The Best Way I Make Life Changes

Some may say it takes time to change a habit, and they’d probably be right. From what I’ve read, it takes upwards of three weeks to fully break a habit.

That hasn’t stopped me from going cold turkey.

When I started blogging every back in January, I decided I was going to do it in the morning, before I left for work, since not all of us have time to focus when we get home in the evening. The early mornings (4-5:30am) are typically the quietest around my house so it made sense.

One thing I did to get my morning routine to support this new style of getting with the program Monday-Friday was to adjust my sleeping habits. Based on the typical 90 minute sleep cycle, I figured out when I could reasonably go to bed and be able to wake at around the same time every morning. This meant that overall I would get less sleep, but from what I can tell so far, waking up at the right time versus the last minute has helped a lot.

What I really changed around cold turkey was my morning routine as a whole. I made the decision to do things differently and just went with them. As much as I wanted to sleep in, I was more motivated by not having to rush around in the morning. As I write this, I look at the clock and can tell I would still be asleep if I hadn’t started this.

It’s really made things better for me as I start my day. I don’t feel as crappy and want to take as big of a nap at 10am.

But back to the cold turkey thing.

I didn’t gradually work myself up to waking up an hour to 90 minutes earlier every day. I just did it. I rolled back my alarm clock and that was that. No dancing around the issue. If I was going to do it, I might as well do all of it and get used to it right away.

So here we are.

It might take three weeks to break a habit, but the desire to improve overwhelms that if one genuinely wants to do it.