How to Create Good Habits in Your Motherhood

I’m a believer that your habits play a key role in your success. Your habits are what you do without even thinking and they could be bad or good. When you start being intentional about how you spend your time, you may find that you’ve got some bad habits that can be replaced with some good ones! In this post, you’ll learn how to create good habits in your motherhood.

Why Habits Are So Powerful

It’s the little things you do every single day that make the biggest impact in your life. My favorite way to explain this is to use dieting as an example.

In the vast majority of cases, going on a drastic diet is not sustainable. You may lose a few pounds, but will you keep them off for life? Not if you don’t change your eating habits for good.

You’ll see better long-term results if you focused on adding in some healthy habits and dropping unhealthy ones, rather than making your body go into shock by drastically changing your diet all at once.

You could focus on eating more fruits and vegetables and start going on a short walk every day. This way, you’re not depriving yourself in any way. The more good things you do for your body, the less room there will be for unhealthy things. So you only need to focus on the positive. Over time, these small changes will become habits that you don’t have to think about anymore.

This is so much better than starving yourself to lose a few pounds and then undoing all of your hard work because your changes were too drastic and therefore, not sustainable.

Recognize Your Bad Habits

It’s okay, we’ve all got some. Mine is allowing distractions to take over what I’m supposed to be doing. As a work from home mom, I don’t have a lot of time to work with throughout the day. I get about 2-3 hours so I must make that time count and stay focused. In order to do this, I can’t have my phone nearby or any extra tabs open because I WILL check Instagram or something else that doesn’t need to be taking up my time at that moment.

But the good thing is that I’m able to recognize that bad habit and create a new one to replace it with. Now I know that I need to have my phone away from me when I’m working, have no extra tabs open, and an empty desk. I put some music in my ears to block out the rest of the distractions and I don’t stop what I’m doing until my time runs out. Those are all good habits that I do every day instead of those time wasting habits I had before.

Write Down all the Good Habits You Want to Create and Make a Plan

If there are other habits you want to create that don’t involve replacing bad habits, write them all down in one place. Let’s say you want to drink more water, get up earlier and read every day.

Depending on how difficult your new habits will be to implement, you may want to start out with just one or two at a time. If they’re simple enough, you can try to work them into your day all at once. You can use a habit tracker to keep yourself accountable. I’ve actually made one just for you that you can download for free below!

You’ll want to make a plan for implementing your habits into your daily life. Will you need to set alarms or write post it notes where you can see them often? If you wanted to start getting up earlier but it’s been difficult for you in the past, keep your alarm/phone across the room at night. That way you have to get up to turn it off. Just make sure you don’t press snooze or lay back down!

Whatever habits you want to have, it’s important to make a plan for them and do your best to stick to it every day.

Try Habit Stacking

Habit stacking means attaching a new habit to an already established one. For example, I like to do squats and lunges while I brush my teeth. I already brush my teeth twice a day without even thinking about it, so I might as well get a couple of minutes of exercise done while I’m at it. Over time, it will become a new habit and you’ll do it without even thinking!

Let’s use drinking more water as another example. You could say that every time you enter the kitchen, you need to drink some water. I don’t know about you, but I probably go into my kitchen about 20+ times a day. So if I get a drink of water every time, that’ll really add up!

Creating Good Habits Takes Time and Practice

If there’s something you wish could be a normal part of your day that you don’t really need to think about it, it’s possible to make it a habit. In my own experience, I’ve always wanted to be an early riser. After years of failing to get up, I realized that all it took was making myself get out of bed to turn the alarm off and staying up. I’ve now been getting up at 6 AM every single morning (even weekends) for the past several months. It’s still not easy for the first couple of minutes, but it’s now a habit for me so I keep doing it.

You can do it too! Just choose which habits you want in your own life and make a plan