I had a break of several days from going to the gym. How can I get back into it?

Just go. Don't worry about whether or not it's a good workout or an ok workout or a bad workout...just go. Building new habits requires showing up and minimum. Start to form an identity based habit...ie "I am someone who goes to the gym...I am that guy."

Make sure whatever you're doing to form the habit is relatively easy...building good habits is most efficient when there is the least amount of friction. For example, given time constraints and other goings on in life, I can't go to the gym everyday...but I can go 3x per week and get in a full body workout in the weight room...so I do that. Trying to go everyday would ultimately cause a lot of friction and be detrimental to establishing the habit for me. This is the same reason I changed gyms...my previous gym required me to detour from my typical route home from work to get there and it was easy for me to just bag it after a long day of work because I didn't want to bother going out of my way. My new gym is on my way home...I have to pass by it regardless so I might as well pop in and get my workout done (less friction). It's also only about a 5 minute drive from the house, so I don't have any real reason to miss my Sunday morning workout.

As time management goes, I've found it helpful to sit down and score my daily habits. A very large % of what we do everyday is done unconsciously with habit. We get up and brush our teeth...don't really think about it, we just do it...it's habit. We walk into a dark room and immediately flip a light switch...habit. As someone who's pretty busy in general I recently sat down and scored my habits as +/-/=...being positive, negative, or neutral as they relate to the identity of who I want to be (which is an active, healthy, and fit individual).

One reason I did this is that I've been wanting to get back into cycling...not really racing like I used to, but spending regular time on my bike for my fitness and health. I started by telling myself I was going to ride 3 days per week after work...I struggled with that mostly due to "friction"...I was tired after a long days work for starters...and also, the weather that time of day is quite hot this time of year making it fairly unpleasant to get outside and ride...so I was pretty hit or miss getting back into things...too much friction was stifling my systems and processes for achieving what I wanted to achieve.

When I sat down and scored my daily habits, one in particular stood out to me. I actually scored it a neutral to begin with...and that was, every morning I would get up around 5:45 or 6 and grab my coffee and go sit on my patio and watch the sun come up...read the news...tool around on social media, etc. I'd do this for about an hour before getting ready for work. It's not necessarily a "bad habit", but it is not a habit that is particularly conducive to wanting to be a more active person while at the same time complaining that I'm just too busy and don't have the time. So now I lay out my cycling gear, water bottle, make sure my tires have air, etc the evening before (less friction) and I get up at 5:30 and gear up. I have a cup of coffee on my patio for about 15 minutes and then go ride instead of sitting there for an hour having multiple cups of coffee. With one small change, I'm instantly more active and doing something active in the morning is a great start to my day...but it is also forming a habit that plays into the identity of who I want to be...an active, healthy, and fit individual.