Atomic Habits Summary:: You Make Me Feel Like Dancing

Lifestyle

Apr 4

Atomic Habits, Mid Life, Rambling, Dance more

Soundbites of “Atomic Habits” – Summary with a Mid Life twist, shimmy, and shake things up

I have a habit of dancing in public.

Sometimes, a great song comes over the Home Depot speakers, and without thinking, I do a little dancing. {Some stores play the best dance-able in-store songs. The Depot surprised me on this one.}

Leo Sayer’s “You make me feel like dancin’” played while we were looking at kitchen stoves, and I got a little jiggy down aisle 9.

It’s only appears like I’ve scrambled my marbles with this introduction into habits, but it sort-of parlays into this atomic habits summary.

Atomic Habits has taken the book world by gale-force winds talking about the simplest {and sometimes impossible to keep} topics…habits.

The topic ☞ Simple

The execution ☞ Vexing…

…along with sometimes being infuriating, tedious, daunting, and dull!

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, didn’t claim his ideas were revolutionary, but how he phrased, molded, and broke down the thinking behind our habits in easy-to-map lingo was the brilliance behind his book. Starting with the simple act we do {without thinking} every day…

Me dancing to a fun song in aisle 9 of Home Depot isn’t a habit, but finding JOY in the EVERYDAY is a conscious action that I’m focusing on so it’ll become a HABIT. {Find a positive over a negative}

There were a lot of great chipper-nuggets in the book.

This Mid Life Rambling focuses on three take-aways::

How we Talk to ourselves Becomes our identity

➤”I’m not a writer”

↠”I can’t eat healthy”

↠”Life sucks!”

➤“I’m not good at math”
{Unless there’s a 30%-off sign on a pair of Tory Burch Good Luck Trainers 😄}

Negative self-talk becomes an imprinted badge that shines brighter and brighter the more we utter the phrase {inside our head or escaping the lips}

Consciously change up your words and thoughts, and see what happens over time.

The 1% better rule {my chocolate & peanut butter ice cream favorite!}

Words alone won’t bibbity-bobbity-boo your best life or new habit into existence. But it’s a start.

For years, I’ve thought of myself as a better storyteller with my camera instead of my words, and I’ve said as much in my social posts, on my blog, and out loud all the time.

I don’t need to write my newsletter or blog perfectly today. But writing e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y. gets me 1% better.

And 1% better…IS BETTER. {A profound tweetable of all tweetables😉}

The beauty of middle-aged life is that I’ve already seen it in action.

When I ordered my first digital camera and started learning photography, I didn’t know my aperture from my ISO, or how to get the red focus square of dread to move to a person’s eyes.

Each time I picked up my camera and practiced, I became 1% better.

“The little things are everything.
How you spend your mornings.
How you talk to yourself.
What you read.
What you watch.
Who you share your energy with.
Who has access to you.
Get the little things right and the big things will work themselves out.”
~Mel Robbins

Getting back on track when you Careen off course

The third takeaway in this Atomic Habits summary is::

Habits can {and will} morph over time

Another luxury when we make it to Mid Life, along with time, is knowing that we all falter, stumble, or careen off the path now and then {or is that just me?}.

Hitch up your wagon, yank it back on-track, and start again. Try again, pretty girl.

If you haven’t heard of that last one, let me be the first to remind you…

“Get up and try again, pretty girl!”

I’ve had babies, one back surgery, and now into full-on Mid Life.

Through each of those chapters, my health habits have changed. They had to change. The time I work out is after the sun rises now. My exercise classes had to change after my back surgery. Menopause changes a whole heap of health stuff! So here I am, morphing my health habits again.🤨

A summary of the summary of Atomic Habits::

1/ We’re all FLAWSOME and muddling our way through life in different ways

2/Making a new habit can start at ANY AGE and at ANY TIME

3/ If you don’t want to change or add a new “habit” to your day,

YOU DON’T HAVE TO.

It’s your middle age in life, and you’ve earned the right to improve, stay the same, laugh, cry, or just huddle up on the couch with a glass of wine and popcorn for dinner.

{It worked for Olivia Pope and she was 🔥}

So on a day I didn’t really know what to write about - but needed to write on the blog {1% better today}, a rambling of these ideas popped in as I walked the track this morning.

Don’t forget to scroll down and click into the Mid Life Refresh Newsletter ⬇↓⬇

Are You Working on a Habit 1% a day right now?

💖 Andrea
📸I’m suspicious of cell phones with 12 photos or less in their photo app
😵‍💫Queasy at the sight of vitamin jars stuffed with cotton🤢
💃🏼Yep, really did dance in Home Depot

WAIT! You’re not on the list? That has to be a mistake!

P.S. Leaving you with kindness, motivation, and wise words from Yul Brenner today…

“…Let me tell you what I see. I see pride! I see power! I see a bad-ass mother who don't take no crap off of nobody!”
- Yul Brenner, Cool Runnings 1993

View on for two more Mid Life Atomic Refreshments::