We first make out habits, then our habits make us.

Today’s topic is about habits and how your habits make you.

What are habits first of all? Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day.

Many times in life we fall into doing things that have us shying away from the things we know we really should be doing. ‘Bad habits’

Things like snoozing your alarm (I’m guilty of this one)

Skipping fitness sessions or choosing the quick and easy meal for dinner regardless of how it makes you feel straight after.

Habits come in all forms, shapes and sizes. Some are pretty easy to change, some not so much.

If you reverse engineer anything in your life it all comes down to your habits.

For example: Your current physique is a result of your eating and fitness habits.

Your bank account reflects your spending habits. Yes I know many other factors come into this one but for example buying a coffee over making your own up is a spending habit that could benefit the amount in your account in the long run.

What I’m going to help you with in this email is identifying the bad habits and replacing them with good ones.

Most of the time you’ll find a correlation between bad habits and stress / boredom. Bad habits are simply a way of dealing with an issue, from biting your nails to overspending. Procrastinating on social media, it all comes down to boredom or stress most of the time.

Of course sometimes this isn’t the only issue and it can be much deeper but in most cases this is what causes a bad habit.

Identifying a bad habit is the first step to resolving it. So I urge you to grab a pen and paper. Then to write down 5 bad habits you have when stressed or bored.

From here you will hopefully have some clarity and now we will be able to be forward with turning those bad habits into good ones.

First up, you don’t get rid of a bad habit. You replace it for a good one.

Choose a substitute for your bad habit. You need to have a plan ahead of time for how you will respond when you face the stress or boredom that prompts your bad habit. What are you going to do when you get the urge to snack?

Cut out as many triggers as possible. If you smoke when you drink, then don’t go to the bar. If you eat cookies when they are in the house, then throw them all away or don’t buy them.

Cutting the connection between you and your bad habit is the second step to overcoming them. You need to remove as many connections as you can with these things. If the first thing you do when you wake up is check Instagram. Leave your phone at the other side of the room and put a glass of water at youuu bedside instead.

This triggers you to go oh yeah. I should drink this first then I can get up and go to my phone.

Thirdly, a great tip I have is to partner up with someone who can push you and vice versa. Having someone there who needs the help just as much as you do pushes you both down a loosely competitive path that sees you both succeed. I find this one works well with exercise and diet mostly.

Fourth we have visualisation. A massively underrated step in achieving most things. When I was training for my fight one of the most important factors was shadow boxing. Where I try to visualise myself in the ring with another person.

Having a set vision in your mind as to why you’re doing all of this in the first place is massive to help you say no to the bad habits and continue forward with the good ones.

Step 5, Plan for failure. We all slip up every now and then. When you screw up by skipping a workout, eating bad foods, or sleeping in, it doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you human.

So rather than beating yourself up over a mistake, plan for it. We all get off track, what separates top performers from everyone else is that they get back on track very quickly. So if you have a bad day or a slip up don’t get down about it and carry on making the mistakes. Brush it off and get back on the horse as I would say.

Remember, little steps over big leaps. Changing a bad habit to a good one takes time and persistence.

Get after it!

Alex