MY HAPPY TRYBE

I am 42 years old. I can proudly say I have learnt the art of building habits. I also confess I struggled and failed miserably for the entirety of my life before this. I was a major procrastinator and a quitter.

My mother comes from a lineage of highly virtuous women. All my life I heard stories of high standards practiced by my great grandmother and my grandmother and my mother followed the same high standards effortlessly.

I, on the other hand, had taken on my father. We took life easy, lived a life of childlike wonder and no inclination of growing up.
Eventually though, I let the stories get to me and decided the high standards were the right standards. This made me look at myself as quite the miserable failure. I was never “disciplined enough”, “willed enough” “virtuous enough”, “mile wide and inch deep” and a “quitter” – a person of no consequence.

And I lived my life under this shadow for 40 years. What a waste. To make up for the ‘obvious’ lack of character, I was a good girl, a good daughter, good wife, good employee, but never good enough in my own recognition.

I can trace back so much of my life to this one belief. I am sure you can too..one thought, one conditioning that someone you trusted thrust upon you and you lived your life under the weight of it.

Anyway, coming back to building habits. What changed. Few things and gradually so..

The trigger

The biggest drivers of change are either pain or love. For me, it was the love for my unborn child. My doctor prescribed some supplements and boy, did I follow the advice.

Instinctively, I had figured out how I could manage not to miss a single day’s prescription even though I would be traveling constantly. I simply wrote out the routine on my door with a chalk, wherever I would go. It would be the first thing I would see when I woke up. There was no doubt in my mind if I was capable of practicing the required discipline or not.
You see, my subconscious had accepted my lineage of discipline. Somewhere inside me I knew I would be disciplined when I had to be. I just didn’t know I knew it!

Enough is enough

Somehow, either when you are older or wiser you realise your life has always been about others. What they say, what they think, what is right by them, what’s not.

At about 40, propelled by some events, I had had enough of bullshit. I distinctly remember screaming in my head to everyone – SHUT UP. Shut up. Let me figure my life out on my own terms. I created a boundary that kept out everyone – even the loved ones.

When I took a step back, I could decide what was right by me and what was not acceptable. I could finally see a hint of what I wanted.

If I was setting my own goals and by my own rules, by my own standards – I did not need anyone to push me. I WAS NOT A QUITTER. I WAS NOT A LOSER.

Rebuilding myself has been a task. But boy oh boy am I loving it.

The why

Why be disciplined, why clean up, why not quit – what’s the big deal??

I am an only child – loved and pampered. So all through my childhood, I was never held accountable for cleaning up, organising etc. Things a mother could do to make life a bit easier on her kid. Of course punctuality, manners were unquestionably implemented.

Anyway, I never needed to organise or clean up and I never did. Until I was faced with the WHY – why should I do it.
In college, I started losing my things and started cleaning up my clutter. As a new mother I started losing my mind and my sleep and started organising so I could salvage precious moments of my already exhausting day.

Over the past two years, my WHYs have become crystal clear to me. The ‘why’ could even be something like “because I don’t know” but that is my truth and I am willing to put in my hours to figure it out

The shift in identity

Would you believe it – if you were to ask me today I’d say I am confident, I am capable, I am dependable and I am a problem solver. More importantly, I have conquered my imaginary demons – I would call myself disciplined, organised and I am not a quitter! The exact opposite of what I used to think of myself!

Make your choice

You are your only true competition, your only true judge and you htry

ave to be your own true cheerleader, only you know what’s good for you.

With that in mind, make your choice.

What do you want,

why do you want it

and

what are you willing to do for it

If your answers to these questions are clear and strong, there is nothing stopping you from knowing and getting what you really want.

So my dear friend, I urge you – don’t put yourself down. Take a step back, figure out what you want and how you can get it. Once your ‘why’ is clear to you, nothing can push you off your path. Whatever you do – will then be a matter of your choice.

Having said all that, here’s how I build my habits

Understand your problem statement clearly
What is that you really want? What’s stopping you so far. Break it down to a granular level and really look at your problem statement like it’s an object you are holding in your hand. Explore every angle, every possibility.

Here’s an example – nothing I did, was keeping me on track with my fitness.
This in turn led me to many unnecessary things and thoughts.

Understand what’s keeping you from it
Understand what is stopping you from achieving what you want. Forget all the noise – listen to yourself. What is stopping you, if you really want something. Doubts? resources? Maybe you don’t really want it or don’t want it so badly?

Cut the bullshit, face yourself and get real.

In my case, I didn’t really believe I could be fit. I saw myself as a middle aged woman, bulging here and there, leading a sedentary lifestyle. I didn’t believe I could be fighting fit. Then I figured, even if I never look fighting fit, I wanted to age well. I wanted to keep my muscles and joints strong. I wanted never to have to depend on medicines or nurses in my old age, as far as I could help it! Now I just trust and love the process too much to give up.

Get to it
Now that you know what and why you want something, its a matter of how.
Here’s what worked for me :

• Visual reminders – Post its, lists written on doors, anything that is shoved in front of me the moment I waked up and then periodically during the day. I even resort to writing on my hand so I would have constant reminders. Otherwise, the urgent tasks take precedence and then I end the day having missed my list.
  I have recently added skipping rope to my to – do list. To ensure I don’t miss a day of it – I keep the rope and my shoes next to my work desk. Despite a busy schedule I have managed to keep going regularly.
  
• Start small and build on it – Just start with building one habit at a time. For example, I started ensuring I show up to work out. The workout could be weak or rushed, but I had to show up 4 days a week. In the first 3 months, I started feeling really good – my body was stronger. Each perfect – week felt like a gold star! and I wanted to keep going.
  
• Keep it simple – don’t chase two rabbits. It takes a good deal of mental and physical work to chase after one goal. Added to this, the fact that we are all busy with our worldly duties. So let’s acknowledge that and take up one thing at a time. One habit at a time. Things don’t get overwhelming and before you know it, you are the master of your own destiny! (maybe far fetched, but felt good saying that :D)
  
• Fool your subconscious – Once you are in routine for one task for 4-6 weeks, add one more task to it. In my case, I added eating supplements. Then 2000 steps a day and then meditation. Before I knew it, I had built 5 habits and I was unshakable! I had snuck in a few things into my list without my subconscious yelling at me not to!
  
• Keep ’em handy – Things you need should be easily accessible. In my case, I set up the home gym to be in the adjacent room. Made sure the gym was always clutter – free, well – lit and my time was fixed to ensure no one else poked their head in while it was my time! My supplements, water, protein powder are set up right there. So after I finish workout and breathwork (meditation), I just have to spend 5 more minutes to get all of this out of the way. When the execution is not cumbersome, things get done.

• Success breeds motivation – Small victories motivated me to keep going. What were the small victories? Well, at first,

• Surround yourself with a community – Whatever said and done, it is easier to sustain a habit if you have a bunch of friends or like minded people doing going after a similar goal. For example, initially I had a group of workout buddies. We don’t know each other, but at the start of each day people would start posting updates of their workouts on the WhatsApp group. I would make a mental note to hit my workout and post that day.
  Added to this, a friend of mine started posting her runs each day on that group. She started this because she was not feeling motivated enough to run but wanted to get past that and train for a 10k marathon. Daily updates and chats made the tracking much more fun. We started sharing other things we were upto – like my rope skill practice and how bad I am at Shuffle dance but I found company among that group to keep going! Along with wins of course we also shared our challenges. The support was tremendous!

A year on, my workouts have now become regular and a given. I can safely say I will never stop working out.

This is not so much about workout as it is about what it means to be able to set a goal and achieve it. After all these years, I have found myself for the first time. I know myself, what i am capable of. It took a while lot of unlearning and learning but it was worth it.

PS: There are a lot of apps out there that claim to help you build habits. I have nothing against apps but I strongly recommend trying this without the support of an app or a journal to start with. The idea is to understand what makes you tick and win over the problem for life and not just address one issue.