How to Stay Consistent with your Habits

When you want to start a new habit or routine, you may feel a burst of excitement or motivation. You can feel this for a few days or weeks.

The challenge is to maintain your habits over the long term because obviously, it’s easier when you’ve just started.

Start small

You don’t want to be discouraged from the beginning because if you start too big, you won’t last in the long term. Instead, it’s better to start small and realistic and build from there.

Imagine you want to start practicing running. You won’t start with running one hour long. Instead, you can start with running for 5 minutes, and you will increase this duration over time.

Focus on one habit at a time

Implementing too many habits at a time can lead you to burnout. Stay reasonable and implement one habit at a time.

Once you think you’ve mastered a habit or at least you feel more comfortable with it, you can start building another habit.

Implement habit stacking

Have you read Atomic Habits? I guess not because else you would not be reading this story, but if you’ve you know what I’m talking about.

Habit stacking is when you add in a new habit before or after an existing habit, or even between two existing habits.

For example, if you want to build a reading habit, you can decide to do it after the cold shower, before the morning coffee, etc…

Make your habits pleasant

It’s better when your habits are fun and pleasant when you can enjoy them. If you don’t think a habit is enjoyable, you will stop it after a few days.

For example, if you don’t like running, why don’t try it with headphones and your favorite music?

Write down your goals, your “why”

Every habit should be associated with a “why”. Why do you read? Why do you practice running, or bodybuilding? If you know your goals, you will gain more motivation for your habits.

Track your habits

It can be a source of motivation when you see you’ve practiced running for 3 days in a row. Or if you see you’ve too much failed a habit, perhaps you can say “the next time I won’t fail”.

Having an overview of your habits and if you succeed in doing them can be good for tons of reasons. Just set up a habit tracker!

Every day is a new opportunity

If you’ve failed yesterday, don’t worry. Today is a new day, meaning a new opportunity for you to do your habit. Just focus on the present time.

Celebrate your wins

If you’ve done a habit for multiple days or weeks in a row, it can be good to reward you, to celebrate this streak. But be careful, don’t celebrate it breaking your habit.

For example, if you decided to stop smoking and resisted for two weeks, don’t take a cigarette but instead go out with friends at an amusement park!

Have a “habit partner”

Everything is easier with a friend, including building habits. If you practice your habits with a friend, it will certainly be simpler to be consistent as you will be under some pressure. It will make it harder for you to skip a day, and it will be easier to be motivated.

For example, if you want to go to the gym 4 days per week with a friend, your friend may be disappointed if you decide to skip a day by laziness.

Final thoughts

It can be hard to keep consistent with your habits, but with some intention or conviction, it’s feasible. There’s nothing you can’t overcome!

To explore more of my self-improvement stories, click here!

If you liked the story, don’t forget to clap and maybe follow me if you want to explore more of my content :)

You can also subscribe to me via email to be notified every time I publish a new story, just click here!

If you’re not subscribed to medium yet and wish to support me or get access to all my stories, you can use my link: