How to Stay Consistent with Your Habits and Routines

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At the beginning of a new day, week, month, or year, you may feel a burst of excitement and motivation to start a new habit or create a new routine for yourself.

These feelings may carry you through a few days or a week, but then you might find yourself missing a day.

You think to yourself well, I missed a day, so I might as well just stop. This is fairly common, and it’s why new year’s resolutions often fail.

One of the biggest challenges new habits and routines present is knowing how to stay consistent and motivated.

Motivation comes and goes in waves, so it’s important to know how to stick to your goals, especially when the motivation just isn’t there.

Here are some tips to help you learn how to stay consistent with your habits and routines.

How to Stay Consistent in Life

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Start small and build from there

Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, your fully fleshed-out new morning routine or healthy habits won’t be perfected in a day.

It’s important to start small and realistic and add more things on as you go.

For example, instead of adding an hour-long walk to your daily routine, start with 15 minutes. Once you feel comfortable doing that, you can increase to 30 minutes and continue this trend until you reach an hour walk per day. 

Another practical example is wanting to wake up early. Say you currently wake up at 7:00 am, but you’d like to start waking up at 5:00 am. Going from 7:00 am to 5:00 am in one day is a big jump, but waking up 15 minutes earlier each week feels much more attainable.

Implement habit stacking

Habit stacking is discussed a lot in the productivity space—and for a good reason.

If you aren’t familiar with habit stacking (or want to learn more about starting and sticking to healthy habits), I encourage you to read “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. 

Essentially, habit stacking is when you add in a new habit between two existing habits that you already do each day.

So for example, if you’d like to do 10 minutes of yoga every morning and your current routine looks like wake up, walk the dog, make coffee, then you might choose to add in 10 minutes of yoga between walking your dog and making yourself some coffee.

Have an accountability partner

As with most things in life, staying consistent with your habits and routines is easier (and more fun!) with a friend.

Having an accountability partner encourages you to show up every day and put your best foot forward with your routines. You’ll feel more supported and motivated to stay on track.

Whether this means you work on your habits and routines with a friend in person or just have a quick text check-in each day, this accountability will make it much harder for you to throw in the towel or skip a day.

Choose someone you trust that has similar goals as you do.

Focus on one new habit or routine at a time

It’s easy to be all gung-ho on a new habit or routine, especially at the start of a new year.

You may want to implement exercise and meditation and crafting and journaling all at once, but that is not going to set you up for success. That could lead you to burn out and give up on all of these activities at once.

Instead, choose one new habit or routine to focus on at a time.

Once you feel like you’ve mastered it and it’s become second nature to you, then you can add on another. This helps you really focus on that one new element to your days and ensure that it’s aligned for you.

Make them as enjoyable as possible

Your new habits and routines should be fun and pleasurable for you.

If you can’t find joy in it, then you probably will have a difficult time sticking with it. Think about ways that you can make the activity more enjoyable.

For example, is there a playlist you can listen to while you journal? Is there a beverage you can sip during your daily walk? Is there a candle you can burn during your meditation?

Keep your “why” at the forefront of your mind

Why do you want to start a new habit or routine?

If it’s because you think you should or because you think you have to, that reasoning may not be strong enough to motivate you on the hard days.

Make sure you add elements into your life that you actually want to do, and figure out why you want to do them.

Reflect on your “why” daily for encouragement.

Write down your goals daily

There’s a good chance you have an underlying goal within your new habits or routines.

For example, if your new habit is daily meditation, then your goal may be to feel more centered and present in your life.

If you start a new healthy morning routine including drinking a big glass of water and going for a walk, then your goal may be to lose weight or have more energy in your day.

Be sure to write down your goals every day and use them for motivation.

Celebrate your milestones

Celebrating all your wins, including wins involving staying consistent with your habits and routines, is important.

An example of a win you may celebrate is staying consistent for a week or a month.

Celebrating can look as simple as watching your favorite movie or as complex as going on a fancy vacation—whatever feels best for you!

Use each new day as a fresh start

We like to wait until New Year’s for a fresh start, but the truth is you don’t need to wait.

Every day, you have the opportunity to start over.

Instead of viewing a new month or year as the only chance, you have to start again and take each day as a new fresh start.

If you forget to do your habit or routine today, you can just hop back in tomorrow.

Final Thoughts

Staying consistent with your habits and routines is entirely possible for you.

It might take some more intentionality and knowing how to move forward when motivation is not present, but that’s nothing you can’t handle.

I hope you’ve gained valuable insight on how to stay consistent with goals so you can bring yours to life!

Remember that the little things we do each day make the biggest impact on our lives, so do the things that bring you joy.

How do you plan to stay consistent with your habits and routines? Let me know in the comments below!