How can you habit hack your life?

Weeks 17 & 18, Midlife Journal Guide

As part of my year long Midlife, redefined Daily Journal Guide, I give you 14 daily prompts every two weeks to help you journal each day (or as many as you can muster) to get, and stay, connected to yourself. The prompts below for the next two weeks are about starting to live with greater intention and checking in with your habits and routines to make sure they’re still fit for purpose. You can start this journalling guide at any time of the year because it’s not date related: The daily prompts from Weeks 1 to 16 are here.

Living in intention

Every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you want to be. But likely your life is ruled by habits; the habitual ways you do things without thinking, yet they define the outcome of your life. The upside of habits is that they allow you to not have to reinvent the wheel every single time you do something - how to set the table, how to fold the laundry, how you start an email, how you exercise.

The downside of habits is the exact same reason. You don’t reinvent the wheel and so if you aren’t careful (or vigilant), you can perform a large part of your life on autopilot, acting with little or no thought or intention. Some research puts habitual behaviour at 40% of our days. Unless you check to make sure your habits aren’t passed their sell-by date, you can be behaving in ways that damage or hold you back. 

So how do you form these ways of behaving without thought?  Sadly, what you usually don’t do, is sit down with a blank sheet of paper at the beginning of each stage of your life and decide exactly what beliefs, habits, routines would best serve you to give you the life you wanted to live (which is what you’re doing now!). Instead you usually absorb many of your habits - even habits around thinking certain ways about things - from childhood, upbringing, and culture. As babies, and then children, you are the blank sheet, imprinted with programming from parents, peers, teachers, family, friends, and the cultural influences of the time.  

As an example, think about something you do automatically like stack the dishwasher. Chances are you do it exactly the way your mum did. I even count the dinner plates out the way my mum did when I’m laying out the dinner. You will form many of your habits without ever thinking about them. 

Another way you form habits is by creating them for a specific time, reason or outcome. This could have been when you were a student, became a new parent, or was overcoming heartache. A few years ago I caught myself reaching for the cereal boxes and setting the breakfast bowls out before heading to bed, even though I was exhausted. I suddenly realised I had started that habit when my kids were really young and couldn’t reach the cereal cupboard. Now they are teens and more than capable of getting their own cereal, but even though the circumstances that had led to the habit-formation had long since become redundant, the habit remained.

Of course many habits are positive. The point isn’t that all habits are bad; the point is that if you don’t pay attention, continually challenging how and why you do something, you can do it forever, even when it becomes harmful, redundant or energy-sucking.

An example of this is a habit I created when my mum died and marriage ended all in the space of ten months. In this following Year of Living Despairingly, I got into the habit of marking the switch-off point of my day - that point that came after keeping my perfectionist smile fixed all day, engaging with the world before getting my kids off to bed, sweet smiles, hugs and kisses all the way. But as soon as the last light was out, I would literally take my coping face off and collapse, often on the last step of the stairs. To mark this intense feeling of relief I would pour myself a Gin & Tonic, and attach a nosh-bag to my face to eat a family bag of Doritos while watching some mindless Netflix. And I’m not going to apologise for that. My life was in melt-down and I was just about holding it all together, so I needed that switch-off every evening. For a good few months, and perhaps even the year, that habit was probably what I needed. The problem arose when the habit carried on much longer than circumstances required it. I began to find my feet, began to at least switch on the searchlight to find my mojo, and unfurl from the mental foetal position I’d been in. But I kept having a G&T and eating the Doritos because it had become such a habit, such a familiar way of living, it didn’t even occur to me to change it. I think I kept up that habit for a good year or so after I really didn’t need it. (I did like it though!).

At midlife, it’s really important to check in and challenge your habits to ensure they are still working for you in your current stage, and more importantly asking if they are helping or hindering you to be the person you want to be. 

As part of my year long Midlife, redefined Daily Journal Guide, I give you 14 daily prompts every two weeks to help you journal each day (or as many as you can muster) to get, and stay, connected to yourself. The prompts below for the next two weeks are about starting to live with greater intention and checking in with your habits and routines to make sure they’re still fit for purpose.

For those of you newly following me on Your Midlife Matters (thank you for being here!) I’ve already explained how this year-long adventure with yourself will work in Power is in Your Hand. You can start this journalling guide at any time of the year because it’s not date related: The daily prompts from Weeks 1 to 16 are here.

In this year long adventure with yourself, this opportunity to spend a few minutes every day (or as many days a week as you can) thinking about yourself will transform your relationship with yourself and to matter more in your own midlife and to build self-knowledge and empower yourself to live life for you.

A quick reminder we are now in the third section - Taking Action and Living with Intention. The first part was Self-Discovery and the second part was Passion, Purpose & Priorities. . Then we repeat these directions (with new prompts) for the second 6 months.

We started with self-discovery because you can make all the plans and checklists in the world, but if you aren’t coming from a place of current self-knowledge - who, how and where you are at this age and stage of life - you could be making the wrong plans, or signing up to someone else’s (culture, society, Instagram, the school gates, the patriarchy, your partner, your parent)’s version of success.  Passion, Purpose and Priorities was all about reconnecting to, and retrieving, all the parts of you that still are there that may not have had much attention. Or just needs to get a bit of a shine.  Or you have lived and loved and laughed and learned and have developed new areas of interest and discovered new talents. This final part is about looking at how you live day to day, and what actions and intentions you can take to make sure they bring you the life you want to be living.

For ALL my lovely subscribers there is my free Midlife Daily Journal Template in my previous post here which you can use as a guide each day - and what I use every day.

For just €5 per month, this Midlife Daily Journal Guide (and lots of other content and discounts on coaching) is for my paid subscribers.

So let’s get into the prompts for Week 17 and 18 of your journaling journey.