non-negotiable habits
How many habits are you trying to maintain?
This week I had my monthly Zoom with a couple of my close friends and we began discussing our health and the habits we either have or are trying to create.
One of my friends said that he trimmed down the many habits he was tracking to the four that had the greatest impact on his day and how he felt. He said he noticed how much better he had been feeling after trimming the 10+ habits down; he also mentioned that while he didn’t know it to be true, but he felt he was probably hitting the majority of the other habits he wasn’t tracking anymore—the lack of tracking didn’t mean he stopped doing them, but there was less focus on tracking them.
I’ve noticed there are a few morning habits that always lead to a great day—there other activities that I try to do each morning and day, but the impact of these is not as great as the main few.
My main few are the following:
Wim Hof breathing
Meditation
Yoga
Afternoon weights or other workouts
* Being in the sun is a bonus that’s out of my control and I would replace the breathwork with this if I have to keep it to four habits.
If I did these four things every day for ME, then I know I’ll be my best for everyone else. I could have added my daily writing, walking outside, eating clean, and a number of good habits and while they definitely don’t hurt me, they don’t put me on as high of a frequency as the main ones.
If the goal of tracking habits is to help you be your best each day, then identifying and tracking the ones that have the greatest impact impact makes more sense than tracking a bunch of habit that don’t really move the needle for you—like my friend, it doesn’t mean that you don’t still do them. But tracking them creates more work and more opportunities for a “miss” that could mess up your momentum.
Take some time over the next week and identify the habits that elevate your energy and make you feel invincible. What are the three or four that are non-negotiable?
See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,
JC
