@CJ_Hereregarding your comment about habits and routines, I read 2 interesting books on the subject. In particular, you mentioned your inner "rebel" girl and that word appears in Gretchen Rubin's Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of our Every Day Lives. My book club read it and I got far more out of it than the rest of the ladies so it may not be for everyone. In particular, the ladies who do audio books didn't care for something in her voice. I read the paper copy from the library and I found it really useful.
It is NOT a step by step manual on how to make or break habits. However, it dissects what she calls "tendency" types and then relates that back to how you can form positive habits or break negative ones. She doesn't label any habits as good or bad specifically - it's simply whether it's a healthy/productive habit you want to make or keep vs a hurtful/unhealthy habit you want to avoid or break. There are links to a quiz on her web-site that will help you determine which of the 4 tendencies you are.
I am, for example, a questioner. I can be convinced to do something or not based upon facts. There are 2 types that are more social - these are the ones that quit smoking for their children or lose weight because of feeling shame from sales ladies at the store when they need a bigger size. But, they may also take up smoking or split a dessert because of being around family and friends. The 4th type is the rebel and these are the hardest ones to make and break habits - sorry. And also sorry, since I learned earlier on that I was a questioner, I didn't focus as much on steps the rebel should take.
The other book I read was the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Among other fascinating topics, he explores the cycle of habit formation and the "reward" that follows completing the cycle that makes it self-perpetuating. For example, it used to be very uncommon for people to brush their teeth. It was such a health crises that the US Army couldn't recruit enough members who could pass their dental exams. There were a lot of products being advertised at the time, including ones referring to the "film" on your unbrushed teeth but the reward of the avoidance of the film still didn't inspire much attention to dental health. Then, one guy came up with the brilliant idea to add the mint flavoring to toothpaste and all of a sudden, there was a fresh and clean feeling attached to brushing your teeth and that became the reward. Suddenly everyone was brushing their teeth and health - physical and dental, improved dramatically.
The value of that book for me was thinking about the cycle and thinking about what rewards I can use to link to behaviors to trigger my own habits for the better. If you are a true rebel, this book may be helpful to you to help create meaningful habits so they become less conscious and more automatic.
Finally, remember that patterns get set - sometimes without our realizing it. If you change one aspect of the chain, that's a great opportunity to change other aspects of the chain. For example, if you commute to work and it's your habit to stop off at the gym en route and then suddenly you quit your job or end up working from home during a pandemic, it's easy to skip the workout because it's stopped being part of the chain of events of your day. These are the times when you need to be very intentional to set up a new habit or chain of habits to ensure that the workout is part of it. I'm going through this right now with my new job - I haven't yet figured out my schedule because I've been in training the past 2 weeks and from here on out, everything is optional. I need to be super careful that I don't create a sequence of habits that ignores my health and fitness goals and very intentional about getting started on forming the right habits because now is the best time to do that - before my sequence becomes automatic.
One example of my chain is that at lunch, when I'm done eating, I clean up all dishes to that point in the day and refresh my kitchen. Then, while I'm still in the kitchen, I pull out and wash all of my produce - fruit for a snack, lettuce and veggies for my salad, etc. Part of this is my slight procrastination to get back to work - I'm allowed to procrastinate the time it takes to prep the produce which is my immediate reward. That makes healthy dinners easier to follow through on because the stuff is literally right there ready and it becomes more effort to order in or pull something from the freezer, etc. That is also the reward - less demand/effort. I chop everything during "Judge Judy Happy Hour" and by 6pm, a fresh and healthy meal is only minutes away.
