Consistency
Consistency is my overall intention for 2024. I want to be more consistent throughout many aspects of my life. Over the next 6 months I’m going to highlight some of the areas in my life where I would like to be more consistent - Sleep, Fitness, Nutrition, Self-Care, Career and Community. Then in the last half of the year, I’m going to go back and revisit each area and see whether or not I was able to achieve my consistency goal and why or why not. For me, this is especially important to acknowledge since comparison is the killer of dreams. I’m setting these intentions for myself and I’m not using anyone else’s life or experience as a measuring stick. My journey is going to be focused on my life and how I can fit these things in to where I’m currently at.
First and foremost, I’m going to prioritize my sleep for rest and recovery. I should define what consistent sleep means to me - having consistent bed and wake up times so that my circadian rhythm runs optimally, getting between 7-8 hours of sleep nightly, and creating a relaxing evening routine that sets me up for optimal and restful sleep. I’m also going to work on shutting down my electronic devices 30 minutes before bedtime to start and I’m hopeful that I can get up to an hour before bedtime. My plan is to make sure that I have a consistent nighttime routine, get enough sleep and shut down my electronic devices 5 out of 7 days a week. I will start out with a more realistic number of 3 out of 7 days until I can get into the flow of creating a new habit. This should be sustainable and something that doesn’t start off overwhelming. Once I feel like I’ve been able to successfully obtain 3 days a week then I’ll go up to either 4 or 5 days. The point is to make sure I start out with something achievable and to make sure I can start the development of healthy habits. This is something that I would like to become a lifestyle change since consistent and good sleep help your body recover from illness, injury and workouts as well has help deal with stress. There are just truly too many benefits from getting consistent sleep.
Creating a new habit takes time, more time than most people actually give themselves before quitting. Something to think about and remind yourself often of is why is this goal important to you, what larger part in your life will achieving this goal help with. Write this down, put it in your planner, your phone, stick it to your fridge or your bathroom mirror, just make sure it’s somewhere that you will see it everyday and especially on those days when you feel like giving up or simply just don’t want to.