The Year Of Better Habits

I didn’t make any resolutions for 2021. I knew right from the start—we all did, really—that it was going to be a year full of uncertainty, and it seemed foolish to try to demand any sort of rigor in the midst of that. Instead, I declared it a “year of months.” 

I really should have called it “The Year of  Better Habits,” because that’s what it was. I have to confess my failings: I didn’t add a new habit every month like I thought I would. Trying to time behavior change to an arbitrary calendar turned out to be as foolish as expecting it all to happen at once. A few of my new habits (the most pleasant ones) slotted easily into place in a matter of days. Some took months. Some took outside intervention to make stick. Others didn’t stick at all. 

I believe in accountability, though, so let’s review the things I tried.

The Morning Routine (January)

Wait…what? What I failed to recognize, right off the bat, was that a morning routine isn’t just a single habit. It’s a whole series of habits. I sat down, wrote out my perfect morning, and then expected the entirety of the makeover to stick immediately. 

It did not.

I ended up with some days that fit into my schema perfectly, and others that decidedly did not. And, while I talked a good talk about each day being a new opportunity, the truth is that I eventually traded in the perfection of that routine for a looser series of habits that were easier to implement and, individually, made more of a difference in my days. 

One thing that stuck: setting a mood. Turning on my oil diffuser and playing a lo-fi playlist turned out to be both thoroughly enjoyable and a signal to my brain that creative, focused time had begun. 

Mood Tracking (February)

In February, I downloaded an app called Moodistory to my phone and set about tracking the emotional trajectory of my weeks. At first, I found the electronic nudges to be helpful mindfulness reminders. For the first few months, they provided a way to check in with myself through all the ups and downs of pandemic life, leading me to reframe my perception of my days and choose happiness more often than not.

Then the big stuff hit. When my mood tracker ceased being a record of mild ups and downs and started being just a series of blue days (when I bothered to track at all), I got professional help.

That was the right call, but the first thing I learned in therapy was that being happy all the time isn’t a realistic life goal. I needed to practice being sad when sadness was called for. We all want to be happier, but there are times when setting that expectation is actively harmful. 

One thing that stuck: self-awareness. These days, I do a weekly mental health assessment with a therapist and am learning to accept the results as a snapshot rather than a report card.

Exercising (March-July)

There’s a trend here in trying to find technological solutions to make my life better. Throughout the course of the spring, I got really into Apple Fitness+ and started using it to regularly add afternoon workouts to my routine. It made sense to me to get my deep work done in the productive morning hours before using exercise as a transition into a more free-flowing afternoon. 

It worked for a while. I did a lot of dance, strength, and HIIT routines before the weather shifted and I realized I was exercising during the hottest part of the day.  With air conditioning, that shouldn’t have made all that much difference but, somehow, it did. I tried to keep at it as the summer progressed, but my regular workouts tapered off completely by September.

One thing that stuck: the knowledge that movement makes me feel better. More on that later.

Making Videos (August)

In August, I set a goal to upload 52 videos to the From Jenn YouTube channel by the end of the year. To get there, I’d have to make two videos a week, plus some. The idea was that by working quickly and consistently, I could build up my skillset in a new area, grow my subscriber base, and short-circuit my tendency towards self-doubt by always having something new in the works.

As of this writing, in mid-December, I’ve uploaded 23 videos—less than half my goal.

To be fair, some major life circumstances got in the way, and the goal I set was was ambitious enough that, to even be possible, it required just about everything to go right. That being said, 12 of those 23 videos on the channel were created after I made the big goal. More than half of my output for the year has happened because I made a commitment that set me on the path to habitual creation.

One thing that stuck: creating on a schedule rather than waiting for inspiration. When it became apparent that I wasn’t in a position to make two videos a week, I switched to an every-other-week schedule and I kept at it!

The Smallest and the Biggest of Changes (September-December)

September was the month when everything fell apart and, in a lot of ways, the last few months of 2021 have felt like building back from scratch after a disaster. It’s a small miracle that any but the most ingrained of habits (brushing teeth, making the bed, getting dressed) have survived the turmoil.

I started therapy (a new habit all on its own) and the idea of habits consisting of thoughts as well as actions has been a big part of our regular sessions. Incrementally changing underlying thought patterns has been a habit I’ve been working on since starting to meditate two years ago, but weekly therapy has sped up the process. 

That’s not to say that it’s fast. My therapist is quick to remind me that patterns forty years in the making won’t be rewritten in a month or two. With her help, though, I’ve been starting to see the places where thought, unconscious patterns, and action intersect, which has made some of the habits I’ve added in the last several months feel like they have surprising staying power. They’ve been formed at the place where my mental health intersects with my physical health and productivity needs.

I walk almost every morning now. The gentle morning workout centers my mind and soothes my anxiety in a way that banks energy for later in the day. 

I write for myself. At least once a week, I write something deep and true that will never see the light of day. Or, more to the point, I write something deep and untrue, but that I have believed to be true for as long as I can remember. Then, I burn it, sometimes with a little cedar or sage or palo santo to make it a ritual. Little by little, I burn away the old narratives to make way for the new.

There are other things too—reframing how I think about acts of kindness, changing the way I connect to my emotions, adjusting my expectations of myself and others, putting my thoughts under a microscope and asking why and how and where did that come from. These new habits aren’t the sort of changes that make great videos or blog posts. They’re not magic bullets to increase happiness and productivity. They aren’t even visible to anyone who doesn’t live in my head. In the end, though, they might be the biggest changes of all.

One thing that stuck: the knowledge that thoughts are habits and like any others, they can be changed.

The Year of Better Habits turned out to be just a start, but I have no doubts that I do have at least some better habits than I did at the start of 2021, so I’m calling it a success. On to 2022 because, it turns out, this just may be a lifetime’s worth of work.

Want to benefit from what I learned about habit-building in 2021? I’m creating a workbook all about it, including a free preview for newsletter subscribers. Join the list to be the first to find out when it’s released.