Do you wish you were more disciplined sometimes?  Are there healthy habits you’d like to start incorporating into your day and just haen’t gotten around to doing?  (Maybe for decades?  I’m guilty!)  I think we all could find areas in our thinking, behavior or routines where there is room for improvement, but we just don’t know how to get there from here.  Each day begins with promise as you wait for an extra few minutes to work out, meditate, shop organic, call a friend.  By late afternoon, though, (does this sound familiar?) the promise fades as responsibilities squeeze the last remaining free moments left in the day.  We have disappointed ourselves again.

Just yesterday I read an article in Massage Therapy Journal that spelled out that it takes at least twenty-one days to begin a new habit.  Twenty-one days.  We are asked to think about our happiest and most efficient days, the days we feel successful.  What happens on those days?  What makes them succesful and meaningful?  Try that on for youself.   Do you start those days with a quiet meditation or walk?  Do you get right to the keyboard to work on your novel or memoir?  Do you eat a nutritious breakfast with the carb/protein/fat balance you need?

Here’s your challenge:  Take one activity from one of those meaningful days that you would like to make a habit, and promise yourself to incorporate it into every day for twenty-one days.  If you need structure or reminders, then stock up on Post-its and stick them to the fridge, your bathroom mirror, your work station, etc.  You might also like to tell your promise to a friend or partner, and ask for them to help to coach you to success.  Don’t go to bed any day until you have fulfilled your new habit promise!

I’ll tell you my new habit.  As a certified Yoga teacher, I have an abundance of knowledge and experience with postures and practices, enough to allow me great expansiveness and personal growth.   My tendency is to fit my practice in where I can squeeze it , feeling sure that there will be openings here and there, such as after breakfast, between clients, while dinner is cooking, etc.  What does that do to my practice?  It chops it into pieces so that it loses its depth.  It drops its priority ranking  below the business phone calls, unexpected crises and sweeping the spider webs from that corner up there.  And then it just doesn’t move me forward in the direction I want to go.  So, as of today I am promising myself (and you are witness) to beginning my day with yoga practice for twenty to thirty minutes.  For twenty-one days.  First thing.  Even before the cat gets fed.  It feels good already. 

Please join me!  What can you start today?  Think hard about your excuses.  You could make that same excuse for twenty more years, and then what have you got?  Just remember that we all have somehow incorporated the habit of brushing our teeth every day, without fail, right?  It’s a little like that.  Get the structure going to make it stick and you’re on your way.  The distance between you and the life you want is really only as wide as a promise to yourself for twenty-one days.