Establishing Habits

When we think about establishing Habits,
most of us focus on the later stage of the process
where things start to become natural,
instead of those difficult early days
where there seem to be more failures than successes.

At the beginning stage, we need to focus
on building the foundations of a new habit 
before expecting a long string of successes.  

It is important to start out with small steps.
Be specific about the exact behavior desired.
A list, or chart, or reward system can help support habit building,
but keep it simple.

In the early days of Habit building,
it's usually easier to stick with it,
when we aren't continually reminded
of our up-and-down progress.

Keep the Focus on individual days,
rather than weeks or months.
Because dealing with long time periods can be very discouraging.
Each day I give myself a fresh start. 

 This morning I decided to...again...work to implement
some habits that would be helpful in my weight maintenance.
I prepared a small chart for myself that dealt with a few of my problem areas
and the Habits that might help eliminate them
...similar to the No S Diet's Habitcal idea,...
Except...my chart covers only one individual day,...today...
and even breaks that day into several different time periods.

Then tomorrow, I'll use another, new duplicate chart,
with a new fresh start.

If, in the future, I want to put that information together,
for detailed analysis, it would be easy to do so,
but for now, this very simple one-day-at-a-time focus
is the only way I can manage to get myself to stick with my efforts.

For those of you who are following my YouTube Ask Grandma videos,
you can see the latest one by clicking  HERE,
which is located at DietHobby under RESOURCES, Videos, Ask Grandma.