Good Morning!
[ACTION STEPS] for this blog post.
Find your purpose, or your "what?" and "why?".
Spontaneous or planner?
Make a to-do-list the night before and make it as detailed as possible. Below's an example of mine.
Here's an "Associative Habit Stack" to do it.
1) Place your laptop or little journal you'll write in on your desk in one SPECIFIC spot.
2) Brush your teeth.
3) Come back to the desk, place a drink bottle beside where you'll sit and sit down.
4) Press a 15 minute timer on https://pomofocus.io/ and start creating it. You can make the list whatever way you want.
Do this for as many days as you can, which might be forever like me.
Otherwise, choose tasks spontaneously from now on and then jump into them. If this works for you, then sweet.
Set Habits on Set Days While Using Pre-existent Habits
1) Where you write/type your to-do lists, write dates in advance, like this:
2) Look at whether those dates are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.
3) Create "Associative Habit Stacks based on pre-existent habits for each of those days.
4) Here's an example of a stack to workout on a Monday morning:
After you make your to-do list, pick a workout YouTube video or determine what exact EXERCISES you'll do and in what ORDER.
Get out of bed and get changed into workout shorts/pants at 6am. Getting out of bed is the pre-existent habit that you're working around.
Say your "Dopamine Hack", like this: Remind yourself of how strong and capable you are, and how good you'll feel after you're done. Say, “I’m so glad that I embrace my natural desire to become more powerful and physically harder to kill. Plus, I love the release of endorphins in my veins. I’ve known people that are scared to challenge their bodies and think it’s only painful. They think that sitting around, watching movies and scrolling on Tiktok will make them happier than working out and becoming harder to kill like I’m doing. How unfortunate for them”.
If you're time and money-efficient like me and are doing this at home, walk to the one spot, facing the same direction. This will be your "Workout Starting Position".
Begin each exercise in its sequence.
Have your morning coffee/tea when you're done. This is your pre-existent habit that you're working around.
5) You'll now do this EVERY Monday, and will do the same on other days of the week.
6) Do the same for work/study sessions, reading and whatever else you wanna start actively doing.
Be Vulnerable + Honest Conversations
If someone asks, "how are you?", you could be feeling these ways; good, alright, okay, fantastic, awful or "I don't know really". Don't just say you're good. Say it how it is. If it's good, that's great. But if you aren't then this is an easy start in being honest. Start with your close friends when they ask you, or other friends if you already do this with close friends.
If you don't agree with someone, of course. This one's a little harder, so here's what I did. I would say, "I disagree actually. How do you feel bout' that?"
Get to know yourself and what you want. If you were dishonest with yourself about what you wanted out of going to the gym regularly, you might say, "Oh, I want to simply be healthier". You now miss out on massive improvements to your health, looks and identity. For me, I am more vigorous with my exercise because I know exactly what I want.
Don't give false compliments unironically.
MEET people in different places that you go. If you wanna meet more people that are on the same life-path as you, like I'm tryna do, try this "Dopamine Hack" at the start of each day:
"I'm so glad that I'm the kind of person who learns from what other's say and do, by going out and meeting people. At this point, I really limit the energy that I put towards people that I don't care much about, because I need that energy to observe and talk to people that I think seem interesting when I go out. I can't wait to get out into the world today, so I can keep learning and connecting!"
That's it!
Talk soon.
The Peaky Pines Path continues,
Riley.