Maintaining good habits as easy as 1,2,3

Over the last few years I’ve gotten a bit better at seeing things through, disciplining myself to overcome some bad habits, and stick with my habits that I’d like to hang on to. Today I thought I’d share a few of the things that I think are helping me accomplish that objective. The first of which is regularly scanning my environment for habits gone awry. Many of you know I’ve recently changed my eating habits quite a bit. I’ve also focused in on how I stay organized for example I’ve worked to keep a cleaner desk and for better or worse I’ve pretty much been able to stick to those items. However, it hasn’t been without some setbacks. There are few things I like to do to make sure I stay on track.

1. One of the things that I think is really important is to monitor yourself. I think you need to really assess on a regular basis whether or not you’re holding tight to things that were important enough that you worked really hard to develop some better habits around them.
2. The second is that I’ve tried not to beat myself up too much when I do slip. I think it is important to evaluate yourself on a regular basis but I think, at least for myself, there’s a subconscious block against doing that if you get too hard on yourself with the results. I try to treat the results as a basis for moving forward and an opportunity to improve. Evaluating yourself on the basis of have you 100% of the time achieved what you wanted to achieve in life is way too high of a standard, at least for me.
3. The third thing that I do is if I notice that I’ve slipped in an area and I need to bring that habit back up to par, I make a note of it. Then I put it somewhere like on my desk, on a post it note, just someplace that I’m going to be regularly reminded of it so I can focus in on it. It’s not that I’m stepping right back to the beginning of where I was originally but I think when you notice that you’ve slipped a little bit in a particular area where you’ve worked really hard to improve, it makes sense to focus in on it to remind yourself of it. So for me that can be as simple as if it’s a work thing, a little post-it on the edge of my screen is all it takes. Oftentimes one word is enough just to remind me. Just having something in my face on a daily basis like I need to clean my desk when I leave the office or I need to complete my getting things done list before I leave the office; whatever it is that triggers to me that it is important.

So I’m curious how other people maintain good habits over long periods of time. That’s my simple formula.