What made me love reading?

This year, one of the habits I’m trying to improve upon and track is my reading. I started outlining this episode and then I woke up in the middle of the night with some clarity and I’ve figured out what I needed to talk about.

So it’s almost 4:00 AM and here are my thoughts.

I love reading. It’s one of my favorite past times, it fills me up more than most activities I’m drawn to reading.

It feels like books are calling to me, which may sound totally weird. I can’t think of a day when I don’t read it’s it’s who I am. I know my love of reading is not held by a lot of people. Many people don’t read a book unless they have to for school. Or they feel like they have to for obligations sake. I started thinking back to my own reading story, the history of my reading life.

And when I look back at my childhood reading was part of my everyday life. Even my name came from a book my parents were reading together. It was a, a fantasy book and I ended up turning into a tree at the end.

Anyways, I remember my mom reading to me before bed and she would use different voices for every character. I still don’t know how she did it. I try to do a little bit of character voices for my kids and oh, man. It is hard. And she would do this, not just for the little picture books. When I was really little, she would do this for a lot larger books, like the Red Wall series, Lord of the Rings, the Little House on the Prairie series.

And she would just read these books to us out loud before bed. I remember we read the little house books. And Halloween was coming up and we dressed up as the Ingles family for Halloween. My dad wrote Christian children’s Sci Fi books, and my parents would read those to us before bed. And now my parents are reading those books to my own kids, and it’s fun to see that my kids get to experience the same books that I did as a child.

You know, I have so many fond memories of my family being together, reading it’s like going on an adventure that we all get to share.

And when we would go on road trips, we would listen to audio books. I remember listening to “Bud, Not Buddy,” which if you have not read that book, it is so good. And we stayed in our van to hear the rest of the story, even though we were already at our destination.

I remember going to the library frequently and doing the summer reading challenges. You know, looking back, I’m incredibly grateful for the reading foundation my parents gave me. Yet, I believe for a good portion of my life, that I wasn’t a great reader. I compared myself to my siblings who could read with ease.

My sister can reach twice as fast as I can and could devour multiple giant novels in a week when growing up. I on the other hand didn’t I would read some but nothing worth bragging about.

I can’t pinpoint the moment when there was a switch.

I went off to college and I started reading books on faith that interested me and about my personality and dating and all kinds of subjects that I had never read anything about before. And I think that was the key. I started reading books that gave me new perspectives. And they were interesting to me.

I realized that all this time I was trying to read books like the people, my family.

My family was all about scifi and fantasy books. But that never intrigued me. My guess is if you are not a huge fan of reading I think it’s probably because you just haven’t discovered the kind of books you love yet.

And maybe you believe that you aren’t a great reader. Yeah. I believe this about myself for years and it was all because I compared myself to my siblings and I don’t know, I just did it. Yet now reading is a huge part of my life. It’s a big priority and it’s something I do every day. So things can change. Even if you think that you’re a bad reader right now.

It’s also really easy to put reading on the back burner when you have kids. But I just wanna encourage you to not do that. I actually read more books now since having kids than I ever did before having kids. And I’m not just talking about picture books that I’m reading to my own children.

So today what I’m going to do is I’m going to talk about some ways to that have helped me read on a regular basis.

And I hope this will give you some ideas on how to make reading part of your everyday life. This is one of the questions I get asked pretty frequently is how do I have time to read? How do I make this happen?

So I have seven ways. On how to make reading happen in your home, as an adult.

The first one is to make it a priority.

If you don’t make it a priority, it’s not going to happen. And the reason I make it a priority is because I know how life-giving it is for me to read. Reading gives me the opportunity to gain the wisdom of people. Way smarter than me, that I would never likely meet. It gives me the ability to go back in time and experience a life very different than my own.

There’s a whole new world that reading opens up to me and I want to say yes to those adventures. That is why I want to read. It’s a priority.

Why do you want to read more? What do you want to gain from it? Are there topics you want to learn more about? Are you wanting to read a fun storyline? Do you wanna do this for relaxation?

Why do you want to read right now and think about it, and that will help you make it a priority when you know why you’re doing it in the first place.

My second tip is to make sure that you’re not too busy…

…because one of the easiest ways to not read is because we’re have too full schedules.

Think about the things that distract you from reading. It’s probably a lot of things. You might have a whole laundry list of to-dos and reading just doesn’t seem to make the cut. How can you make it, make the cut? How can you get distracted less?

Here are some things that I think are really common ways of why people don’t read as much.

For one, the TV. A lot of times people have a TV going on all the time. You don’t have to do that. You can have the TV off. You can only watch TV when you are sitting down and actually enjoying it.

Another reason is social media. It’s really easy to scroll aimlessly. You can actually even see how much time you spend on social media on a day. And it’s crazy if you spent that amount of time reading. How different would your life look how. How much better would it be?

Social media encourages comparison. It makes us feel. Like we are lacking in some ways. And it can really increase our feeling of being alone. Yet reading books can fill us up in ways that social media will never fill us up.

One of the things that I do to help me with this is where I normally sit down to relax because normally watching TV and social media are ways that people relax. Where I tend to sit down to relax. I always have a book sitting on an end table, so I will more likely reach out for that because it’s easy access.

So, think about where are the places that you go and sit down and just unwind. Instead of having your phone right there. How can you have a good book? Maybe it’s on your nightstand. Where can you put these books to make you want to read? Because it’s something you can easily pick up and in turn to.

You want to make reading really easy? I’ve been talking about habits and making things easy and changing your environment. This is one way to do this.

Another thing that I do is I try to plug in my phone and have it in the cupboard, in our kitchen. So that way I’m not on social media as much, there’s a lot of ways to make your environment work for you. So that way reading becomes a go-to instead of other things.

All right, here’s the third idea.

You want to think about how do you like to read.

And there’s no right or wrong here. There are some people that love listening to books. They’re all about the audio books. There’s people that love reading on a tablet or a Kindle. There are people who love to just read from an actual book and smell the pages. I am that person, but I also like reading from an audio book. I do not like reading on a tablet. If it’s on a screen, I am not reading it that way. But there are a lot of people that, that is just something that really helps them read consistently.

So figure out how do you like to read. I like to check out library books. And the reason for that is that I have a due date and I feel like I need to read them. There are some books that I have bought and I still have not finished them yet, or I haven’t even started them because I don’t really have that incentive to read it as quickly as other books, because I need to go and return them soon.

So I check out books from the library. I also put them on hold and when I have them on hold, it’s nice that they just come whenever they are returned. And so I don’t really have a specific time frame of when I’m going to read it. That has really helped me is having a due date, knowing that I need to read this and there’s a deadline there.

I also like to listen to audio books.

I feel like I’m doing a combination of the two really helps me to be able to read more often. And so if you like to read and listen, don’t feel like you have to choose one over the other, use them in different ways. So that way you can read more often.

I like to read two to three books at a time, and that might feel really overwhelming to you.

But the reason that I do it that way is it gives me the opportunity to read whatever I’m feeling like at any given time. And they’re typically on different topics. So there’s not really a whole lot of overlap. And they’re not a bunch of different storylines and so it, it’s not like I’m getting confused about which story is, which.

So I’m just going to give you an example. These are the three books I’m reading at the moment. So I’m reading “Dream Big” by Bob Goff. Right now I’m reading the “Gift of Dyslexia,” and I’m reading to my kids “The Long Winter,” and it’s by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

So that’s the three things I’m reading right now. So they’re very different books. You know, the storyline book is for sure the “Long Winter,” but “Dream Big” and the “Gift of Dyslexia,” They both are not books that have a real storyline. And so it’s been really good.

I’m normally reading those kinds of books, and then I read classics to my kids.

Maybe for you reading multiple books at a time might be something really beneficial. And I only figured this out probably, eight years ago that this is how I really do well is by reading multiple books at a time.

Figure out what works for you. Maybe you want to read one book at a time, or maybe you want to do multiples. The nice thing with multiples, if there’s a book that is not interesting. I don’t feel like I have to finish it and that’s okay.

I’ve talked about I’m reading a book about dyslexia and I’ve been learning a lot about that. If you have dyslexia and you struggle with reading, try listening to audio books, the audio version still counts. You can also change the speed of the reading to fit how you like. A lot of people with dyslexia, like to increase the speed, it helps them to focus and listen to it more. That can be really helpful to you.

Also, if you look at the YouVersion Bible app and you like to read the Bible, they actually have a dyslexia font to make it easier to read. So that is a really good option. I don’t know if they have it on Kindles and things like that, where they can have a font that makes it easier to read, but that might be something to look into. If you deal with dyslexia, or a loved one that you know, has that issue.

Here’s the fourth way to help increase your reading. This is to find books that interest you.

This is what held me up for years. There are so many books to choose from. It can be really overwhelming. And a lot of times you feel like, well, I don’t want to go all the way into reading a book and then find out, “oh, it has stuff that I’m not okay with” or “it’s just not something I’m interested. I wasted all this time.”

I have a couple of suggestions for you for that. Think about what genres of movies you like to watch. That can give you some ideas of what kind of books you would be interested in. If you are really into the scifi movies, maybe start reading books that are scifi and fantasy.

You know, think about the genres that you typically are like, oh, that sounds really interesting. Or if you see that, you know, there’s a lot of movies that are based off of books, read the book and then watch the movie and compare them. Typically the book is always better.

But that can give you some ideas that something that you can start with, if you don’t know where to go.

You can also ask friends for suggestions. You probably know people that read frequently. And ask them what books that they would suggest you could post it on Facebook. There’s a lot of places where you can go and find some ideas of what books you might love. And if you don’t love the book, Don’t feel obligated to finish it. It’s okay to read something and then say you, not that’s not great. And just let it go. It’s fine.

My fifth tip is to read in the in-between spaces.

As a mom, this is so key. It’s really hard to designate a certain time to reading. I don’t have a set time that, you know, from one o’clock to two o’clock I read every day, I don’t do it that way. What I do is I just fit it into my schedule wherever I can.

So if you like to listen to audio books, there are so many ways to increase your listening. I also do this for listening to podcasts. So this could still apply to listening to this even.

You can listen to this when you are taking a shower, getting ready in the morning, putting on your makeup, doing your hair. All of those things, you can listen to an audio book or a podcast. You can do this while you’re cooking. I love listening to books while I cook. It gives me something to, to think about. And, you know, these activities that you do that you don’t really have to put a lot of mental effort into, you can always add in reading.

When you’re driving to and from places, listen to an audio book when you’re folding laundry, when you garden. That’s one things I, I do when I weed. I mean, right now, it’s not the time to do a whole lot of, of yard work, but I love listening to books when I garden. I do this when I weed.

I love being outdoors, but I love reading books. And so it’s like, I combine the two activities that I really love and it makes it so rewarding, I feel like I’m accomplishing more.

Also do this when you’re doing housework, when you’re, you know, scrubbing toilets, you’re doing all of the things that are not always that exciting listening to a book while you do it can really give you the incentive to get things done faster and just enjoy it.

I’ve read books that are about like decluttering and minimalism while I’m decluttering. Like you can do those things while you’re listening. And that is really encouraging and I love doing that, like going through and purging stuff while I’m listening to someone talk about it. You can work things together to really make it work really well for you.

You can also do this when you have a physical book, maybe you’re waiting in the carpool lane to pick up your kids. One of the things that I do is when my husband is driving, like on the way to church on the way back, I’ve been reading “Little House on the Prairie” to my kids and my husband listens too. But I read on those drives.

When we drive to go to his parents’ house, it’s an hour drive. I read typically on the drive and on the way back. And that’s two hours of, of reading that I get in when we could just be sitting there listening to the music or talking or whatever, but it’s been one thing that we really do as a family. You could also do that with an audio book. But I do that a lot bringing books on the drive.

You can also do this while you’re cooking. Like I put stuff in the instant pot when things are in the oven, I’ll read for, you know, seven minutes, then I go and check on something and I read a little bit more and it’s just, it’s a little bit choppier but that’s okay.

Make this work in whatever your schedule looks like. You can find little pockets of time to read if you really want to.

The sixth idea I have for you is to start a book club or join one.

This is something I just started doing. I started my first book club with a few of my friends and it has been amazing. This isn’t like a rigorous book club. All I did is I invited two of my really close friends, and I know that they both loved to read and I wanted us to get together more often and have some accountability to read some books.

What we do is each month, one of us chooses a book. We all read the book. We get together at a restaurant without our kids. And without our husbands and we just spend time talking about the book connecting, and then we decide which book we’re going to do next.

Each of us get to choose, and it’s been really fun because I’ve been reading books that I would never have chosen on my own. And I get to be exposed to things that I went typically read, and it broadens my horizons. And it connects us in a different way than we’ve ever had before. It’s been a really fun thing.

So you could start your own book club. You could join a book club. I mean, I’ve done Bible studies where we go over a book and that’s been really fun, but it’s more like you, you read like a chapter and then you discuss, and then you go the next week and you did it on a weekly basis. You can make this work however you want.

But feel free to start a book club. And I’m guessing your friends would be like, “Yes, we’re totally on board. We would love to do that with you.”

This gives you an opportunity to meet with friends. And I think that’s a great thing.

All right, here is my last tip for you. Is to set a reading goal.

Now I have never done this until this year. And it has been incredibly motivating for me. Because I’ve read a lot and I have never had any idea how many books I read in a year.

I had the idea this year, since it’s beginning of 2022, to track how many books I read in a year. And so instead of just tracking them, I thought, well, I should probably have a goal, an idea of what I would like to read.

And so my goal for this year is to read 52 books. That’s a book a week. I’ve been writing it down. I even have it on just like a sheet of paper. Isn’t just regular lined paper. It’s nothing fabulous at all. And once I read a book, I’ve been writing down what the book title is, who the author is, and I just started writing the date so I can track how many I’m doing.

So far, I’ve read seven books this year. Which I’m pretty proud of myself because that’s more than one a week. But I’ve been surprised on how exciting it is for me to finish a book. And even my kids are like, you’ve finished a book. Write it down on your list. How many do you have on your list? And they’ve been interested in doing that with me. So that’s been kind of fun that it’s been kind of like a family thing a little bit.

Maybe what you can do too, is, is write down how many books you read in a year, maybe set a goal. It doesn’t have to be 52 books. It could be, “I want to read 10 books this year.” Or three books this year that that’s more than most people do. So. Maybe set a goal like that, or maybe a goal could be something like I read twice a week. It doesn’t have to be a number of books to accomplish, or maybe I read 10 minutes a day having a goal like that will help you reach your bigger goals of reading more frequently. So whatever that is, go and do that.

Maybe you want to set a goal that might help you read more frequently.

Wherever you are right now, I want you to look back at your own reading timeline. I never thought about my own reading timeline until I woke up at four in the morning and had this like, Download.

I want you to look back at your own reading timeline. Did you read much as a kid? Think about what it was like. Was there ever a time that when you loved to read? What books were encouraging and what books did you feel like you couldn’t put down?

And when you do this, you may recall some negative things. It could be things that your teachers have said, parents , siblings, other people that have maybe said your reading ability isn’t up to par. Maybe you’ve believed yourself that you’re just not a good reader. You’ve just made that your crutch where you just feel like, well, I’m not a good reader. I just don’t read. I just don’t do that.

You don’t have to be like that for the rest of your life. You get to choose what the rest of your timeline looks like. You can be a reader and a lifelong learner.

I believed for decades that I was not a good reader. Yet, I read more than a lot of people they know. And so you can completely change the trajectory of your of your timeline.

I want to encourage you to say yes to going on an adventure in a book. It has been transformational in my life and I’m sure it will be for you. Don’t put it off, take some time for yourself and read it is so important and it is so good for you.

Thank you so much for being here today. I hope this episode leaves you feeling really filled and encouraged and ready to read a book. I really hope that you get to experience how wonderful reading is and that you can experience it for yourself.

Spend some time on your own to read it will make a world of difference.

Hey friend, welcome to today’s show. This whole year, we have been going through a lot of information, helping us create change in our lives without using a typical New Year’s resolution.

In my podcast, episode 75, we talked about why resolutions typically fail. And a lot of it is because we’re trying to do something that seems big and daunting. We just don’t know how to do it or how to stick with it.

And we’ve been really going through a lot of information based off of the book, Atomic Habits, by James Clear, helping us figure out what are the mindset blocks we have, how do we change our environment?

And today we’re going to talk about habit stacking. So we’re going to start this off and I’m going to just tell you the story of a typical morning in my life.

So I wake up. Not to an alarm. And just when my body naturally wakes up. And one of the things that I do in the morning is we say to Echo, the Alexa device, we say

“Echo, good morning.”

And that queues Echo to tell us the weather for the day, it then reads to us, our devotion. Our church has a podcast that has a daily devotion on weekdays. And so we listened to that devotion. And so we’re starting our day praying, reading the Bible, hearing that devotion. During that time, it turns on the lights in our bedroom automatically.

And it’s not like the overhead lights, just the ones on the side, like our table lights and it’s, it’s just like, it helps me wake up in the morning. It’s it’s a really good start of the day.

So once that is done. My husband and I are talking to each other in bed and then I get my robe on and we make the bed together and I open up the blinds. So that is our morning routine. And that’s an example of habit stacking.

All of us wake up in the morning. We get to choose what we do next. And when you start creating habits, you think about the things that just automatically seem normal.

For example, when you go to the bathroom, this is something we all do. Hopefully you have a routine where you flush the toilet. You wash your hands and then you dry them. You don’t have to think about, “Oh, I just went to the bathroom. Maybe I should flush the toilet or I might just skip washing my hands.”

These are things that we just do so frequently and repetitively that one action of needing to go to the bathroom causes a chain of reactions.

So habit stack is when you take a habit you already have, and you tie it to new habits you want to have.

This is really powerful. You can intentionally stack habits with something that you already have on autopilot. Something that you do automatically, you don’t have to think about and you just add a new habit to what you already have as a regular habit in place.

Looking back at the example of our morning routine. James and I, we talked about what we want our morning routine to look like, because we wanted to start off our day well.

We want it to be relaxing. We don’t have an alarm. We typically wake up at the same time. Every day, we wake up at seven.

We realized we wanted to do a devotion together daily. And so we wanted to make it easy, something that would be taking all the reasons why we shouldn’t do it and all the reasons that hold us back out of the way. Having it just automatically have Alexa read it to us and listen to it without having to do anything was a game-changer for us.

And that’s been really helpful. And, we would get out of bed before we had this, this routine and I would always have to go look at my phone and check what the weather was because I wanted to dress according to the weather, and know what to look for for the day and be prepared.

And now I don’t have to have my phone in the room. I can have my phone charging in the living room. We have it underneath the kitchen cabinet, so it’s closed and it’s something that I don’t go and look at. And I know what the weather is, so I don’t have to use my phone right away.

There’s a lot of studies out there that show that when you use your phone in the morning, it starts you off on the wrong foot.

So that was hitting two things when we say Alexa, good morning. It tells us the weather and then it goes through that devotion for us.

We really liked adding the light to our room because it gently wakes us up. And it brought us to this more relaxed morning routine.

Another thing with our morning routine is we used to not make our bed. We probably have been making our bed for the last five years, maybe five or six. We used to feel like it was just a waste of time. But then we realized that it was much more inviting and our bedroom looks so much nicer with having a bed made, which is like an obvious.

And we noticed that when we were getting into bed, we’d have to make our bed so we could get into it because it would be all screwed up. So it would be making our bed anyways. So instead of waiting till the end of the day, We can enjoy it because we make the bed in the morning and it looks nice all day.

And then the last thing about our routine in the morning. Is that we put a plant in our bedroom. And so now. I open up the blinds each morning, because I want to make sure the plant has enough sunshine and it won’t die. I’ve realized that it makes a room much more cheery and bright.

All of these things were tied to a routine waking up in the morning. And what we did is we habit stacked all these different habits we wanted to have in the morning, like do a devotion in the morning. And not look at our phones right away, but we still wanted to know that the weather. All these different things. So we habit stacked in making our bed like making things routine, opening up the blinds. It becomes this thing that we do automatically now. And we don’t even have to think about it. It has simplified the process.

One of the things that James Clear says is,

“No matter how you use this strategy, the secret to creating a successful habit stack is selecting the right cue to kick things off.”

And I think that’s really important. So if you are wanting to change something in your life, you need to figure out what habit you already have that would be a good place to fit that new habit and stack it.

So if you want to create a, a daily habit, but you tie it to something that you don’t do on a daily basis. Maybe you drive your kids to school, but that’s only Monday through Friday and you want to tie something to that event on a daily basis, you’re not going to be doing it on the weekends. What kind of thing do you do every day that you could tie those habits to.

Think also about the timing of when you want that habit to occur and tie to something during that time of the day. Like, if you want to do it in the morning, maybe you sit down and eat breakfast in the same spot every day. We are creatures of habit to begin with so If you can start tying what you are currently doing to that it makes your life so much easier.

The last thing you need to make sure you do is you make it easy.

Us saying ” Alexa, good morning,” and it just tells us everything. We just lay there and we don’t have to do anything. It’s not like we are actively reading our Bible, we’re listening to it. We’re just absorbing it.

What things could you do to break down all of those barriers to make it really simple and easy?

Another thing that James Clear says is that:

“goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”

Creating habits and stacking them is the system to get to the goals you want to have. It’s all those little tiny actions that create the success that you’ll eventually get.

What habits do you already have?

You probably don’t even have to think about them because they are so ingrained in your daily life, but try to think about how you could stack something new that you want to add into your routine.

So I want to give you some more examples. And most of these are from my own life.

For us, our breakfast, we have a lot of routines in our morning. When we sit down for breakfast, I have a bin that has all of our vitamins in it. It has our devotions. We do an M and M for each person. When say our breakfast benediction. I talked about on a previous episode.

What we do is we just pull that thing down and it has all the things that we need for the morning.

Once we have finished eating breakfast we do our morning devotion. And then we hand out the vitamins, to their kids and to us. And then we do our breakfast benediction. We recite that together and we give each other one M&M and then we’re done with our breakfast routine.

I was wanting to take vitamins on a daily basis and I wasn’t tying it to an event until we started tying it to breakfast.

Then we realized, we just make sure that when we are sitting down for breakfast, we do vitamins at the same time.

We started off doing devotions just with our kids in the evening time before bed. And then we started talking about it would be really nice to do devotions in the morning and at night. And so we started adding devotions into it.

Then we started adding in the breakfast benediction. It’s just been one habit stack on top of the other to, really figure out what type of morning routine we wanted to have.

Here’s another example, one thing that you hopefully should do at least twice a day is brushing your teeth. When you brush your teeth, you could use that time to get like a little bit of exercise, you could do squats during that time. You could pray, you could be silent and present and just brush your teeth and pay attention to it.

If you’re wanting to add just a little bit of workout in your day. Add it to your brushing of your teeth, or if you want to make sure that you are spending time with God and praying more frequently. Tie it to brushing your teeth. I mean, there’s things that you can do to really help you.

I’ve even noticed driving to certain locations, I’ll talk to the kids about different things. Like we’ll do some different homeschooling things while we drive, I’ll ask the kids, how many eggs are in a dozen.

Well, my daughter just figured out how many feet are in a mile. And what temperature is boiling and asking these questions. And we do that on our way to church.

We volunteered at the food bank and so we do that on the way there, and it’s tied to that routine. We do that once a week going there. That has become a routine for us because it’s a habit stack where we do this on Wednesdays. We don’t do it on the typical days because we’re not driving anywhere. We’re normally at home.

But you can tie things to different things that you do.

One of the things, when my daughter was going to public school, I was riding my bike and we have a cargo bike. And so I would ride our kids to school each day and I would pray out loud over both of our kids on the drive there. That was something that I created into this routine because I was going there every day and I tied that to something I was already doing.

One thing you could do too, is think about you go to the bathroom frequently. Maybe at the beginning of the day, you wipe the counters with the Lysol wipe, and then you wash your hands after it making sure your bathroom was a little bit cleaner.

It’s just these little things that once you start doing them, it compounds.

Maybe when you wake up and you turn off the alarm, you go and you make your bed right away. And then you open the blinds.

For cleaning, this is something I’ve really tried, figuring out different routines and habit stacking to make things easier.

Like when I am making a meal, instead of waiting till the end of the meal to put things away, putting things away as I go. When I take something out, I put away afterwards, even if I might have to pull it out again it’s worth it for me to just continually be putting things back into the original place. And That has become a routine that I don’t even have to think about anymore.

Another thing is when we have the dishwasher unloaded, we try to unload it as quickly as possible, and then just fill it up with all of the dirty dishes. So there’s not dirty dishes hanging out in the sink. Because I’ve realized that when I have dirty dishes in the sink, then we have pots and pans that are dirty and I don’t have room to wash them. And it just becomes this cycle of having a really messy house.

And so doing some little things right at the beginning, creating some habits and then stacking them with things that you already are doing, just makes life a lot easier.

One thing, when you go into your house, having a routine where you hang up your keys in the same place, you put your shoes away, all of these things, it sounds like common sense, but how can you tie things to what you already are doing?

Maybe you don’t have those routines in place. How can you start doing that? And a lot of it is just putting things in place to really help you be successful and just doing one little thing at a time.

These habits are really small. But those small habits make a huge impact on your life. When you look at it for the rest of your life because they become routine. And then you can add more of these little habits that help you get into the direction you want to go.

Okay. I have one more example for you.

So when you’re making a meal and you’re plating your food, maybe your goal is to always put vegetables on your plate first, because you want to eat more vegetables. Doing those little things will help you get healthier. And that’s just a little tiny habit that you can stack onto what you already do.

You already are putting food on your plate. Why not just start putting things in your favor and stacking those habits.

So, the homework that I have for you today. I want you to come up with some ideas on how you can create a habit stack that will get you closer to becoming the person you want to become.

Think about a routine that you already have. Maybe it’s your morning routine or your evening routine. If you have kids, these are the routines I would go and look at first.

Try to figure out how you can automate a lot of these things.

Our evening routine. When people come to our house, they probably think we’re like the craziest people in the world because what we do in our house, like James has made our house very tech savvy and everything’s automated.

One of the things that we do is at 7:42, the lights flicker in our house. And so they just like pulsate. And when people come to our house, they’re like, what on earth is going on? Because the lights just start going a little crazy.

And then that’s just the warning that an announcement is coming. And then Alexa, through our whole house goes and says,

It’s time to get ready for bed. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

And then there’s a six minute timer and our kids know that when the lights flicker, they’re already bolting out going and getting ready for bed and they wanna beat that six minute timer.

We don’t have to be the ones telling them, okay, it’s time for bed. Bedtime’s getting close. We don’t have do any of those warnings. We’re automating it. We’re stacking these different habits to help them get their stuff done and putting it on this timer and we’re making those routines just simplified.

Most people who are parents they really struggle with the morning and the evening routines.

Think about which one is bugging you the most. What is just driving you crazy? What could you tweak on your morning or your evening routine that will really help your family? It will help you feel more sane, more fulfilled.

How can you stack some new habits that you want to create? Maybe you want to make sure that you have devotion time with your kids, but you just haven’t set it up and it doesn’t seem like you can be consistent. How can you tie it with your bedtime prayers or even maybe you don’t have a bedtime prayers and you want to start implementing it.

How can you start creating a routine that will work for your family?

And it’s going to look different than mine, and it’s going to look different than your friends.

Come up with something that will really work for you and hopefully today’s episode has given you some ideas.

This is endless. You can do so many different things when you start stacking these habits and those little things will make a world of difference in your life.

Thank you so much for listening to today’s show. I’m so glad that you’re here and make sure you tune in to next week’s show.