The only way to establish a new habit is to put the action you want to become a habit into a daily routine so that you’ll do it enough times for it to become automatic. Before an action is a habit and part of your daily routine, just think of all the options you have. Options are what pull you away from doing something you've decided to do to change the status quo. In other words, you have to learn to be an option stopper, whereby you don’t give yourself the option of not doing the action you want to have become a habit.
For example, if you want exercise to be part of your daily routine, then you have to stop giving yourself options out of exercise. Until exercise is a habit, your options will always look better than exercise. But if you’ll be an option stopper, one day you’ll realize you have a new habit, you're happier and life is better!
Have you ever stopped to think that right now your life as it is, is the result of your daily routine? It is. For most SHEs, we have such a developed sense of spontaneity that we're not all that excited about consciously creating a routine...until we get a taste of the freedom a good routine gives us in addition to more free time to play.
NOSS (National Option Stoppers Society)
Through the winter months, my husband Terry and I both got bad colds and we didn’t do much for almost a month. The weather was also nasty and even after we were feeling much better it seemed too rainy or 
just too cold and we’d opt out of our walk. And besides, we even had a bigger reason to opt out. A deer was mauled and killed by a cougar just a few homes away from us.
For several weeks after the kill, I found myself singing the “lions and tigers and bears, oh no” lyrics when I’d venture outside. Three months went by when I realized I needed to stop giving myself options out of walking. And I was becoming more lethargic as March began to beckon me out to walk.
I walked four days in a row (I took Buckley my neighbor’s big dog as cougar security) and when I invited Terry to walk on day five, it was so far out of his sight as a choice, you would have thought I’d asked him to join me in eating slugs for lunch.
Most of us are great option stoppers with our kids as we train them to have good manners, pick up after themselves, wipe their feet before they come in, cough into their arm and the list goes on and on. But when it comes to us adults, most of us aren’t so good at option stopping. Since there’ll always be a little girl in us, we’ll always be facing that child as we continue to learn and grow in this life. We will be successful at establishing good habits when we find that we need to improve in an area, decide what it is we need to do to bring about that change, then do it in the face of sabotaging options.
The next time you make a decision to change and before it becomes a habit, stay awake, because you’ll be dancing down the road of life and you’ll merrily bump into a juicy option. Look it right in the eye and say, “Sorry, but I’m going to do what I planned to do, so be off with you. I’m a member of NOSS the National Option Stoppers Society!
Just think how wonderful it is to have a daily routine that delivers to you a life filled with excitement, joy, love, health, abundance and peace!
When you plan out a daily routine, be sure to add day dreaming to it. Just click on this picture of me making friends with a baby chipmunk, during my day dreaming time.
Love,
P.S. My get organized book "The Joy of Being Disorganized" was written specifically for the SHE (Sidetracked Home Executive). It'll guide you to simplify your life and get organized just enough to please you. Just click on the cover for more information and also to purchase if you want to.
