Go Easy: The Habit Strategy of Convenience

Life Coaching Tip: As you dig into the goals you’ve set for yourself in the new year, creating fresh habits that support your goals is a surefire way to uplevel your life and realize your dreams. Habits can reduce stress and anxiety, and they can help you develop a sense of empowerment and self-control.

____________________

Habits are powerful because they allow you to perform more efficiently and reduce the need for daily decision-making, preserving your energy for more important matters—like manifesting a richer, more fulfilling, magnificent life!

There’s no shortage of books on habit formation that can provide tips and tricks to help you succeed. Three of my very favorites are:

Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Badass Habits by Jen Sincero

Each of these authors present timeless wisdom on building habits that stick. And while they share similar principles, each brings their own unique flair to the topic. You can’t go wrong with any of them.

If you decide to read one (or all!), I’d love to hear your thoughts and how you plan to incorporate some of their strategies into your aspirations.

Now, I know that establishing new habits might feel like a monumental task, but I’m here to help you get started with some impactful strategies.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share some of my personal favorites, and I encourage you to reflect on them. You might find yourself thinking, “Well, that’s obvious!” and you’d be right—sometimes the most powerful strategies are the simplest.

But the truth is, knowing what to do isn’t always the same as actually doing it.

And if you’re already doing some of these things, amazing! Keep up the momentum—it’s proof that you’re already on your way to creating a life that’s aligned with your desires.

Let’s kick things off this week with a strategy that can be a game-changer: The Strategy of Convenience/Inconvenience.

Simply put, when developing a new habit, make it easy to go right and hard to go wrong!

To a remarkable extent, we’re more likely to do something if it’s convenient, and less likely if it’s not. The amount of effort, time, or decision making required by an action has a HUGE influence on habit formation. 

The more accessible, effortless, and convenient a habit is, the more likely you are to stick with it.

Convenience can look like this:

• Keeping your workout clothes and shoes in the car so you can head straight to the gym after work.
• Pre-cutting veggies or preparing other healthy snacks so you can grab them on the go without thinking twice.
• Setting up a dedicated meditation space so you never have to hunt for a peaceful corner.
• Keeping a bottle of water by your desk or in your bag to stay hydrated throughout the day.
• Having a book by your bed to inspire reading over endless TV or doomscrolling before sleep.
• Automating your savings transfers so you don’t have to remember to do it manually.

Now, the same magic happens when we apply this principle to breaking bad habits. Making them inconvenient is the key.

The harder it is to do something, the more difficult it is to do it impulsively.

You can make a habit less convenient by increasing the amount of physical or mental energy required, hiding any cues, delaying it, engaging in an incompatible activity, raising the cost, or blocking it altogether.

Inconvenience can look like this:

• Logging off social media or deleting the apps from your phone altogether so you must go out of your way to reconnect.
• Storing sweets in hard-to-reach places, making it more of a hassle to indulge.
• Leaving your phone in another room while you work to reduce distractions.
• Implementing a 24-hour waiting period before making unplanned purchases.
• Keeping your hands busy with something creative to avoid mindless snacking.
• Canceling credit cards to stop adding to your debt.

Remember this: Habits are not just about routine, they’re about empowerment.

Every decision you make, even the small ones, contribute to the story of who you’re becoming. By making it easier to do the things that serve you and harder to do the things that don’t, you’ll set yourself up for a future that feels not only successful but meaningful.

Please give this strategy some consideration and challenge yourself to create a plan that will make it easy to thrive and hard to flop.

The conversation will conveniently continue next week with another of my favorite habit strategies. See what I did there? (wink) 

This is your time, my friend. Get it!

xo Tracy