Nearly every Sunday evening for the past 7 years, I decide what 3 habits I’ll focus on in the coming week. Then, I make sure I do those 3 things every day. It usually takes several weeks to really make a habit stick for the long run, but this initial commitment serves 3 purposes:
1. It gives me something to devote my enthusiastic attention to, and has me feeling proud of my progress, even through life’s ups & downs.
2. Committing to just 1 week is a way to get started without feeling overwhelmed by the weight of “I should do this forever.”
3. By focusing on just 3 things for just 1 week, I can make adjustments to my habits from week-to-week, until I really find my groove.
Before this practice, I would write mammoth lists of all the habits I wanted to embrace, and tackle them all at once. By Monday evening I’d be zoning out on the couch with a bag of potato chips, feeling like a miserable failure of a human being. No worky.
The simple ritual of choosing 3 weekly habits has changed my life.
This week’s 3 daily habits:
Early morning walks; practicing my ukulele; all solo meals at the dining table.[/caption]
This week, what 3 habits will you embrace?
Here are some guidelines that may help:
* Make them daily habits. This will help them stick.
* Each morning, set up a reminder system for each habit (an alarm on your phone, for example.)
* Tell your friends for accountability! Have them play with you.
* Don’t set the bar so high that you feel discouraged. Small steps add up.
—> I know this exercise is simple, but sometimes simple things make big impact. Will you join me? In the comments below, share what 3 habits you’ll embrace this week! I’d love to be your cheerleader.
Absolutely love this post and it couldn’t come at a better time! My three habits I want to embrace are waking up early, going to bed early, and having dinner planned so that I don’t end up staying up late at night trying to work and have meals unplanned.
Awesome, Elizabeth. How’s it going so far?
Much love,
Nisha
I’m bringing more movement (hula hooping), book reading, and stretching into my daily routine.
Thanks for sharing!
Hula hooping! You have no idea how much you’ve inspired me to get a hula hoop now, Melissa 🙂
Have fun!
Nisha
I love that, Melissa! I am a fellow hula hooper myself and that I one of my three things for the week too.
A green juice in the morning.
15 meditation.
Night time streaches.
Thank you for this lovely simple reminder. Do you carry on the same habits from week to week sometimes?
Night time stretches…good one, Camila.
I will add that one when these ones stick.
And yes, the same habits stay until they stick!
xo
Nisha
Love this. Daily walks outside, morning pages in my journal, meditation. xo
Lots of morning pages in here. Love it!
Thanks, Stephanie 🙂
xo
Nisha
My 3 habits for the week each morning:
– oil pulling with coconut oil
– meditation (this morning I listened to Elayne Doughty – holy moly!)
– breakfast with greens (smoothie, juice, or sauteed!)
xo Nisha. This is fun!
Becca love, you’ll have to teach me oil pulling!
And isn’t Elayne the best?!
xox
Nisha
I LOVE oil pulling, meditation and breakfast smoothies… hmmm Becca, you are are speaking my language 🙂 haha!
Great idea! My three habits are: walking my dog every day at least 1x, plank, and read 10 pages of a good book a day.
Plank! I love to hate it. Great work, Lauren 🙂
Thats awesome! Sometimes I feel like there are so many things I am trying to do/change/add it can feel overwhelming. But I like this idea of 3 things, one week….I can handle that. 3 things: eating smaller portions, moving my body everyday, no email in bed.
Thanks for sharing!
Yes! These are SO GOOD, Sarah.
Cheering for you,
Nisha
Nisha, such a timely and lovely post!
Thank you. <3
Mine for the week:
Morning pages
The Desire Map
and Business Planning (Calendar Set-Up)
Awesome, Katie 🙂
So you’ll be Desire Mapping & Business Planning each day?
Big hugs,
Nisha
Awesome, I am doing the same for a few weeks: just having one week goals, with friends accountability, so I can actually have the reward in one week, not when I am 60 years old!
This week: 15minutes yoga and 10 minutes breathing/meditation before work every morning and singing a song I like out loud even if my voice is clumsy 🙂
So awesome, Natacha 🙂
I think I’ll borrow your sining-aloud idea!
Thanks,
Nisha
Great practice!
My focus this week will be exercise, healthy cooking, spending time with friends.
Great, Nancy!
So you’ve been cooking and exercising daily
Big hugs,
Nisha
Love the simplicity of this!
My three for this week: Walk or run every day at lunch, eat a salad or fruit with lunch, and get back to my nightly progress report or gratitude list.
Love the nightly gratitude list, Sarah 🙂
Are you living somewhere warm that a walk
at lunch is inviting?
Warmly,
Nisha
This is awesome, Nisha! Will pass it on. My focus this week will be:
Read a book a week.
Take a daily 30-minute walk.
Have breakfast every morning.
Morning breakfast is so important!
Glad you’re including that, Hakikah.
Big hugs,
Nisha
Yes honey – dancing (solo or in class -Michael jackson mondays dance class leaves me walking on AIR), eating food from home (not ordering out), and writing a little each day (for work or pleasure). Good reminder.
xx
Nice, Ishita love. Does that mean no ordering out at all this week?
xo
Nisha
I will, walk outside for 20 minutes everyday, practice my meditation breathing, eat raw spinach with my eggs in the morning.
Awesome, Rebecca. I love that these are clear and doable.
Warmly,
Nsha
Awesome idea.
It was my birthday this monday, and watching this just made me think about choosing 3 habits for this new year of mine: taking deep breaths & don’t let my impulses cause trouble, listen to my body, read & learn
& 3 habits every week, this week would be: eating a salad per day, writing down whatever bothers my mind, find something positive everyday (anything that I enjoyed or was good)
Happy Birthday, Giselle!
I love your 3 for the year + 3 for the week.
Big hugs,
Nisha
Love this. I will take a 30-minute morning walk , journal and write for work daily
Awesome, Regina. Rooting for you!
love this! (is there an echo in here? :D)
1. clean my house for 10 minutes. (yes every day.)
2. go for a walk (can be any/or of the following):
– walk break at work
-walk the dogs
– evening walk with the hubs
-greet the morning sunrise walk
3. Practice asking my Oracle goddess, Ra (yes she’s a she. 🙂 little questions and practice listening to a following the answers.
Love every one, Erin 🙂
Love you, too!
xo
Nisha
I amended my 10 minutes to pick up 10 things. I hated the time limit, it’s nice to just pick up whatever 10 things I feel like, as SLOW as I want. Plus, tonight I ended up picking up a good 20 things! And last night I was SO tired, so I counted a pair of a shoes as 2. Ha! I feel like the mama who says honey just pick up 10 things, and the little kid who figures out which way she feels like doing it. You’re a light and a love, Nisha! Love this so much.
Love it, Erin!
Yea Erin! Mamas could “pick up” forever as sweet kiddos “make deposits” right behind them! I use a trick called the “27 boogie.” Pick a number (use your intuition) and allow play and silliness or calmness or whatever emotion/music/flow you want to Boogie you along until you pick up that number of things. I do this with my kids. During a great boogie…we crank through the entire first floor of the house in about 8 minutes.
Loved this post! I’m usually the exact same in that I make a to do list that’s five pages long and then wonder why none of it gets accomplished! So this week I am transitioning to having a weekly to do list, rather than daily. I’m also creating workflow periods of time where I block off 1-2 hours in the evening, put my phone away, turn off email, and just immerse myself in whatever task I want to get done. I’m also really working on going to bed at 10:30pm every night, even if I haven’t accomplished all that I want to, because if I don’t get enough sleep, I will not be at my best the next day.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Yes to getting to bed early, Lindsay! Love that.
Let me know how it all goes 🙂
Definitely appreciate the blog about habits! I am making the habit of eating more greens. Just baked Kale and OMG so good!
Nice, Alina!
This is so perfectly aligned with my desire to get myself back into a purposeful practice of life.
My three for this week (which I started today):
-write in my journal every morning
-floss every day (sad to say I don’t make it a daily practice but know I need to!)
-send love, light and prayers to a loved one each morning
Thanks for inspiring!
Tricia, this practice is how I sealed the deal with flossing.
Cheering for you!
Big hugs,
Nisha
Hi Nisha-
I just had to come back and re-read this post I loved it so much the first time! I used to set new goals and expect myself to do them (whatever they were) every day for the rest of eternity. Of course I crashed and burned a few days in and made myself feel like a total failure. This approach was really revolutionary! I started thinking about my weekly goals over the weekend and then on Sundays, like you suggested, choosing just 2-3 for the upcoming week. It transformed the whole idea and execution of goal-setting for me! I’m also trying different apps to help me track my progress; I’ve found some (that show the entire month) are just too overwhelming, but other apps just show you the upcoming week so it’s not as daunting. My three goals/practices for this week are 1) oil pulling (I read others doing this too, how funny!); 2) meditate at least 5 minutes; 3) say my angel prayers (I just took Doreen Virtue’s Angel Card Reading course and am trying to get better at talking to my angels! ) So thank you thank you thank you!! You truly made a difference in my life by sharing this approach. Much love, Tarah
absolutely brilliant! I grab it!
Nisha, I adore this idea! What an incredible way to overcome “The Shoulds” and just start living your dreams!
Thanks, Molly, and thank you for reading!
Hello Nisha. I´m a reader (fan) from Norway, and I often re-read your posts, but I never comment. So the time is now!
I´m in the middle of studying for an exam, and it is a bit hard to have daily habits. HOWEVER, I guess that it is exactly in these kind of periods that it´s even more important to have a few daily habits as it´s so easy to start de-prioritising oneself..
I´ve always been a thinker, and seeker, and sometimes I feel so .. complicated. Thus, it is so frikkin´ refreshing to realize that actually no, I´m quite simple, and that suggestions like in this post work. My worst enemy is to feel overwhelmed, bcause then I get really paralyzed. So my new strategy is to really simplify things, and this post is a perfect example of this strategy.
Thank you for everything you do, Nisha! I really enjoy your work, even though it´s only from my screen, as I´m never able to join any retreats, courses, etc….
Anyhow, THANK YOU, You inspire me, and you are one of the few people I keep catching up on, even though I´ve done a cleanse of “inspirational people” to follow, get e-mails from, etc. You´re a keeper, for sure!!! (And your super-sweet friend Sarah Jenks).
Big hug from Hedda, all the way from Norway!
I love that tip. I think it seems to be so easy, but it is about creating our atitude in the long run. 3 commitements, 3 wins each day. And we love winning – it makes us so strong. I create the whole programm of waking our sexuality – based on one habits. Those small once. And the idea of sisterhood is great!
What a great way to approach all of life – one week at a time… You are inspiring me to do the same in order to gain greater control over what I would like to accomplish personally. Thank you for this post today…it came at the perfect time.
Love the gentle approach to developing a wealth of good habits. Thank you for sharing. My 3 concepts for the year are Ready, Fire, Love. My three habits for the week are: notice how it feels to be ready once each day, notice a moment of self-love every day, breathe hard every day, I often hedge in making a business ask or offer due to belief “I am not ready yet…” thus am curious to get in habit of noticing when I am ready – I’ll learn from this habit and work towards changing that belief. Rather than set big goals for the new year I realized it was even more important to get out of what I call “self-love debt”…gonna notice when i make deposits and move towards more and bigger deposits as I learn from observation, and I am gonna get back into my daily exercise habit after being sick for a few weeks…breathing hard is the most basic evidence I “showed up” to exercise. All kinds of fun things count for breathing hard!! 😉
Sisterly inspiration at it’s best! This week my 3 are:
1. Drink more water.
2. Run.
3. Nourish my inner child (she loves painting/playing with dogs/being inspired by Hayao Miyazaki films).
I’ve been setting weekly intentions, but this is another simplified way to do it. I love it. Mahalo Nisha <3
This is fun!
This week’s daily habits are:
1. Taking a walk outside for 400+ steps every hour (it helps the blood flow as I work from home and sit at my desk all day).
2. Do some yoga stretching exercises for 15-20 minutes every day.
3. Drink more water.