Habit Overcomes Habit
My mental health hasn’t been great for awhile now.
I’d say the last two and half years have seen the worst of me and it hasn’t been pretty for anyone close to me. I felt so stuck in my anxiety and depression that I would sit on the couch or in bed for hours everyday. I barely ate and when I did it was something junky and fast. If I moved it was only to go to the bathroom. When I learned of my PCOS last year I had a brief blip of working out and eating healthy to get pregnant and when I did I fell right back into where I had been. Granted, things were a bit better, but when you’re in a really good spot, hindsight is 20/20 and now I can see that I still wasn’t doing that great. Between the hormones, the global uproar, politics and friendships breaking down, I was a bit of a mess.
After I had Hayden I knew I wanted to get healthier and I knew how to do it, all of that time laying in bed was spent watching YouTube videos about health, marriage, relationships, raising babies and keeping house- I just didn’t have the motivation to get started. I know it’s hard to explain this, but eventually you just reach a point where you’re done with living how you are and you have to make a choice about how you’re going to move forward. You either give up, or you take advantage of that motivation from being done and you do something with it. Although I’ve been close to giving up several times in my life, I chose life. Rather than let that moment simmer out and pass, I chose to take advantage of it. When I was 6 weeks postpartum I decided to just start; something, anything.
I needed something to help pull me out of the rut so I could really get going, I started with working out. I did a little workout everyday just to start getting my strength back.
After a few weeks I decided I was capable of handling something else, so I started tracking my calories and adjusting my diet.
I started with my breakfast bowl. Every morning, rather than eating frozen waffles & sausage full of sugar I made myself an oat bowl with fruit. Now I don’t even have to look at what I’m putting in it because it’s just second nature.
Fast forward a few months-
I had felt God pulling on my heart for awhile and like I shared in my Homemaking podcast episode, I knew the next step to preserving my mental state and improving my family and marriage was to start caring for our home.
At first I thought this meant just buying things to replace what I didn’t like anymore, but as I dug deeper into #thehomemakingproject on Instagram (@marriedandahouse) I realized it was a lot deeper than that. It was cleaning, switching out unsafe and unhealthy products for ones that benefited my family. It was keeping things tidy and fresh and doing anything that would bring more peace into our home.
I started studying my heart and I realized that not only did I need to do a deep clean on my house, but I needed to do a deep clean on my heart.
Like I said, it’s not all about buying things, but I do think buying a few items to switch out to make my space homier for sure helped. I got them all on a budget- check out that post here- and I got a bowl specifically to put my devotional & journal in for morning devo time.
Every morning I’m starting off my day with Bible time from the She Reads Truth app, a day in the 100 Days to Brave book by Annie Downs, a few pages of One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp and then I’m journaling my prayers, reflections & eucharisteo for the day.
This has helped me have so much more joy, peace and motivation going into my daily household tasks.
A tip:
Something I’ve noticed, is to start your day by doing all of the chores so that you can create and relax in the afternoons. It’s gotten to the point that I look forward to this routine, but it definitely didn’t start this way.
Like the title reads- “Habit overcomes habit”. The original quote is from Erasmus and reads
“A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.”
When I read this in Ann Voskamp’s book, I was struck by the idea that what I had been doing, making little daily and weekly shifts- I was driving the nail through my old habits just by doing the new tasks and doing them with joy and gratitude. That’s why I was happier and more at peace- it was becoming second nature simply through doing.
Now, let’s go back to the mental health aspect- as I acknowledged earlier- my mental health hadn’t been good and I needed something to pull me out. Once I pulled myself out of it and just started, things slowly got better and better. I want you to realize that a. this house and my life is not perfection and never will be and b. I had to do the work (supported by family and friends) to get out of that state to even START. It’s a process you cannot rush.
So here’s what I’ll tell you.
It helps to choose one thing a week to implement.
And I’m not talking about big chunks like cleaning, health, relationships- I’m talking about breaking it down into micro categories.
I chose to start with my health because I needed the energy to be able to clean and then build on the other things to continue to make me feel better even if something started to slip and to build that new lifestyle out of the individual habits.
Here’s a few graphics that kinda sum up how exactly I did that so it’s not just a bundle of words scattered across a page.
Breakdown (B-Down) - every month I’d choose a topic to work on and then each week there would be a sub-goal (or two) and that’s what I’d focus on that month and then by the end of the month if I felt ready to move on to the next topic, I’d be ready to go, if not, I could leave notes for the next month. As you can see I’ve checked off the first three focus points. Those are the goals I’ve completed in the last few months. The next row is what I’m working on now. With these templates you could print it out, laminate it (packing tape also works), hang it on your fridge and use a dry erase marker to fill it out each month and keep you on track. In the notes section you could also put what you want to improve on next month, or if you need to remember what your habits were for the previous month so you don’t let those go with your new goals, you could put those in the bottom. And remember, as you keep going, they’ll keep building up and eventually become second nature as they become your new lifestyle. I don’t always use this template as I kinda have my goals mentally or just written down in a note, but if you’re a template person, fill this out real quick & I’ll send it to you for free!
Once it was broken down into bite sized pieces,
I started implementing one thing every few days or a new concept each week to make it more manageable. This has been ongoing over the last few months but it’s been less of a conscious effort until recently. When I realized what I was actually doing I was able to make more conscious goals. Like this week my goal was to show up everyday with a photo and a caption. Even if it wasn’t new and exciting, just a little thought. It usually would be a business strategy, but I recently realized that until I start actually showing up consistently my pursuits like blogging and podcasting aren’t going to gain traction because people’s knowledge of me is limited to the two to three times I’d post in a month and that’s just not working. I got so caught up in trying to appear perfect that I stopped appearing. ..and that sums up my mental health and all of my other pursuits. Hah.
To wrap this up, I want to encourage you. If you have been feeling stuck in the mess- whatever that mess is- I challenge you to choose just one thing that you start today. Then do it tomorrow and the next day and the next until it’s habit and then start the next thing on your list and keeping building and repeating until one day you wake up and it’s second nature and you have a new lifestyle. I think one of the ways I realized that it had really sunk in for me was after a month of my cleaning schedule, I helped Dustin’s nanny move and then I got sick and things fell behind for a few days, but it didn’t get horrible. And then when I was better I was right back to my routine. I am proud of that because it meant I didn’t just give up when things got hard or imperfect- I kept going, which if you’ve followed me for awhile you know that doesn’t come easily for me and that’s usually how I fall into a new depression. Knowing that gave me hope for the future of my household and my own health.
One day, one choice, one habit at a time friend- you’ve got this.