My BAD habits with working from home…
(Cue – Bad Habits By Ed Sheeran)
November of 2021, 20 months after the pandemic began, I just STARTED to realize that I had created really bad habits.
Granted my life changed drastically in those 20 months, becoming a homeowner, a dog mom, and a baby mom, not to mention going through an unprecedented pandemic. As a result of all that, my daily rituals and habits drastically changed, and not in a good way.
I used to be a 5 am girl, starting my day with meditation, goal setting, and working on my dreams. My workout schedule was predetermined the week before, classes were booked and alarms set. Followed by structured days of work with prepared lunches, daily mindful walks, and strict bedtimes and rituals.
I can honestly say I have not done ONE of those things consistently in the past 18 months.
Today, I wake up when I feel like I need to, then I hang out with Parker. I start my day later than I should. I have almost completely abandoned morning routines and consistent work out schedules. I make my lunch on the fly and my day at work is never really predictable.
These bad habits started to creep into my life slowly over the past 20 months and then never went away.
There was just something about the unstructuredness of the pandemic, being home everyday, and having to put all life goals and plans on hold (because of both the pandemic and baby) that made me feel like, “why bother?”.
I know I am not alone in this. I am SURE we have ALL created bad habits during the time of the pandemic when our worlds were turned upside down. Maybe you started drinking too much (pretty sure we all did at one point). Maybe you stopped working out, or stopped making time for yourself (because how could you when there is a full house at home).
Whatever that is, or in my case the MANY things that I let slide, you CAN turn that around. We CAN get out of these bad habits and slowly start to recreate better ones.
Now just like we don’t want to do ALL of our New Year’s Resolutions at once, we don’t want to try to reverse every single bad habit at once. We want to focus on one thing at a time, slowly getting back to those better habits. If we try to do too much at once it becomes stressful and too overwhelming holding ourselves to unrealistic expectations.
Start somewhere, but start small. Start with ONE small thing that will set you in the right direction.
Adding in small habits slowly over long periods of time, makes it stick. It makes the changes feel less daunting, easy, and doable. Then before you know it, you are ready to take on the next one.
If you, like me, have created BAD habits, you CAN change that. Making small adjustments to your day will make a huge impact in the long run.
Slow and steady wins the race after all. 😉
-Emily
P.S. Remember to give yourself grace along the way. We have been through a heck of almost 2 years now, change was inevitable, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. 🙂
