How to Balance your Habits and Go with the Flow

Imagine yourself waking up early, feeling energized during your morning routine as you tend to yourself. Taking some time to meditate, move your body and consume warm lemon water.

These are just a few ways of incorporating healthy habits into your life.

And I am sure you’ve heard them before, right?!?

The question is… how do you create habits successfully – long term?

First, you have to understand that there will never be a “book” that will tell you how long it will take for you to create a habit. You just have to want to make a change and then consciously practice that change every single day – until one day, you wake up and do it without even thinking about it.

That’s what a habit is – all things you do subconsciously (without much thought).

For example:

While driving your car you may be consciously aware of the streets and signs if you are trying to find a place you haven’t been before. But if you are traveling somewhere you have been many times, you may be consciously aware only of your own thoughts-or your phone conversation-and totally oblivious, on the conscious level, of the streets, signs, traffic, and buildings around you.

While you are consciously aware of only your own thoughts, your subconscious mind is paying attention to the other things, including the streets, signs, speed limit, odometer reading, proximity of police cars, the locations of the curbs along the road, and the landmarks that will cue your mind that you are near or at your destination.

Changing a Habit

When you decide it’s time to create change, that change (new habit) needs to be small. Your mind and ego have to feel as though this new thing you’re doing is attainable. If you think its achievable, then you’ll do it. And once you do it a certain number of times, it will become a subconscious behavior or action. This is great when it’s a healthy habit that helps you get centered, nourished and feeling your best.

It’s important to really look at your life and see what habits you already have that need to start being replaced with healthier ones. Doing this slowly, one by one, is a great way to create a healthy lifestyle full of rewarding benefits.

I always recommend making a list of the habits you want to change, in order from the most important habit, down to the smallest. Then, you enjoy your life-journey of changing one habit at a time as you learn, grow and evolve.

Habits come in various ways of how you think, feel and what you do. You have mental habits and actionable/physical habits.

Mental habits are the foundation because you have to be in a good mental state in order to continue moving forward with changes in your life. When you focus on your inner state for your mind and your body, the rest of the work starts to fall into place naturally (in your perfect timing).

When you think of your mental habits, start to think about how you talk to yourself, how you see yourself, judgement towards yourself and others. Think about how you react in certain situations. These are all programed within you – you have over 60,000 thoughts a day and they are often recycled to the next day.

Imagine starting to change those thoughts to more positive ones? When your mental game is strong, then you can be more efficient in changing the physical, day-to-day habits.

The Journey from Habit to Flow

My favorite way to help people enter into this journey of beautiful change starts with meditation.

Before you get nervous about meditating, remember what I said earlier – you start small with something that is attainable for you. Maybe you start with one minute, maybe 5. Either way, you pick what is achievable, do it consistently and eventually it will become a habit.

The beauty about starting with meditating is that meditation helps connect you to yourself. It helps you to open up and see more of your subconscious behaviors. It leads you down a path of getting to know your authentic self on a deeper level, and when you do that, you automatically start making shifts in your thoughts and behaviors. This leads you to more awareness of all the things that are impacting your life.

As you practice meditating daily, you start to see the journey of your life as you slowly improve in each area. You may start seeing changes in your relationships – with a partner, family member a friend or even your own self. You start to connect with what your body truly wants to eat or how it prefers to move for exercise. You will have more awareness of what’s going on in your mind, how your ego is responding in certain situations. Your life just starts making sense and you start to see the signs of how to create this beautiful change and live your life in the FLOW!

That’s where the BALANCE comes in.

Habits have a place and purpose in life but living in a flow state – or being flexible does too.

The idea is for you to create these holistic habits that allow you to subconsciously do all things that help bring out the best version of yourself. Getting good sleep, drinking a lot of clean water, moving and nourishing your body. When these are automatic, then your mind and body don’t have to waste energy thinking about doing them. You can save that energy for your mind to learn new things, and for your body to perform at its highest potential.

At the same time, you can have trust that all things in your life are falling into place as they should. Allowing your holistic habits to fall into place as needed for that day, and to be flexible as life changes and your journey goes through ups and downs. Finding that flow in life so that you aren’t constricted by your habits, but rather they are serving you and allowing you to enjoy the flow and beauty of your life as it evolves.

The true beauty of balance!

If you are interested in living a more healthy, holistic lifestyle through meditation, breathwork, or nutrition be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook or browse through my website.  

With love and gratitude, 

Rachel
xoxo