A Year-End Review of Habits

This year, I prioritized working on a lot of habits I knew I needed to be successful.  I read Atomic Habits and wrote a blog post, "Embracing your Pavlov's Dog" on my learnings.  

My habits ranged from basic ones like wearing my mouth guard, to work habits like planning my day the night before.  I can definitively say that my better habits caused some amazing results: 

• Major improvements in my health

• Overperforming my financial goals 

• Maintained strong mental health

• Despite working a lot more this year, I held more space for family and friends

Okay enough with the self-congratulation :) On the contrary, in areas where I did not keep my habits, it’s obvious that the results were disappointing - habits around learning and reading daily, networking, and making some progress on my business.  The results were night and day.  

The lesson is clear - where you want to produce better results, you need to instill or refine habits.  You should aim for these habits to be automatic and take no effort.  

Here are some habits that were useful to me, and the benefits from them: 

Habit	Result
Make the bed!  (I know embarrassing this is a new habit!)	Starting the day productive, with the feeling of accomplishment
Meditation	Clear mind, more open and present for a new day; overall better mental health; more purposeful and productive
Journaling	More mental clarity, clearer thinking, moving the day’s events and thoughts to paper (leaving room for more thinking), better mental health, better decisions
Morning Sun (5-10 minutes of being outside before 10am)	Better mood, clearer mind, more energy for the rest of the day
Posture Corrections	Strengthens stabilizer muscles, reduces back pain, maintains better spinal curvature and health
Yoga	Improves strength, balance, flexibility, and mood and reduces stress
Weekly/Daily planning	Improves mental clarity, reduces stress, and improves productivity
Finance check-ins (reviewing credit card statements, spending habits, checking/investment accounts, etc.)	Improves financial performance (spending, saving, investing), reduces financial-related stress

A few other notes on starting new habits: 

• Habits are brain pathways. Every time you get out of habit, it's strengthening the neural pathway against the habit you're trying to build, so correct it as much as you can (this was especially my experience with my posture).

• Focus on fewer.  Choose high-leverage habits that have cross-cutting results and are aligned with the results you want.

• Track habits for improvement.  Tracking brings more awareness and hopefully motivation to see your progress. 

• It’s okay to struggle.  Just recommit and start again strong! 

• Be aware of persistent inertia.  If you find yourself not starting, or very quickly giving up a habit, you might want to do some reflection and analysis - is it a skill issue? Will issue? Fear?  There’s likely something that explains the struggle.    

Thinking back on 2023:  Celebrate what habits you were able to keep and the results they created for you.  What did you learn about yourself in the process of establishing this habit?  

Thinking forward to 2024: Think about what habits you need to put in place (start with 2-3) to get what you want in 2024.  Perhaps you want to level up an existing habit.  Think about how you can tweak your systems to get better results.  

Hopefully, this gives you some thoughts on how to think about your habits. Want to discuss this?  Feel free to schedule a discovery session here.  

For Learning and With Love, 

Chris