The Unstoppable Method To Sustaining New Habits In Your Morning Routine

Let me start this off by saying, I had periods of time in my life where I would roll out of bed and barely make it to college class on time. I had periods through my working career where I tried to maintain a morning routine of daily habits such as working out and meditating before work by willpower and I was inconsistent from week to week.

I am now at a place where I can do a 2-3 hour morning routine every day. I am telling you this so that you know it is possible to build and sustain new habits that will lead you to live the life you truly desire.

You’re probably thinking “Here we go… Another challenge on habits” or “I hope this method doesn’t rely on willpower” or “Waking up early is impossible!” I mean you have a busy life, right? With work / studying, family, friends, and day - to - day stress it feels like there is barely enough energy to get through the day.

You may be thinking “30 Day Habit Challenges never work! I lose motivation after the month is over!” You would be right, and that is why I challenge you to do 90 days with this template. 

This article will flow as follows:

1. Start With Why

2. Then the How

-      Small Expectations

-      Daily Consistency

-      Habit Stacking + Temptation Bundling

3. Template To Take Action

1. Start With Why

You may be thinking “Wow! 90 days… I don’t know about that.” I understand how a daily habit for 90 days seems impossible to do however; I want to emphasize that good habits are built for a lifetime. Ask yourself “Why do you want to do your new desired habit?” If you truly desire a habit you should be in it for the long term (multiple years - life). It should be a process you want to incorporate into your life rather than just for a short amount of time.

Before moving forward make sure you understand your “Why” for your desired habit(s). You must truly want the habit to become a part of you. If I can give you a piece of advice, I recommend that you turn inward and block out any outside influences such as social affirmations, money, awards, etc. and find your “Why”. Put aside the “Good Job”, “Congratulations”, the raise, and anything else and see how your desired habit(s) delivers value in the role(s) of your life.

2. Then The How

Now to the how. Below is a 3-step repeatable process for implementing and sustaining a new habit.

Start with Small Expectations (1 minute, 1 action, etc.)

Aim for Daily Consistency (Set time & place. Document it.)

Utilize Habit Stacking + Temptation Bundling (Use a current habit to stack the desired habit with.)

Start with Small Expectations

Regardless of how large your vision is for your desired habit, starting with small expectations in the beginning will allow your body and mind to adapt to performing the new habit while balancing the complex demand and current habits in your life. Starting with small expectations allows you to implement your new habit without being forced to choose between an old habit and a new one. Spoiler alert: The old habit always wins.

Let me know if this sounds familiar: You try implementing a new habit that takes 30-60 mins daily. You may be consistent for a week or two… but then you miss a day because you had to work overtime and you had other responsibilities after work. You may be good for another few days or week but then an emergency comes up and you skip again. Then one skipped day turns into two, two into three and before you know it your new habit is hardly done, if at all. If this is you… you are not alone.

We all have good intentions to implement new habits such as working out, journaling, or a hobby, but we typically set the expectations too high in the beginning. Starting with small expectations does not mean you are taking the easy way out. Starting with small expectations means that you are committing to building this habit for the rest of your life. If you look at it on a long term scale, it does not matter if you start with one minute or one hour for the first few weeks – months, what matters is that you don’t give up and improve your process over time.

My advice: Give yourself a small baseline expectation for your new habit as well as a stretch goal. This means that you give yourself the opportunity to “win” daily while being able to push yourself when opportunity and / or motivation are present.

Examples

Working out:

-      1 minute or 1 push up

-      Stretch goal: 30 minutes or 50 push ups

Journal:

-      1 sentence

-      1 paragraph

Meditation

-      1 minute or 1 breath cycle.

-      30 minutes

Giving yourself small expectations will facilitate the opportunity of daily consistency.

Aim for Daily Consistency

Now that you have given yourself minimum expectations for your desired habit(s), let’s explore why we should aim for daily consistency. Daily consistency ensures that you are constantly making progress with your habit process, furthering your dreams and goals on why you are doing the habit in the first place. Daily consistency ensures you build an identity with this habit, rather than just a task to be done.

Constant progress by daily consistency means that you are always moving forward with your dreams and goals. I understand that your dreams and goals may feel so large and so far out that small daily wins feels insignificant. You may feel like that a “1-minute meditation today & 1-minute meditation tomorrow” has no impact, however I want you to look at the large picture. I want you to look at your best weeks and your worst weeks and self-assess the differences in your thought process between the two. During our worst weeks we will rationalize that we can make up for lost time later in the week, and more often than not we end up losing out on time as other aspects of our life take priority. Ensuring that we make daily consistent progress will turn our worst weeks into small wins, furthering our progress on our dreams and goals.

Daily consistency reinforces our identity with our desired habit so that it becomes part of us rather than just a task to be completed. I understand that identity is a complex topic and incorporating a new habit into your identity can be confusing. You may think a new habit doesn’t have anything to do with your identity, however I want to flip the script and say that you as a person are a stack of your habits whether you view them as good or bad. The actions we take are directly related to our identity as our actions solidify who we are. Our thoughts, feelings, and rationalizations may carry extreme weight internally, however our actions are the only thing that can turn our desires, dreams, and goals into reality. Ensuring that we do not sacrifice one goal for another, will help us become the person we want to be.

My advice: Give yourself a time and a place to perform the desired habit as well as document it to reinforce the completion of the behavior.

Example:

Journal

-      7AM

-      Dining room table

-      Document date in journal

Utilize Habit Stacking + Temptation bundling

Take a minute and think about all habits that you currently do every day as these habits can provide momentum to start new habits. These habits must be done every day (not 5 days out of the week such as going to work)

Examples

-      Waking up

-      Hygiene / getting ready for work

-      Breakfast

-      Coffee / tea / morning drink

-      Lunch

-      Dinner

-      Sleep

You can use the habit that you currently do every day as an anchor of time in your daily routine to perform the new habit. The key is to take advantage of natural momentum that comes from one behavior leading into the next.

To set this up you use the formula:

After (Current Habit), I Will (New Habit)

After (New Habit), I Will (Habit I want)

Example:

1. After I pour my morning cup of coffee / tea, I will stretch for sixty seconds.
2. After I stretch for sixty seconds, I will drink my coffee / tea.

Note: A habit is the process of Trigger – Craving – Behavior - Reward

Trigger / Craving: Making cup of coffee / Tea or Breakfast 

Behavior (New Habit): Stretching

Reward: Satisfaction of drinking or eating.

The old habit becomes the trigger and the reward that reinforces the habit loop. This helps your body and mind pair the learning of the new habit with something that is familiar. This is a concept called habit stacking that is widely discussed by experts such as James Clear (Atomic Habits) and S.J. Scott (97 Small Life Changes that Take 5 Minutes or Less).

Rather than forcing yourself to rely on the willpower of your mind to control your body, you make the new habit you desire have an obvious trigger (an old habit – making morning coffee). If you pair the concept of habit stacking with the previous concepts of setting small expectations and daily consistency, you will make progress every day that rewards your mind and body for the new behavior.

Once you learn and master how to utilize habit stacking, you can then aim to stretch the duration of your new habit and / or create a chain of new habits in a larger stack to create your morning routine. This fully utilizes the momentum of one behavior leading into the next, increasing the probability that your new habit(s) will stick in your morning routine. I am emphasizing morning routine because I want you to control your day by making your morning decisions your own rather than let outside influences control you. This way you have a game plan of what actions should come next, and you can proactively set up your day to be successful rather than be reactive to things that come your way.

My morning routine below can be used as an example, but feel free to adjust based on your own personal desires.

After I wake up, I will work out for 45 minutes

After I work out for 45 minutes, I will take a cold shower for 5 minutes

After I take a cold shower for 5 minutes, I will take my protein shake

After I take my protein shake, I will stretch for 15 minutes

After I stretch for 15 minutes, I will make my breakfast

After I make my breakfast, I will read at least 10 pages

After I read at least 10 pages, I will make my coffee / tea

After I make my coffee / tea, I will journal for 10 minutes

After I journal for 10 minutes, I will write my to-do list for the day

After I write my to-do list for the day, I will start my first task

Another way to utilize habit stacking recommended by James Clear is that you can insert new behaviors into the middle of your current routine that will trigger a new habit in a later routine. For example, if you wanted to implement a new habit of reading each night, you add something into your morning routine to trigger the habit of reading at night:

You currently morning routine: Wake up – Make your bed – Take a shower

New morning routine: Wake up – Make your bed – Place a book on your pillow – Take a shower

This way your new habit of reading is set up to be done every night before you go to bed.

My advice: Take an audit of your current daily life so that you know the right triggers to use to stack your habits. We all have different lives and you may feel a morning routine is impossible with your work schedule and / or family responsibilities. Consider where you personally are most likely to be successful so that your mind is not preoccupied with something else while you are trying to implement a new habit. 

Specifically, when implementing your new desired habits, only add one new habit at a time into your morning routine. Start with small expectations and do not build onto your habit stack until you meet your minimum daily expectations (~1-5 minutes) for 30 days in a row. This way you ensure daily consistency and prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed and / or burnt out.

Example

Habit 1 (Days 1-30)

Habit 1 + Habit 2 (Days 31-60)

Habit 1 + Habit 2 + Habit 3 (Days 61-90)

Etc

3. Template To Take Action

Here is a simple habit tracker that you can use to track your progress.

Habit Tracker Template

Insert the habit name you desire in the yellow box above the 30 day period.

Insert a “1” next to the date if you complete the habit.

Insert a “0” next to the date if you miss the habit.

At the bottom there are boxes for “Time” “Place” and “Habit” which you can use to commit to the habit stack.

This template can be copied and used to layer in new habits to your routines.

Have fun with implementing your new habits! If you find this helpful, post your morning routine and tag me so that others can see the possibilities.