When Habits Feel Hard

This post is by Tami Rodriguez.

Habits are supposed to make life easier, but establishing and keeping habits can be really hard sometimes.  I often “surf” the internet (do people still say that?) for motivation or some secret key to making life easier. I’ve yet to find the magic. If you have please let me know! I have however found a few things to consider when I feel like my habits are failing me. They help me be logical, purposeful, but also to have some grace for myself.

We’ll start with the grace part. Consider the season you’re in. 

Yes, your season of life but also the actual, literal, season. As I’m writing this, it’s summer and it’s a lot harder to keep up on habits because we generally are completely off all “normal” schedules and routines. While summer is an easy example, the winter holidays are another crazy time and sometimes February. Because…well, it’s February! The point being, when this happens, recognize life is in a different flow and start making some smart adjustments. 

Every home is different. Take a little time to evaluate your stress or frustration and see if you can follow that back to a bad habit or old habit that isn’t working well anymore. Think about how you can create some new or changed habits to put in place. Remember to keep it simple and to habit stack—add that new or changed habit to something you already always do to make it easier. 

The second thing to consider if you’re having a hard time keeping up with habits, is, are there things in your control making it harder to be successful?  

If one of your habits is to workout every morning, but your workout area is also your main living space, and it is a constant mess, you are setting yourself up to fail. If you want to keep the kids' toy room tidy, but you have 8000 toys…it’s not going to last. 

Sometimes we have work to do FIRST before we can build a successful habit. In the above examples, before you accomplish a morning workout habit, first you’ll need to establish an evening habit of family clean-up before bed. For the toy room, it may be time to donate, trash and rotate toys. Try to set yourself up for success not stress! 

If you have a list of 10 habits you want to start tomorrow morning, I hate to break it to you, but it’s not going to happen. 

As a type A person, I’m so annoyed by this truth, but it’s proven itself in my life over and over. You are way more likely to keep good habits if you start really small and build from there. 

That’s why Kat talks about the 3 Minute Morning Routine.  An odd example of this for me was during a bathroom remodel. For a while we only had a working toilet in that bathroom and since it was the only thing you saw it really annoyed me when it was dirty. I had tried to add “wipe down bathrooms everyday” to my lists before, but for some reason in my brain that seemed like a lot of work (don’t judge me). I found reasons to skip it—but it seemed pretty foolish to come up with an excuse to skip a two second wipe down of a lonely toilet! I got in the habit of wiping it down every day and once the bathroom was complete it was really easy to add the sink to that now established habit. 

Habits are hard in the beginning, and it can also really catch us off guard when we find old habits feeling hard AGAIN in times of change. However, we know they make life so much easier once they are in place. 

If you’re struggling with maintaining habits, consider tweaking them for the season or thinking through any prep work you can do to make yourself more successful. If you’re trying to establish new habits, don’t forget to try adding just one or two new ones at a time. I promise you will be pleasantly surprised how easy they can become. You can do this!!!

Tami Rodriguez has been married to her high school sweetheart for 29 years and has 5 children plus a lovely daughter in law! She has homeschooled for 18 years and still has 5 more to go...send coffee! Tami is a lifelong learner who loves to study God’s Word and share with others whenever given the opportunity.  You can find her living life as “just a mom who likes to write” over on instagram @rodfamily007

Photo by Estúdio Bloom on Unsplash