How to Leverage Your Habits to Achieve Goals for Life (Part 3)

You have habits. I have habits. Whether good or bad, we all have habits that will propel us forward toward our goals for life. Or keep us from achieving them.

If you truly want to achieve your goals for life, then you need to look at the habits you’ve formed. Because habits are such an integral part of you. Remember, habits are something that you do almost involuntarily. You need to really look objectively. Or get someone else to give you objective insight.

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Habits are going to take you from the frustration and failure of not achieving your goals to the engine that drives you forward to achieve them.

Creating Goals for Life

This is part 3 of A Mom’s Realistic Guide to Setting Goals and Crushing Them. In Part 1, we talked about why the popular systems, SMART goals to name one, don’t work for moms. For Part 2, we differentiated between goals and habits, and talked about getting started on your goals.

For this post, we are going to talk about creating habits to achieve your goals for life.

Creating Habits to Crush Your Goals for Life

I love the idea of focusing on creating habits, instead of goals that I never actually accomplish. Every January I set out to take on the world and conquer it. And every March I cast aside my list of goals and just gave up on them. I wasn’t lacking grit or perseverance, but I was lacking a realistic goal setting system for moms.

When I read Atomic Habits by James Clear, it was a lightbulb moment. The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy also has similar ideas.  I was thinking, “Finally, something that makes sense for moms. I can actually apply these ideas to my life, and they will work.”

With my take on the world and conquer it attitude, I have also accomplished my goals. However, this has changed dramatically the older I get and the more kids I have. It just becomes a lot harder to do. So I had to find another way.

It was actually my husband who spoke rationally to me (he usually does). He said the Navy Seals look at getting 1% better every day. That is their mantra. You need to stop trying to get 150% better in sprints, and start looking at this as a marathon.

I prefer to sprint. This is what it usually looks like: sprint, recover, sprint, recover, you get the idea. But this pace eventually becomes unsustainable, so I needed to figure out how to run a marathon. I may be running slower, but the accumulative distance is greater.

Creating habits of improving 1% every day, will be the system that gets you to accomplish your goals.

Keep this in mind: if you try to do everything in the first week you will fail. Get better every day, so the accumulative progress is what matters. Not what you happen to accomplish in one day.

If getting in shape and being healthy is a habit you want to create, but getting started is so overwhelming. Then start with creating the habit of doing 3 pushups every day. By the end of the year you will have done 1,095. That is a lot of pushups. Also, more than likely, you won’t stay at just 3. You will start to build on your progress. And that is what makes habits so effective. You can slowly build on your progress.

How to Get Habits to Achieve Goals for Life

Habits create behaviors, whether good or bad, that will move you in a direction. They can move you toward achieving your goals for life. Or keep you stuck in the same place, and even move you further away from your goals.

Every goal is doomed to fail if it goes against the grain of human nature.

James Clear

If you want to crush your goals, then you need to work on your habits. Start with taking note of your good or bad habits. Then start creating new habits or build on your existing good habits.

Here are few tips to get you started on creating new habits. Atomic Habits has many more recommendations, so you should definitely check it out.

1. Habit stack

This is one of the first suggestions from Atomic Habits. If you want to start a new habit, then stack it with a habit that you are already doing. So your old habit becomes the cue to trigger your new habit.

If reading more is a habit you want to create, here’s how you would habit stack. After I pour my first cup of coffee, I will sit on the couch and read for 5 minutes. You are using a habit that you do every morning (if you are a coffee drinker), and adding your new habit, reading, to it. Coffee is your cue to read for 5 minutes.

2. Find your groove

Find the routine and habits that work for you. When you are starting out it can be difficult to assess the time needed or how long something will take. There is a lot of advice telling you how to do this or that, but you need to find what works for you. The goal is to improve at a steady pace. Only you can determine that pace.

If you are trying to get into the habit of writing 500 words a day because that’s what all the writing books tell you to do (here are my favorite writing books James Scott Bell and Joanna Penn). But it is taking you longer than anticipated. Cut back and find the word count that you can easily do in the time you have.

Start with how many words can you write in 5 minutes or 10 minutes. Make that your writing goal each day. And then build up.

The more you work your habit, the more it will become automatic. Write at the same time every day, and your brain will shift into writing and creative mode. You will be start writing more words in the same amount of time, as your brain gets into the habit of writing.

There is so much advice and so many how-to rules. The best thing to do is take the best ideas, try them, and find what works for you.

3. Respect the routine

This is a very important step when you start to create new habits. Once you’ve habit stacked and found your groove, you need to respect the routine. It is so easy to put something off to the next day. We are really good at scheduling everything we need to do today for tomorrow. I even added this to my Demotivation Journal.

If you are going to achieve your goals for life, then you need to respect the routine that you created. Do it even when you don’t want to, don’t feel like, or life has just handed you lemons.

Even if you can’t give it the full amount of time— because let’s face it life happens—take 5 minutes to work on your habit. Whatever you do, respect the routine.

Create the Processes to Achieve Your Goals for Life

Now that you’ve started thinking through the habits that will move your goals forward. Let’s get into the actual processes you need to create to achieve your goals for life.

1. How do you see yourself

In Atomic Habits, the author places a lot of emphasis on identity-based habits. The idea is to focus on who you want to become. If you want to change your habits, then you need to change who you are. It doesn’t work if you just try to change your behavior, you actually need to change what you think about yourself.

Not to get too woo. I am not a fan of being disconnected from reality. If you see yourself as a healthy person, but you won’t get off your butt to act like one or work towards it, then no amount of calling yourself a healthy person will make you one. You actually need to get off the couch and start working towards the habit of being a healthy person.

It is the same for writing. You can call yourself a writer 100 times a day, but if never writer anything, then you are not a writer. You actually need to put your butt in the seat and commit words to paper.

What type of person do you want to become. Do you want to be a healthy person? Are you seeing yourself as a writer? Do you see yourself as a reader? How you see yourself and what you think about yourself will have a direct impact on your habits.

2. Replace bad habits with good

The first thing you need to do is to see your bad habits. You don’t need to replace them all at once. Look at one and see what you can replace it with.

Do you want to be a reader? Then ask yourself how much TV am I watching? Or how much time do you look at social media? Can you replace these bad habits (or habits that don’t move you forward) with reading for 5 minutes. Just start with 5 minutes of reading and create the habit.

Use this notebook, create a two column page. In one column list the habits that you want to replace. In the next column, list the habits that you want to replace your bad habits with. Then pick one and start working on it. Decide when you will do it, remember to stack it with another habit, give it 5 minutes to start, and get going.

3. Patience

Be patient with yourself. Ugh. This is the hardest part for me. I am never patient with myself.  Slow and steady is a pace that I despise. Really, I do. I know it wins the race, but can’t we get there a little faster. I like to get things done as quickly as possible, so I can move on to the next thing.

If you are going to improve 1% every day then it requires patience. Warren Buffet made this statement, “That’s how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.” This is true with everything you do. Building it up a little every day may be a very small feat for that day, but just like money grows with compound interests, so your habits and tasks will grow. Over time you will see the growth.

Remember, 3 pushups per day will get you to 1,095 in a year. That is more than most people will end up doing.

4. Create the right environment

If you want to create new habits to crush your goals for life, then you need to create an environment that you will succeed in.

If you want to be a healthy person, but you keep buying ice cream and Oreos, you are creating an environment for failure. Create an environment that you can be successful in.

I try to ride our exercise bike 4 days a week, in the morning. But I need my husband to set it up for me, so I will actually do it. I also watch Perry Mason (I love the old black and white shows) while I am riding. So I’ve created an environment (with my husband’s help) to work my habit of exercising every day. And watching Perry Mason is a reward while I’m riding. I am creating an environment for success.  (Update: This was my old routine. I switched to strength training. All the concepts are still the same though.)

5. Build up to it

Habits are about behavior change, so you need to move slowly. If you try to make dramatic changes all at once, it will lead to failure. Set yourself up to succeed.

If your goal is to run a 5k, but the behavior you want to have is to be healthier, then start small. If you aren’t used to running 3 miles, then you won’t be able to the first day. But if you start walking that distance, you will more than likely succeed at it. But even that may be too much to start with, so start with a 10-minute walk every day. And very soon, you will find that you are able to go the distance.

Conclusion: Setting Goals for Life for Moms

Let me end this post with the same question asked in part 1: Are you ready to zig when everyone else is zagging? If zagging hasn’t worked for you then try something new. What are some habits you can start creating, so that you can accomplish your goals for life?

Be sure to check out the other posts in the series. A Mom’s Realistic Guide to Goal Setting. 5 Tips to Get Started Setting Goals in Life. Practical Tips to Achieve Goals.