habits by James Clear? I heard that was a good book.
However, I recently stumbled upon a Youtuber, Elizabeth Filips who shares she is not a “habits” person and has her own way of reaching goals in her video called “You’re Not Lazy: How to Live a Chaotically Organized Life.” It’s quite insightful.
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Yes! My dad absolutely loves that book – and I’ve read it through a combination of actually reading and listening to it’s audiobook, but it was a while ago so it might be time to reread it for deeper inspiration!
I’ll definitely check out that youtube video – thank you for sharing!
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I’ve been very inconsistent with goals for a while, and this post was very helpful! I hope that you can be more consistent with your goals as well, Zainab!
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Thank you so much Naomi! Hopefully we can help eachother! :))
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For someone like me who isn’t the most consistent person, this post was definitely helpful! I like the before and after idea and with school starting in 2 days, the timing of this post couldn’t get any better. Thank you, Zainab!
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Thank you so much Alina, good luck back at school!
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You’re welcome and thank you too!
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