Creating New Habits
In my quest to live a healthier lifestyle I've been working to create new healthier habits. I found a great little app (iPhone) called HabitSeed.
HabitSeed
HabitSeed is set-up to help you work on a single habit for 21 days. The theory being it can take 21 days to form a new habit. I believe more recent research says it can take more or less time - depending on the habit. For example: Creating a habit of having a square of dark chocolate every day will take far less time to create than creating a habit to walk 10000 steps daily. (Now - If I got a square of chocolate for every 1000 steps...)
I "plant" my habit seed: I want to walk every day. Every day at 7pm - HabitSeed asks if I achieved my goal today - with a "Yes" or "No" button for reporting. A "No" response gives me a message to "Try Harder!". A "Yes" response gives me a "Congratulations!" message - and my little habit tree grows. Both responses give me a nice inspirational quote. I also have an option to share my progress via email, Facebook or Twitter. I post progress reports to Facebook and get positive feedback from family and friends.
My New Habits
So far - I've used HabitSeed to:
1. Create a habit to walk every day. It was successful. I walked 10,000 steps a day. (I'm currently off walking with a knee injury and I can tell you I MISS my walking.)
2. Create a habit to use my CPap mask every night - 5 hour minimum - for my sleep apnea. Another success! I wear the mask every night- often for a full 8 hours. I was falling asleep while reading - without the mask. And I had to force myself to find another routine. I need a good night of sleep to aid in cell repair. Sleep deprived bodies struggle to lose weight - and can have a lot of other bad health issues.
I'm on Day 14 of a new habit: I will not eat past 9pm. I want to stop late night snacking (had to stop a bad PB and banana habit) and have a good overnight fast.
One habit I abandoned.... Declutter 15 minutes daily in my weekly zone. I just wasn't feeling it. It wasn't that important to me to put forth the effort to do it. I have a declutter plan and I'm making progress - just not as fast as I could make progress. I'm okay with that.
There are lots of "habit creating" apps on the market. I like this one because it's simple. I work on one habit at a time. I either met my goal today or I didn't. And - I love the inspirational quotes.
What habits do you want to create?
-- Ginger