Zombie Habits: The Power of Unthinking Action
Zombie habits need less mental and emotional energy to follow through on.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Do you feel like zombie? Not the kind of zombie in need of caffeine. Or the undead kind, wandering the town on a full moon. I’m talking about a habit zombie.
Habits take the thinking out of things.
They can make us like zombies, getting triggered and focusing on our innate missions.
To eat your brains…
Oops, I mean following the well-worn paths of our prior actions.
Zombie habits can be bad for your health
Some zombie habits are not worth keeping. Some keep you living a rather undead life, leaving you feeling aimless, on an unfulfilling mission.
Doom scrolling
Couch potato-ing
Numbing out
Mindless snacking
You know your own zombie type habits that aren’t helping you live the life you want. Time you spend out of boredom or without a fulfilling purpose are keeping you in that zombie trance.
Not all zombie habits are bad
This isn’t always a bad thing! Taking the thinking out of the doing helps eliminate the resistance we can feel if we make it a conscious choice every time.
Daily habits like-
brushing your teeth
eating fruits and vegetables
moving your body
releasing stress
taking vitamins
drinking water
… all good zombie habits!
“Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, but much more rewarding.”
How to Create a Zombie Habit
In order to live a life that lights you up, you need to take some real action. It’s time to pick one of your zombie habits and take the 3-step antidote!
Set a goal
Grab an accountability partner
Track your new habit streak
Starting a zombie habit begins with starting with where you are. Give yourself a little snort, shake, and shimmy to wake up and shift from one type of zombie habit to another.
Setting a goal that is meaningful to maintaining and growing your glow helps you gain focus and direction on where you are headed. It also helps you keep your bearings as you start to move forward and maybe get distracted by other things going on in your life.
If you want inspiration for what your heart is dying to tell you about where to focus on growing your glow, download the free mini-course. Discover how to truly listen to what you heart is telling you and create a map to show you the way.
Starting a new habit is easier with a friend with a similar mindset
An accountability partner is great to have someone that you are going through the experience with. Getting that nudge from someone to remember to honor your promise to yourself is really helpful. I was in an online community that was promoting their own challenge, so while it wasn’t a one-on-one accountability, it still helped with being in a group where we collectively did check-ins on our progress.
Tracking your progress can be an addictive motivator. Seeing the daily tracking add up into a consistent pattern or streak has a real satisfaction to it.. And the longer you keep it up, the more invested you become in keeping it going.
Tracking your goal with an accountability partner is like the trifecta of starting something new. It may also trigger that competitive streak in you, speeding up the effectiveness of the antidote.
Keep in mind, your results may vary. It’s important to keep experimenting to figure out what works best for creating your zombie habit.
The antidote doesn’t work overnight, but the more invested you are in leaving the undead behind, the more you can sense how great the new habit will make you feel, you’ll be closer to being among the living once again.
Using my iWatch as habit tracker and non-human accountability partner
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
The Story of My Zombie Habit
My zombie fitness habit started nearly two years ago. For 690 days, I have moved my body for 30+ minutes every.single.day.
*10/2024 Update my zombie daily walk habit is now approaching 5 straight years.
I wanted to finish out the year strong and hit 2020 with a good habit under my belt. So I did an experiment of sorts. After being sporadically more active throughout the couple months prior, I made the promise to myself to close the 3 fitness rings each day, using my iWatch for accountability – daily calorie burn, minutes of exercise and standing hours.
And I started with day 1, walking on the treadmill after the kids went to bed. And then day 2 and 3… Before I knew it, I WAS STREAKING! (ummm, did I ever think that was something I would declare to the world?!).
Usually my workout is a daily walk to clear my head and reset. Or a mix-and-match combo throughout the day to make it happen. Sometimes it’s kitchen dancing, running, playing tag, jogging in place during work breaks from my desk, yoga stretches or dance fights. Moving my body in a way that I enjoy is a key part of the habit.
Going full zombie mode
As the days progressed and my streak was building, I was starting to take my self-talk from IF I work out today, to WHEN am I working out today. That small mental shift of thinking helped me eliminate excuses I came up with and began to turn it into a zombie habit. I didn’t know the world was about to basically fall to an apocalypse of sorts in 2020, but I was so glad I had this habit already engrained into my routine. I became focused on completing my mission each night.
Having a fitness streak gave the workouts an even greater purpose. Was my excuse to skip a workout today really worth it to break my streak? Would I be happy with myself tomorrow knowing that I had broken my momentum just because sitting and watching a show felt more desirable than watching it on the treadmill, after the kids went to bed?
Now I know that there were some days that getting the sleep should have been more important than getting a couple miles in (hello 4 a.m. wake up call for a cross country flight for work), but maintaining my streak, my promise to myself was more important to me. Each workout rewarded me with a few moments of clarity, my mood lifted and point of pride in telling myself, ‘see, I knew you could do it’.
And while we haven’t literally experienced a zombie apocalypse (yet?), I have to say that damn it feels so good to know that through all the hard times we’ve experienced lately, I have the utmost confidence in myself that I can do hard things.
And so can you!
Surviving Even When You Stumble
If you didn’t already know, zombies kind of lurch and stumble. This experience has taught me a lot about myself, and I have definitely done things the hard way before figuring out what makes it easier and more enjoyable.
Allow yourself grace to stumble through starting this new habit, to feel frustrated as you learn new things and practice being accountable to yourself. I had been sporadically walking or working out for a few months before truly making this a streaking habit. So don’t be too hard on yourself if you slip one foot back into the grave, I mean, onto the couch for a binge watching night.
Remember that you get to choose on what ‘counts’ as part of your habit, so set the bar low and raise it every week or two, little by little.
“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”
So what’s next in starting your new habit?
At this point, the only running I’m doing is to log my exercise minutes. I’m not scared of zombies anymore!
Do you have a zombie habit you want to send back to the grave? Or what kind of good zombie habit do you want to build? I’d love to know and help cheer you on! The Firefly Scout Heart Intention Tracker is a tool that will help you build up your zombie habit to make it even easier to follow the dreams in your heart. It builds in all of the tips to help you finally feel successful creating new habits in your busy life.
*post may contain affiliate links
Founder of Firefly Scout, Stephanie Rose is a transformation-focused mentor and strategic change guide, helping people uncover the mysteries that hold them back from living a life they love. Through energy management, intuitive insights, and practical tools like the Glow Map and Human Design, with a playful, detective-inspired approach, she empowers others to confidently pursue their dreams and create sustainable, lasting change.
Start your journey and create your free Glow Map and check out her free resources to start living a life you love.
Related entries
