Habit Tracking
When I was a little girl, I loved a star chart. I would make them with my mom, and throughout the week, we would add little foil star stickers to whatever task I was trying to complete, usually to earn something that I wanted. When I became a mother myself, the star charts returned. I remember when my boys were about 7 years old and wanted new bikes. Spring was coming, and the anticipation was palpable. But their birthday wasn’t until July - far too long to wait for new wheels! So we came up with a plan - if they completed a set number of chores an agreed-upon number of times, they would earn their bikes…
Remember these?
It worked… for a couple weeks. After the novelty wore off, the boys grew a little ‘tired’ with being held accountable all the time. We loaded into the car, drove to TL Fritts, and went to see the shiny new bikes. I had them on hold… still on the showroom floor, with their names on the tags. “Look at these bikes,” I said. “Aren’t they awesome? Isn’t it going to be amazing to ride them around all summer? Just imagine how it will feel…” We then left - without the bikes - but with a new sense of commitment to earning our stars. 12 days later, we returned. This time, I drove home alone.
Earned it.
I returned to this memory, sitting here on the First of February, tallying up my habits from my January tracker. I sat with my journal and reflected on the following:
What went well for me in January?
What can I improve?
What did I learn?
What do I want to do differently next month?
For me, the month of January was about bringing back a sense of calm and working to decrease inflammation. I came up with seven habits that aligned with those goals. For me, that looked like moving my body, cutting out alcohol, going to bed by 10 pm, decreasing gluten/dairy/sugar, journaling, and reading. How did I do? Pretty well on some, less well on others.
My end of month reflection time… a beautiful mess.
Tracking habits can be a powerful tool when you’re working on putting new practices to work in your life. But what can make them even stronger is when you align them to a vision. This is what I do with my clients when we work together. Before we get to work on implementing change, we spend time getting really clear on WHY we want to change. What will that change look like? How will it feel? It’s the moment we returned to the bike shop… “how will it feel to ride these awesome bikes this summer?”
Because I love this tool, and I love to share things I love with my friends, I created a download for you to create your own tracker to use. Think about how you want your month to look… How you want to feel… What you want to focus on… and then get to work checking those boxes!