Cheryl McColgan outlines six principles for building lasting habits: consistency, commitment, choice, community, connection, and clarity. Start small (like 5-minute runs), align habits with your purpose, frame choices positively, and surround yourself with supportive people.
Hi everyone, I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Fuel, Learn, Grow, and today I'm here to talk to you about 5 tips to creating better habits. So tip number 1, and of all the years that I've worked with people on improving their diet or getting healthier, having business goals, whatever it is, the number 1 tip that I have for you is consistency. And that sounds so simple, right? And it is, but it's not easy because we all have great intentions at the start to like do all these new habits, eat better, exercise. Um, we have projects that we have in mind that we want to accomplish for work or for success or for life goals, whatever it is. And we have— start out strong and then we lose our consistency. So how you want to drill into that, you need to have an overarching goal and an overarching theme for your life. I've created some worksheets that can help you get to that. But what it provides is the ability to narrow down on a day-to-day basis little habits that you need to do, good habits, to create a situation that gets you to your overall goals. So if you use those worksheets, what you're going to find is it starts— you've got to start small. So the example that I always like to use is if you want to run a marathon, for example, and you never run before, you're not going to start running 30 miles a week for 6 weeks to build up to this marathon, right? It takes a lot longer than that, and it needs to be consistent, needs to be over time, and it needs to start small. So you might start by running 5 minutes, 3 days a week. That sounds even like not enough, right? So simple, but it's so small that you almost can't blow it off, right? You have to be consistent with it because you're like, okay, if that's my goal, this is really easy. I can do that. Anybody can do 5 minutes, 3 times a week, right? And then you just build up to it, and then you're getting to that longer-term overarching goal. That's a marathon. Maybe it's 6 months away, maybe it's a your way. But that's how you get there, is small, manageable, intermediate goals to get you to your larger goals. So consistency is my number 1 tip for creating good habits. My number 2 tip for creating good habits is commitment. So you have to be committed to what you're doing to actually create these habits, because if you're only kind of half committed to it, or you just think this is something you want to do, you're not going to be consistent, right? Which was number 1. So to be In commitment is, again, you need to find goals that are in alignment with your whole life's purpose, and that's where those worksheets come in handy. So if you're all about being healthy, for example, it's gonna make it easier to commit and be consistent about those habits in your day-to-day life. My third tip for creating good habits is to choose. So every day you get to make a choice about what it is that you're doing with your time, what you're putting into your body, how you're expending your energy.. But the important thing is, and one of the things that I learned from my psychology training, is that you need to frame it properly, right? So the example that I like to use here is people often say to me— so I live, I try to live the healthiest. That's what I'm— one of the things I'm committed to is healthy lifestyle, and that includes the way that I eat. In the last 5 years, that's been low carb and then keto. And so people will often say to me, oh, you can't eat that, or, oh, but you don't like that. Well, it's not that I don't like those things. I mean, who doesn't like sweets, right? It's that I'm committed to my health, so I I choose not to eat those things. And so framing it like that will help you a lot because it puts it in a much more positive frame and it's something that'll allow you to commit and stay consistent. My fourth tip for creating good habits is community. So right now, more than ever, it's important. And if you're watching this later down the road, it's 2020, things are crazy. A lot of us are more isolated than we ever have been. And so the nice thing is at least we have the internet to create online communities and eventually things will go back to where you can have your in-person community as well. But for now, creating community is important in achieving your goals and creating good habits because you've probably heard this before, but people will say you're sort of the product of the 5 people that you spend the most time with. So creating your community of people that have the same kinds of goals that are in alignment with the way that you want to be, with things that you want to achieve, maybe people that are already achieved what you want to achieve, those are the people that you want to surround yourself with. And so that is my 4th tip for creating good habits, is to have an awesome community. And I'm lucky to have one myself. My 5th tip for creating good habits is connect. So connection is really related to community because quite often many of us have a good community or we're creating that good community, or we spend time getting that in place, and then we forget to connect. And when you lose connection, it starts working on losing your steam towards your goals and towards your good habits. Connection with people. Even if you're an introvert like me, you still need to have some contact with people. You still need to be in touch with people that have goals and practices that are in alignment with what you're trying to achieve. So connect is my 5th tip for creating good habits. Okay, I have one little bonus tip that actually just came to me on a walk the other day with my husband, which is one of the things we're committed to a healthy lifestyle. That's one of our consistent practices that we do is walking almost every single day together. And that is clarity. And that's really maybe the most important part of using all of these 5 tips for your life and for creating good new habits is getting clarity on what it is that you want. What are you trying to achieve? And that's where those worksheets or working with a coach or giving some thought to what's really important to you is key to creating success and creating new habits. So get clarity on what it is that you want, what you want to achieve, and then that'll make it so much easier for you to create these new habits using these 5 tips. So I hope this has been helpful. I look forward to hearing from you. I'm always wanting to connect with new people that are reaching their goals, striving to create new things and getting healthier and just striving for better in their lives. So I have some links in the text below for you. Get in touch if any of these things you have questions about and And make sure you download the worksheets, and I'd love to hear how you're doing with creating your new habits.
30 Day Challenge Series, Day 30: Choose Your Three Habits to Continue for 90 Days
30 Day Challenge Series, Day 28: Schedule Connection (Put It on the Calendar)
