Adding self-care habits to your routine that stick is about understanding that change to start with is uncomfortable. Many people know exactly how to accomplish their goals but want to avoid being uncomfortable getting there. However, to get your self-care habits to stay, you must push through these feelings of discomfort. Repeating the behavior and going through the pain is the first step to developing a habit. You can’t expect yourself to form a habit if you don’t get moving.
Here are tips on how to build self-care habits that stick:
Be True to Yourself
You can read every self-help book in the world, but if you’re not true to who you are inside and you’re not willing to figure out who you are, you may end up disappointed. You don’t need to do things you hate to be a productive and important member of society. Don’t do something you hate doing. Know why you hate them and find other things to do that feel more in tune with who you are.
Understand Your True Value and Worth
When you start knowing who you are and what you want to stand for, you’ll begin to understand your true value and worth more. Mistakes do not make you less valuable to yourself or others. Mistakes are part of life and cannot lessen your value if you learn from them. No matter what, you are more than enough, and you have intrinsic value just because you exist.
Ditch the Excuses
If you find yourself making excuses day after day for not living up to your goals in life, stop. People prioritize what they want. Maybe you haven’t figured out who you are and what you wish to do yet. Perhaps you need to take more time to learn what you want so that when you go after it, it feels almost automatic or like a compulsion and not something you have to force yourself to do.
Keep It Short and to The Point
As you work on new habits that increase your ability to care for yourself, you need to remember that making things overcomplicated never helps anyone feel better. So instead, narrow down each goal you want to achieve and connect it to an action you can take to make it happen. The easier you make your life, the better outcomes you’ll experience. So, if you want to draft that novel, don’t think about writing 80K words. Instead, focus on outlining the first chapter.
Track and Repeat It
Everything you do in life can benefit from tracking to ensure it’s working and then taking those successes in life and repeating them. So if you have experienced success once, and you know how you did it, you can experience it again and again.
In the end, the most major step to making habits stick is through practicing authenticity. If you try to be someone you are not and ignore your reality, you will constantly be chasing it. That doesn’t mean you can’t change your unhealthy habits, though. It just means finding the right ones and fully understanding your purpose, dreams, and desires to get there.