• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

mamakay

managing a household of 10 by the grace of God

  • 2020 Book List
  • Seasonal Living
  • Blogging
  • Investment Cooking

New Years

Habits Shape Your Identity

January 9, 2020 by mamakay Leave a Comment

habits

Habits shape your identity and your identity shapes your habits.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Habits are the things we do each and every day for good or bad that make up who we are. They are choices we make each day of what we do and how we think (how privileged we are to be able to have so many choices). The good (and bad) thing about habits is that we often do them without even thinking about it. That’s why it is so hard to change.

As we start the new year we can think of so many things we want to change! But come February we have completely given up the hope of changing. What if there was a different way? And it doesn’t matter what day it is. There is nothing magical about January 1st! Here are some ideas to help you be successful in changing your habits.

Decide Your Identity

According to James Clear if you want to change your habits one of the things you need to need is to change what you think about yourself. By identifying yourself in a different way you will start to do the things that that type of person does

When you think about it — your actual life and identity is made up of all the little habits you practice all throughout your day. If you think of yourself as a healthy person you will choose to do things like exercise, drink water and eat healthy foods. If you think of yourself as a reader you will spend time reading whenever you get the chance.

Start Small

Start small and you will have better success. Pick one thing you want to change. Break it down into small chunks that are easier to accomplish and give you the feeling of accomplishment to help you continue to move forward.

For example, if you want to be more active the first small step would be to put on tennis shoes each morning. Once that is your regular routine add something more like doing some stretches. Maybe buying a fitness tracker so that you are more aware of how much activity you do each day would be a great next step. Next you could walk around the block each day. Each small step helps you to establish good habits that you will be able to maintain over time.

Body, Soul and Mind

I like to group the habits I want to establish in terms of body, soul and mind. Things to consider for the Body are drinking water, exercising, eating a salad, drinking a smoothie, getting enough sleep. For the Soul: reading the Bible, praying, listening to worship music, being still before God. For the Mind: reading, writing and listening to podcasts.

Habit Tracking

Keeping a habit tracker is very motivating for me. I have used many different forms from a hand drawn chart in my bullet journal to the one included on my tending sheet in Powersheets to the Loop Habit Tracker App on my phone. Sign up below to receive a Habit Tracker I created for you. There is something about seeing my progress that makes me want to keep it going.

  • Powersheets Tending Page
  • Bullet Journal Example
  • Habit Tracking
    Bullet Journal Calendar Example

Resources for Working on Your Habits:

Being intentional about choosing your habits, making sure to start small and then tracking them can make all the difference in creating the life you want and being the person you want to be. Don’t try to do everything at once. Just pick one thing and go from there.

MamaKay

You also might be interested in reading more from my previous posts here:

January Reflections

Hello Mornings

Filed Under: Daily Rhythms, Habits, New Years, planning, powersheets, Seasonal Living

New Year, New You? How to harness the power of a new start while loving who you are right now

January 8, 2019 by mamakay Leave a Comment

calendar

The New Year is such a mixed bag, isn’t it?

On the one hand, it is a fresh start, a new beginning, a clean slate.

On the other hand, we are still who we have always been and will continue to be.

How can we harness the energy of the new year but not live in shame over all the past year’s expectations that haven’t come to be? What if we can reframe our thinking? Instead of deciding to be a whole new person (some imaginary perfect version of ourselves) we look for ways to make better choices each day. To celebrate our victories and to give ourselves grace when we don’t accomplish all the things.

Don’t get me wrong, I love making plans! Tracking my habits and breaking my goals down into doable steps has made really accomplish the things that are important to me. But there isn’t a day that goes by that I actually check off everything on my list. And I’m okay with that. Having those daily intentions have helped me to do more of the things that are important to me than I ever did before. To me this is a VICTORY!

Over the next few posts I am going to go through the tools I use to organize my thoughts, plans and to do lists. I hope you find them helpful. But they are just tools. I want you to understand that you are a beautiful human being just being you without having to fix anything! Let’s step into this new year knowing and believing that we don’t have to change anything but its okay if we do 🙂

Filed Under: Blog, New Years, planning Tagged With: intentions, New Beginnings, new years, planning

September: the New (Old) January

September 13, 2018 by mamakay Leave a Comment

Happy New Year! Fall is by far my favorite season! I love the cooling of the air, the shortening of the days, and the invitation to prepare for winter by preserving the harvest (even if its not from my own garden). It is the time of returning to routines and the home is central to it all. Warm meals and baking are welcomed after so many hot months where the kitchen seems unappealing. School begins and the rhythms of life become more predictable.

Each season brings a time for reflection for me. What is working in our lives? What isn’t working? What can we do differently? How do we want to spend our time during this season? I try to take some time to really think through these things. The last 2 years I have been able to get away for a couple days and it has been such a blessing to have the time and space to consider our lives. We have made some huge changes this past year and having some space really helped me have some clarity.

This year I also started making a wall calendar on a half sheet of poster board for the family for the season. It has been amazing to me how much it has helped us be intentional about our time. Seeing our schedule a little zoomed out has helped us so much as we make our plans.

I have been thinking about how much September seems like new year. It is a time for making plans, lists and preparations for the coming time. And then it hit me as I looked at the calendar. Rosh Hashanah was this week. In the Jewish calendar, September has been the new year all along.

So Happy New Year! May God bless you in this coming year!

Blog Widget by LinkWithin

Filed Under: Blog, Fall, New Years Tagged With: new years, Reflection, seasons

Primary Sidebar

Stitch Fix outfit

So glad you stopped by. I am a Christian wife and mother of 8 in the middle years. My kids are aged 4 to 20 and just about every 2 years in between. I write about our life as a big family, what God is personally doing in my life, food and books.

Hopewriters

Our Sponsors


This website includes affiliate links. Please help support our site by clicking through and purchasing from our sponsors! Thank you!

Newsletter

Simplified Organization Simple Meal Planning - Plan to Eat

Recent Posts

  • How Yoga Helped Me Fight Depression
  • What is the Best Way to Practice Advent?
  • Amazon Prime Days 2020
  • What I Learned This Spring 2020
  • Favorite Family Read Aloud Books

Categories

Copyright © 2021 · Wellness Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in