Do you ever wonder what life would be like if you could just change a few bad habits? What if you woke up earlier? What if you started to walk 10,000 steps everyday? What if you cut sugar out of your life? What if you started a meditation practice? What would life look like? Well, that is what I am setting out to do in the next 100 days until my birthday. I am exchanging bad habits for good habits.

I have chosen to create my version of a habit tracker after looking into what they entail. When I finished reading The Atomic Habit by James Clear I wanted to throw out the bad habits I have acquired since quitting my 9-5 job. One thing I can tell you is this book is life-changing in itself. He goes in-depth about improving habits and what it takes to get it done.

I have always known that a habit comes from doing something over and over again. What I never understood was why I couldn’t stick with the process to make the good habit last. I always thought that I was lacking something, maybe my will wasn’t strong enough or maybe I was just weak. What I didn’t realize was, I going about it all wrong. I was making habits harder than they had to be.

I was in the mindset of all or nothing. It is a mindset that I have always struggled with. It’s always been, I eat healthy or I don’t. I run on my schedule or I don’t. It’s a battle that I have fought with myself all my life. What never occurred to me is I didn’t have to go to war with myself. I didn’t have to make things tougher for myself.

Recently, I have come to realize that the only way I can change my bad habits is if I work with myself. I have to exist in the same space as myself, not ten steps ahead. Where I can’t see my WILL struggle to keep up, because once that happens, I am falling off the cliff into my bad habits once again.

Now, I don’t have horrible habits, but I want to improve how productive I am in a day. I want to be both mentally and physically healthy. I want to write. Whether, it’s a blog post or short story. I want to wake up with the sun and go to bed feeling like I did all I could do.

Ultimately, I have to change my present habits little by little to make a big transformation for my future success. By reading Atomic Habit I feel like I finally have the last pieces of the puzzle to make that happen.

I figured my birthday would be a good mile stone to shoot for. After 100 days, I haven’t made a plan. What will most likely happen is I will choose another milestone and add a couple of habits I want to enrich and continue on my merry way. Or maybe I will just keep working on the same habits.

So, here is to the next 100 days. Here is to improving my life. Here is to the future and what it has in store for me.