39: 3 Things I Do Every Day: Building Success Through Root Habits

See the show notes for this Episode here.

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Transcript:

When we establish these root or core habits, they create a framework for success that can be expanded on over time.

I'm Bonnie Christine, and this is where all things creativity, design, business, and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town, tucked right inside the Smokey Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. When I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today, I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want and is wildly profitable.

Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast. Hey there and welcome to another episode of the Professional Creative Podcast. Today we'll be talking about the importance of what I call root habits and how they can help us build a successful, balanced, and more fulfilling life, both personally and professionally. Sound good? As a creative entrepreneur, I've found that these root habits are really essential for shaping my business and my overall wellbeing. A little bit later in this episode, I'm gonna be sharing with you three things that I do every single day that I find make all of my other habits that I'm wanting to develop and keep easier.

These root habits are like the foundation of a plant providing all of the necessary nutrients and support that we need for growth. So by establishing and maintaining these habits, we can create a stronger foundation for both our growth and our business and our personal development, which will ultimately lead to a more sustainable and thriving creative career.

Before we dive in though, I want to tell you about a free download that I have for you that's gonna go with this podcast episode perfectly. You can go download my personal habit tracker and ideal week worksheet that's gonna help you establish these root habits, keep track of them, and make sure that you are in control of having your ideal week over at the show notes for today.

Root Habits help us achieve our goals and maintain that healthy balance in our life. So by developing consistent routines and practices that positively impact various aspects of our lives, we can stay focused on what matters most, while also ensuring that we make time for self-care and personal growth too. These root habits contribute to a well-rounded life, and they help enable us to manage the demands of our business with our personal life more effectively. So as a result, we can achieve our goals and live a more balanced life. Yes, so one of the main benefits of these root habits is increased productivity.

The habits create structure and consistency in our daily routines, and that ultimately helps us use our time more effectively. Improved focus is another benefit of root habits is these routines help eliminate distractions and cultivate mental clarity, which I'm always interested in doing more of this enhanced focus can in turn, result in better decision making and help us better approach challenges and opportunities with a clear and focused mind.

So I want you to start thinking about some habits that you could implement in your life. These root habits are powerful as they can serve as a foundation for building other positive habits and routines. On top of when we establish these root or core habits, they create a framework for success that can be expanded on over time. This is often called stacking. So if you have a habit that you've already mastered, let's say making coffee in the morning, but you also want to start reading a book in the morning as well, well maybe you stack those right?

So you can make coffee and then drink your coffee while you read that book. So that would be called habit stacking. By consistently practicing these root habits, we can develop the discipline and the momentum that we need to adopt the additional positive behaviors and routines that we want to develop.

Over time, these habits compound and you'll find it easier to maintain progress and ultimately achieve your goals. So let me share with you three of my own root habits that you'll find me doing every single day. The first one is my morning routine. I think it's really important to start the day with intention, and so there are several things that I do every single morning and I recently was able to stack on top of them.

So I'll first tell you my initial morning routine and how I've been able to stack on top of it most recently. So for years, my morning routine has looked like waking up at around seven o'clock, getting the kids ready and out the door for school and then going to workout at eight 30. So I go workout at eight 30. This is after I've had breakfast and after I've had my morning coffee,

and then I head to the studio around 10 o'clock. Now, most recently I wanted to start reading in the morning as well. Specifically, I have been wanting to implement more time for reading the Bible, but this could be anything that you want to really focus on developing your habit or a skill around. But I've also been working on prioritizing my health.

And so in December, actually for Christmas, David and I invested in P E M F, Matt and Red Light Therapy, and so I wanted to incorporate all of these things together. So now I wake up 20 minutes earlier, my alarm goes off at six 30, and then I'm out of the bed at six 40 and I get on the P E M F Matt.

And so while I do this, I also do the red light therapy while I read the Bible. And so I was able to stack three habits on top of each other and attach them to my morning routine. And I've been doing this now for nearly three solid months, and I can't believe how much better I feel in the morning that I've stacked these things into my morning routine.

This episode is sponsored by my very own guide called Start Simple in Surface Pattern Design. Have you ever wanted to see your artwork on products or work for yourself and use your creativity to build a career that you love? If so, I made this guide just for you. I created it as a way to help creatives take the overwhelm out of getting started in surface pattern design and begin learning how to design their own fabric and wallpaper gift wrap and stationary.

Inside this 44 page guide, you'll learn how to gather inspiration and create collections, how to promote your work and pitch like a pro, how to create income from your artwork and get a behind the scenes look at what it takes to design a fabric collection. Whether you want to add an extra income stream from licensing or craft an entire breathtaking career, the start simple and surface pattern design guide has you covered and it's entirely free. So hop on over to bonnie christine.com/guide to download your copy today. Again, that's bonnie christine.com/guide. I'll meet you there.

Let me tell you about one more hack that I kind of built into this morning routine that has helped so much. So the P E M F Matt, it takes a little bit of time to get warm so it actually warms, and I'll link all of this in today's show notes.

In case case you wanna go check it out, but it takes a while to warm up. It usually takes like 30 or 45 minutes to warm up, and so that's tricky in the morning because I'm waking up and wanting to get on it at the same time. So I invested in a little plug that is attached to an app on my phone, and then you can schedule for when it comes off and goes off.

So when it comes on and turns off, and I think there are so many different ways that you could utilize a plug like this, but it's basically a smart plug. So my P E M F mat starts to warm up at 6:00 AM which means when my alarm goes off, I know that it's already warm and it's waiting for me, and that helps me reinforce the habit of getting on it every morning.

So this has been a really amazing addition to my morning routine and it sets my whole day up for success. Okay, so we're gonna jump to the evening now with the second thing that I do really almost every single day, and this is cooking dinner. This is one way that I really nurture creativity and connection in the family. I've always loved to cook, but it serves so much more for that to me as well. It's a time where I'm truly unplugged, meaning I'm not keeping up with anything else. I'm in the moment and really thinking about the ingredients and the cooking and the timing of it all. But since my children are a little older, they're seven and nine now, they love to come in the kitchen and help me cook and help me decide on what we're having and plate things and get the water ready for everyone.

And so it's been a really sweet connection point, but it also means that we are prioritizing our health because we 100% eat better when we eat a home cooked meal than when we go out to dinner. Not that we don't ever go out to dinner, of course we do, especially when we travel. But if it's a normal day with a normal night, then I'm cooking in my kitchen every night. This is a root habit for me because I know that when I'm cooking, we're getting the benefits of improved health and cost savings and fostering connection with my children. When I do these things, everything else in my day feels more accomplished and better as well. Now, the third root habit that I have is consuming information and really nurturing a growth mindset.

So literally every single day I am actively learning. Now, oftentimes I do this in the form of an audiobook or a podcast, and so I'm listening and learning in the margins of my day, meaning when I'm driving or when I'm getting ready and you know, doing my hair and makeup in the morning or maybe when I'm doing the laundry or something like that.

It's a practice that I know keeps me moving forward. So I consider it a root habit because number one, I'm doing it every day, but also by way of this root habit, everything else becomes easier to me. It works to propel my knowledge base and therefore what I have to pass on to other people as well. It keeps me inspired, it gives me constant access to new ideas and bigger thinking and new people to connect with.

And so I know I've had times in my life where I felt like I haven't had time. In other words, it wasn't important enough for me to make time for listening and learning constantly, and it really makes me feel like I'm running dry, I'm running out of ideas, and I don't have anything that is propelling me forward. And so I've learned over the years that constantly consuming,

even if it's just 10 or 15 minutes a day information that I'm interested in helps propel everything that I do in life and helps me be able to mentor and lead better as well. Side note, the world is rapidly evolving, and so I also feel like if I ever stop this habit, then things just start to pass me by more quickly than I could ever get caught up on.

So to round out this episode, I want you to think about what habits in your own life would you consider to be root habits, meaning what are you doing already? That by way makes everything else easier and these root habits, maybe you can identify some as well that you need to start. And these will help increase your productivity, it will help improve your focus, and it will help you be a better decision maker. I'd also love for you to think about some new habits that you could potentially stack on to habits that you're already doing and finding easy.

So for instance, if you are wanting to start flossing, maybe you set the floss right beside your toothbrush because you do brush your teeth every day, and so maybe you stack on this one to your tooth, to your teeth brushing. It can be as simple as that. But one of the best ways to establish new habits is to stack them on to ones that you've already found success with. I know we are all looking to improve the way that we run our business as well as the way that we live our lives. And so I hope that these habits or root habits have got you thinking about how you can add some as well.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Professional Creative Podcast. You can get the download for today. Remember, it's a free habit tracker and an ideal week worksheet that you can use to help better build out your habits during a week over at today's show notes, my friends work to create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you.