I am sitting in my car in a secret location, rain slashing the windscreen.

It is 5.30am.

(That’s five in the morning for anyone who overlooked the a.m bit.)

Up ahead headlights bounce across the slick, wet road.

I signal softly with my lights.

The car pulls up.

She gets out.

Still wearing her pyjamas.

Then we turn in unison and leaning into the rain, begin stomping up Bitch Hill.

Bitch Hill isn’t any old hill.

It is a 90% vertical climb of wet grass and soft hillocks that have a smattering of lethal steps carved into the cliff-face of hell. As you walk, your thighs burn like red hot pokers. Half way up your lungs threaten to collapse. By the top, you’re rasping and staggering like an unsavoury villain in a zombie movie.

  We do this walk more or less every morning.

Cultivating the Getting Up Habit has not been an easy feat, particularly as autumn has begun to set in. During the summer it was better, but now it’s pitch black and even the birds are still snoring in their nests.

But SOMEHOW we’ve managed to maintain the walk up Bitch Hill.

And by building this ONE health habit, we’ve begun to change all sorts of other habits too.

This is rather a fantastic happening because, lets face it, our habits are *slightly*  powerful things.

The habits that people indulge in on a daily basis (a little bit of exercise, making sure you eat your five a day, flossing your teeth, writing a few lines of your book, picking up your saxophone and blasting out tens minutes of music) support health, well being and positive growth. Over time our lives will take on the shape of health, well being and positive growth.

On the other hand, if the habits a person develops are a little on the slack side (perching on your bottom all day, watching trash TV, moaning and criticizing others, looking for the negative, eating chocolate doughnuts every time your neighbour’s dog barks) life is going to start looking like a landslide.

Health will slip, sunny attitudes will darken and well being will begin to deflate.

These daily actions that we repeat over months, years and decades, shape the lives that we are experiencing today and we have to work these habits like muscles – consistently, efficiently and sometimes painfully – in order to change them.

If your life was a bottom, your habits are the muscles (glutes) that support and pertify it

During our walks up Bitch Hill, Clare and I have begun to identify and tone up the habits that are not leading to helpful life experiences (in the field of health, relationships, food choices, money mind set and business) and then we are bringing in small, doable Habit Challenges to help break these.

Gradually, our lives (and bottoms) are in the process of becoming well rounded and uplifted.

This is a very nice feeling.

Now.

I am quite certain that having looked at the illustration above, you are now drooling over the thought of having a Pert Bottom Life too.

If you are, here are a few ideas to get you started:

Your supportive habit is the very first building block in your New Habit Empire. It is very, very important because successfully integrating this habit will lift your confidence around bringing in other habits. For Clare and I, our supportive habit was to begin getting up very early and walking every day for forty five minutes. We didn’t try and do ANYTHING ELSE except this simple, mildly painful action.

A supportive habit needs to be:

* Something that makes you feel good, gets your endorphins popping out from the woodwork and whizzing about shouting “Blood stream party!”

* Contained within a period of time where you get at least fifteen minutes to think/reflect and process. .

* Physically active (Yoga, Corpse Position doesn’t count)

Your first mission is to maintain this new habit for at least six weeks. I would 100% suggest getting a Pert Life Buddy who is also up for changing habits. Knowing that you’re going to be standing up a friend at 5.30 (who is dressed in her pyjamas) is quite a strong motivator to force you out of bed.

Once your supportive habit has been well and truly ingrained into your lifestyle, you then get to move up to your gluteus maximus. This set of habitual actions are what will shape the main sphere of your life.

To tone this area, spend time during your supportive habit (see step one) identifying three little habits that you’d love to change, then  choose one and set up a simple, five day challenge to try something new.

At this point, having a friend to join you on the journey is VERY helpful. Accountability, trust and knowing you’ve got each other’s backs massively helps the process.

Some of our habit changes have been:

4 days of no processed sugar (This is a hard one. Once the initial 4 days were up we decided to continue for a another few days and then another few days to try and break sugar addictions).

10 days of water only beverages (ie. water and herbal tea) … After these 10 days I have literally given up tea and coffee.

30 days of meditating around money-mindset and improving financial self care.

Small habit changes to implement larger parenting strategies.

22 press-up challenge.

I feel that the trick with these habits is to make them small and doable and put no pressure on yourself to go beyond your initial set of days. Treat the whole thing as a game, a project of pertification and if you fall off the wagon … that’s fine! Just keep maintaining your supporting habit and then set yourself a new habit challenge when you are ready.

Your gluteus medius are the lifting muscles at the top of your bottom. Your gluteus medius habits are uplifting habits that pull your life out of the ordinary and turn you into the owner of Extraordinary Perfected Pertness. They include things like:

Telling at least one person every day how great they’re doing at their job.

Random acts of kindness.

Positive thinking/feeling/attitudes.

Practicing being fully present.

Looking for the gorgeousness in life.

Offering compliments.

Consciously practicing gratitude for the amazingness that life has to offer.

Being interested in what people are saying and listening well.

Saving spiders.

Loving.

Subscribing to people’s blogs.

That sort of stuff.

In essence, you need to work all three habit groups to build a life and posterior to be proud of … but it is the gluteus medius (uplifting habits) that are really going to pull your life in the direction you want it to go.