If you aren't familiar with architecture, a keystone is a stone at the top of a structure or building that holds everything together.
Your keystone habit is the one thing you do everyday, based upon on an action, a location, other people's actions or another habit that you do. You may not know it, but doing this daily helps your universe roll smoothly through day to day activities.
I learned something interesting in the past few months about myself. In August of 2021 I challenged myself to the #75Hard Challenge - maybe some of you remember it. In that challenge I drank a gallon of water, woke up early to get in two workouts, read pages of positivity from various self help and motivational books, ate healthy, drank zero alcohol, etc. It was a great lifestyle kick in the pants!
It was then I realized, I needed more water in my life. It was also then that I realized waking up early, allows me to drink more water through the day so that I am not waking in the middle of the night to go pee! Then, the two work outs a day made it so I was sweating more which was expending the water that I was a intaking. Also, waking up early allowed me more time in the day to read my pages. Working out two times a day with early morning made it so I was tired, getting to bed early ad experiencing great rest.
They are all related, of course. But my keystone habit? Early mornings.
If I slept in - I would have to stay up until 11:00 PM to get in my water, which had me up all night peeing, which is probably why I slept in. If I didn't do one of the workouts, I wasn't tired enough to go to sleep early and I didn't sweat out enough of the water. If I didn't wake up early enough, then I couldn't get my morning pages in so I would have to read at night - but reading at night is what puts me to sleep so that would then disrupt my plan of finishing my water.
You see, my mornings at the one structured thing that I need to have go perfectly so that everything else goes perfectly too.
So, I challenge you to define or decide what your Keystone Habit is! Don't know how? Start journaling about what you do every single day. When you feel emotionally or structurally off, start to compare to a great day and see what you did or didn't do - other habits could be working out, eating healthy, cutting off food consumption at a certain time of day, cutting off carbs/caffeine/alcohol at a certain time, stretching, meditating, breathing, etc.
Go to Subala's Public Forum to share what your keystone habit is!
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