Most of us want to feel better in our everyday lives, right? But we are also very busy. We often set such unrealistic expectations regarding Self-Care that it becomes one more thing to feel guilty about. If you want to feel better with minimal investment, try this –
Incorporate Micro Habits into your daily routine.
What are Micro Habits?
Micro habits are actions that require minimal time and effort to complete and help build desired results over time. They are an effective alternative to methods that require setup, monitoring, and/or skill mastering.
Micro Habits can be helpful for almost everyone…but especially for moms. Here’s why:
Why Moms Need Micro Habits
Busy moms often rely on urgency and/or external motivation to get many things done on a daily basis.
The problem? When it comes to caring for ourselves, we don’t often feel the same urgency as we do for our family’s needs. And as for external motivation – there often isn’t someone on the sidelines cheering us on to get in shape, sleep better, or improve our mental health.
It seems that If we want to feel better we’ll need to accomplish this goal with minimal support. Luckily, Micro Habits can do just that. They don’t require urgency, nor either external or internal motivation. All that’s needed are minor adjustments in how we organize our busy days.
But what do these minor adjustments actually look like?
How Micro Habits Work
We all have predictable activities that will happen each day, no matter our schedule – bathroom breaks, teeth brushing, coffee making, driving, and sleeping are some examples.
Micro Habits fit into these predictable routines in ways that are almost unnoticeable. A good Micro Habit should take two minutes or less to complete and become part of a predictable routine with little effort.
Here’s a simple example:
Want to drink more water? Fill your water bottle, take it with you to bed, and drink from it when you wake up in the morning. This is a Micro Habit built around the predictability of bedtime and wake time. It requires minimal effort, takes less than two minutes to complete, and will improve your daily water intake and skin appearance.
Now, let’s put this Micro Habit of drinking water into the context of a larger goal:
Micro Habits in Action
Want to feel better in your day-to-day life? You might set the following goal for yourself:
“Take better care of my body on a regular basis.“
If you failed to achieve this hard and complex goal in the past, try turning it into a series of Micro habits instead. With them, your list would now include habits such as these:
- Drink one glass of water in the morning.
- Do five Sun Salutations while waiting for the coffee to brew.
- Take one whole piece of fruit with you to work.
- Keep dental toothpicks in the car.
- Buy one pre-made salad when grocery shopping.
- Stock up on frozen vegetables at the store.
- Take a full water bottle with you when going to bed.
- Do ten wall pushups before getting into bed.
When you look at each habit it might not look very exciting, original, or enticing. On the other hand, they are all simple, attainable, and effective in meeting this goal over time.
With these Micro Habits in place you could be a person who flosses their teeth most days, eats more fruits and vegetables on a weekly basis, enjoys better hydration and skin appearance, and does over 3,000 wall pushups a year.
However, even after adopting Micro Habits there is a good chance that they won’t stick over time. Here are a few tips to ensure that they do:
Tips for Sticking with Micro Habits
Use the following tips so you to choose the right Micro Habits and stick with them:
- Start with only one habit and don’t add another until you’ve mastered your current habit.
- Incorporate Micro Habits that take two minutes or less and do them for longer periods of time only if you feel like it.
- Finding it hard to stick with a specific habit? Drop it and try a different one. It’s not the right habit if you can’t stick with it easily.
- Choose habits that are not affected by schedule changes to avoid losing momentum. Examples include exercise that does not require equipment or a hydration goal.
- If you are reluctant to do a habit at its allocated time, ask yourself, “Do I have something better to do in the next two minutes?” Often when you’re driving or waiting for coffee to brew this will be enough to get you back on track.
The truth is, if we really want to feel better, we need a simple, fool-proof method to achieve our personal goals, and Micro Habits can do just that.
Did you know you can build your Mom Village using the same concept of Micro Habits? Read 11 Simple Ways To Build a Strong Support Network for some inspiration.