Category: Habits

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Do you know the one thing?

Do you know the #1 difference between goals that are met and those that are unmet?

I spent so many years of my life being taught about “SMART” goals, and all the right ways to hit goals. Yet, year after year I was missing the same ones over and over again.

Like many things in life, it’s so very simple, but not always easy.

Attach it to a daily habit.

“The fastest way to success is to replace a bad habit with a good habit.” – Tom Ziglar

The goals that are the most likely to be achieved in your life are the ones you have attached to a habit you are committed to each day.

It sounds so easy, and yet, we all have a story of when we have struggled to stick with a habit we wanted to form.

Here are a couple tips to help ensure your habits will stick. BJ Fogg wrote about these tips and the studies behind them in his book Tiny Habits. I have found each of these principles to be true in my own life.

Tackle one at a time.

Go all in on one habit change for as long as it takes to stick before picking up the next one. Sometimes this can be done in a couple days. Sometimes this may take months.

It is easier to commit to one habit change each month, and successfully complete 12 by the end of the year, than try to tackle 12 new things in January.

Make it as small as possible

Instead of tackling something large like “exercise every day at 6am,” try breaking it down into smaller steps. For example, “I will sleep in workout clothes and replace my slippers next to my bed with tennis shoes so that as soon as I wake up, I’m dressed.”

(By the way, I definitely love sleeping in pajamas and wearing my comfiest pajamas to bed. My tiny habit is that when I change clothes to drop the kids off at school, I dress in workout clothes and tennis shoes so it’s that much easier to stop at the park next to their school each morning.)

Keep it positive

You are highly unlikely to stick with a habit that you don’t enjoy. This is why 30 day programs and anything you commit to for a short stint is unlikely to become a life change. If you feel like you are “suffering through it,” your eyes will regularly be on the finish line, focused on when you can quit.

Instead, find ways to enjoy your habit so your brain associates happy feelings with the task.

I love my morning walk because it genuinely brings me joy and peace. I also remind myself I am doing it because it helps my brain work more efficiently and think clearer. I show up to the track so that I can be more effective the rest of the day.

I also love the way yoga makes my body feel, so I’m much more likely to show up to my mat when I say I will because it feels like a reward to myself.

However, fast paced workouts and H.I.I.T stress me out. Even if I know they help me get in shape and get stronger, I don’t find pleasure when I’m doing them. Therefore, I’m more likely to avoid the habit.

Don’t should on yourself.

If you are setting this habit goal because it’s something you “should” be doing, but not something you genuinely want to do, it will not stick. Commit to habits you want and know why you want them.

I’m so excited for you guys to create the lives you want to be living in 2022. I look forward to helping and being a part of your journey.

Keep it simple folks. Success is found in the mundane of the daily routine.

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With Gratitude,

Sophia Hyde
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If you are ready to make yourself a priority in your own life and start putting yourself on your own to-do list, let’s chat. Here are the two ways to get started on creating the life you crave to be living:

1. Book a strategy call with Sophia to discuss your particular situation and see if coaching can benefit you. Sessions are extremely flexible and only 20 minutes twice a month to get results.

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How to Change Many Habits at One Time

Did you know that every now and then life will hand you a gift you probably won’t recognize? 

When we have a major life-changing event, we are presented with an opportunity to create new habits at the snap of our fingers. 

Traditionally, changing too many habits at once is nearly impossible. For most people, your brain experiences overwhelm, and after a brief period of time, you will revert back to what was comfortable. It has been proven that tackling one new habit at a time will set you up for the best long-term success. 

However, there is one exception. 

When you experience a major life change, you are forced to create all new habits at once. 


Most of the time we are not consciously aware of this opportunity so we just stumble along until we find a new normal. 


If intentional, you can set yourself up for great success, whether the new life change is positive or negative. 

Personally, I am encountering this right now. Tomorrow is my last day at the job I’ve had for four years. Beginning Monday, I am officially self-employed. Everything about my routine will be changing. For four years I have had to shuffle every aspect of my life around the concrete blocks of 8:00-5:30pm being consumed by a full-time job and the commute to and from there. 

Suddenly, come Monday morning, that giant block will disappear. Because of what I know about habits, I am choosing to consciously move into this space. Since I will be instantly forced to create new habits around my lunches and snacks, morning routine, evening routine, and time constraints, I can design them with intention. 

This morning I sat down and reflected on my goals I set for the year. I attached every single one of them to a daily habit that could help me get there. 

My challenge for you is that next time it feels like the rug is being pulled from underneath you and everything is changing in one moment, choose to see the opportunity. Regardless of whether the reason for the life change is positive or devastating, you are being handed a fresh start and can design your new normal. Choose your habits wisely and with intention.

Got a question or wanna chat about this topic? Text me at 813-946-6706.

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Inspiring Through Imperfection

This quote came across my Instagram stories last week, “You don’t inspire others by being perfect. You inspire them by how you deal with your imperfections.” 

Immediately, I resonated with it at a very deep level. I had never been able to put language to what I was trying to create with this blog and in my coaching business, but this line said it all. If you have followed my content for any length of time, then you know I regularly interweave my mistakes with the lessons that accompanied them. My desire is to teach by walking alongside you, not by standing behind a podium on a platform pretending to have it all figured out. 

So with that said, it’s time to circle back to a post from December, where we discussed the three recommendations to effective goal setting. As a recap, the three principles were: 

  • Don’t set goals, solve problems
  • Focus on the habits
  • Have an abundance of love and grace 

We are now six weeks into the new year, and chances are your goal chart is not trending perfectly up and to the right. Most of you have probably hit some bumps in the road. Let’s talk about those. Since I know most people learn best through stories, we will discuss the bumps through my own personal experiences in the first six weeks of 2021. 

At the beginning of the year I set 9 goals for 2021, but knew I could not tackle them all at once. They needed to be handled a few at a time.

For this year, the spokes that needed to most attention were: 

  • Financial
    • Upgrading from a sedan to a minivan (Also a family spoke goal)
    • Finishing our 6 month emergency fund (we began the year with 2 months)
    • Saving money toward a home upgrade (having 1 bathroom for a family of 4 has its moments 😉 
  • Family 
    • Finishing our home renovations so we can list our house 
    • Capturing more photos and videos of my children (At 2 and 7 their childhood is in its prime and I want to treasure these days) 
  • Health
    • Lose 20 pounds by prioritizing daily exercise and cleaner eating (long list of the reasons why I want to do this. They are all health benefits and quality of life connected. I love my body as she is, and want to take better care of her)
  • Self-Care
    • Prioritize stress management outlets
  • Career
    • Transition to full time coaching 
  • Mental & Spiritual 
    • Prioritize my meditation practice daily

It’s important for me to share my list of goals with you so that the rest of the content makes more sense. 

It’s not wise to tackle all the goals at once. I knew I needed to pick three to focus specifically on for quarter 1 so the rest could fall into place over the course of the year. 

For January, I decided to tackle my morning routine because it’s a foundational habit. It would help the mental, spiritual and physical goals that I set, which I believed would set me up for success everywhere else. 

However, I hit some major roadblocks. Oftentimes, when trying to create new habits, we discover other habits that must first be addressed in order to create the space for the new habit to develop. 

In my attempt to wake up earlier, I needed to go to bed earlier. In my attempt to go to bed earlier, I discovered just how much I had gotten accustomed to doing after the children went to bed. My 2020 routine had been to have the children in bed by 8pm and then I would sleep 11pm-7am. Trying to shift to a 5am wake up call meant a 9pm bedtime. 

I truly thought I could do it on January 1st. However, as the month progressed, I realized that so many other spokes were getting completely neglected. I had created space in that time for my writing, cleaning my house, quality time with my husband and stress decompression. Going to bed earlier, so I could put new things into my morning routine that weren’t already in my life, proved to not be sustainable for me. 

Something had to give, somewhere. 

I already knew my plate was full and at maximum capacity. I told that to people regularly. However, I had convinced myself I could squeeze in some new habits. The truth was, I definitely could not. So what was going to go? Something could no longer fit. 

The middle to end of January looked messy as I powered through deadlines and projects and intentionally let things fall through the cracks while my husband and I discussed a sustainable solution. 

I had to shift the order I planned to accomplish my goals. 

On January 1, the map I made for my year slated my career changes for Q3. I believed I could keep growing this business on the side of a career and make the leap later. Two weeks into the new year I proved I was wrong. 

We re-evaluated the goals and realized that one goal on the list of 9 could be THE catalyst of change in every other area. The career spoke. 

In 2020, my schedule looked like working a full time job for 40-50 hours a week, and then running this blog and coaching business for an average of 10 hours per week. If you go back and reread that list of 9 goals, imagine how much easier they would all be to accomplish if I transitioned into a career that allowed me to add back in 10-20 hours a week to my other spokes AND increased my income significantly. 

I had to pivot. 

I paused my January intentions of mastering my morning routine and set to figure out how to make the transition. And today, as I write this blog, I’m in that messy middle. I am working with the leadership at my dayjob to find a replacement and train her/him while I tie up any loose ends. Simultaneously, I am building a strong foundation for what is to come in the near future. 

As I sit here in mid-February with none of my habits completely successful, I have the power to choose the story I tell myself. I know that I cannot yet check any boxes and declare one accomplished, but I can see that the stage is being set and preparations are underway. 

Have you hit any roadblocks on your journey to accomplish your goals? What solutions are working for you? How are you overcoming the obstacles? 

Do you realize you still have the power to accomplish everything you intended? What can you learn from what DIDN’T work last month? How can you be empowered by that experience instead of discouraged? 

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Why I Said Bye to Hustle Culture


There was a season of my life I participated in hustle culture, mostly from my teen years through early twenties. I believed that burning the candle at both ends and running myself ragged would help me get to the top faster.

I specifically remember one speaker in college who greatly inspired me. He was a highly successful businessman who was the guest speaker at an event my last semester. There were two quotes he shared that day that I wrote down and internalized,

“You can sleep when you’re dead.”

And

“Do not put off for tomorrow what can be done today.”

My type-A personality loved the reinforcement to continue to pursue my workaholic behaviors.

Fast forward two years from that event and my body was crashing, my marriage wasn’t very healthy, I was regularly sick, I lived with constant brain fog and I was exhausted all the time, to the point of falling asleep in my desk at work. This was not working for me.

I later learned that sure, this man had accumulated a lot of wealth and had built one of the largest advertising agencies in the world, but his family suffered. His marriage ended in divorce and come to find out, he didn’t have a strong relationship with his kids until they were adults.

After my body crashed and I took my sabbatical, I started reframing the way I did everything.

The first thing I did was grab a couple mentors. I looked specifically for people who were in their sixties and had created a life that looked like what I wanted mine to resemble at that age: strong family, successful career, financial independence and a peaceful confidence.

It was fascinating to me what these two very different people had in common. Although they had never met, their habits highly resembled one another:

• Strong spiritual life
• Daily meditation practice
• Full night’s rest every night
• Prioritized healthy eating
• Always stayed hydrated
• Had strong boundaries around their time
• Valued philanthropy
• Read books constantly
• Insatiable hunger to learn

I started realizing that I had none of these habits, and I had to release my beliefs around hustle culture. I was “too busy” to slow down and make time for these habits.

Instead of believing I could sleep when I was dead, I spent months getting 9 hours of sleep a night until my body caught up. Now 7.5 is when my body naturally wakes up.

Instead of believing nothing could wait until tomorrow, I now believe that almost everything can wait, and I pick the most important priorities each day. I am deliberate at prioritizing each area of my life and giving it space on my calendar. What’s not on the calendar waits until its designated time. I have fully accepted that my to-do list will never, ever, ever get to zero.

I calendar time with my husband to binge-watch television. I set aside time with my kids to sit in the house with no plans and chill on the couch or chase them around in circles (quite literally, one of their favorite games is playing ‘catch me’ while we run around the kitchen island).

Less truly is more.

As we enter into the peak of the holiday season, I hope you are able to detach from any hanging to-do lists. I hope you give yourself permission to rest. I hope you freely allow things to wait until January to be done. I hope you enjoy the present moment, enjoy your families, and create space and time for restoration, whatever activities that word involves for you.

Grace and Peace my friends,

Sophia

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