You already have everything you need to transform your health and lifestyle..
When you think about changing your life or health, you know it’s going to take some action from you to achieve this. Did you know that habits are simply actions that you do without thinking, they happen on autopilot! It’s also important to know the more often you perform a habit the stronger it gets, so I wanted to share the top 3 ways I’ve learnt how you can master your habits.
Start at the Best Beginning
When people set out to make a change in life, they typically follow the crowd and do what everyone else is doing. But the popular method doesn’t always suit everyone or their lives.
When you consider taking on a new habit, first ask yourself - how important is it really that you make this change? How confident are you that you can implement this new habit? And how ready are you to start working towards this behaviour change?
Get really clear before you start by scoring these questions out of 10, and understand why your score isn’t higher or lower. You’ll have best results when your scores are 8 and above, so don’t be afraid to set a more approachable goal or new habit to ensure higher scores and more likely success.
Do your New Minimum
One of my favourite questions when coaching people is “what is the most you can do during your worst week?”. Often clients will say “I can do X amount of this new behaviour in a week”, but they’re usually thinking about an average week.
Unfortunately life isn’t always average! When life doesn’t go to plan (ie motivation is low, work is crazy, kids are sick, the car is getting serviced, etc) the good intentions of this new habit flies out the window.
Instead, identify what you can STILL do when all these things get in the way. This becomes the new minimum amount of the new behaviour per week. Now you have a new target to aim for, one that you can DEFINITELY do this week, next week, every week! Any more is a bonus, but doing this new minimum is still progress and offers a great sense of accomplishment!
Know your Plan B
Even the best made plans can come unstuck. What makes all the difference long term is your ability to be flexible and remain consistent with your new behaviour. So instead of hoping not to have any disruptions to your plans, EXPECT them and make plans to keep in action!
You could RESCHEDULE the same habit at another time. If your new habit is getting outside at lunch, but you have a work meeting at that time, make sure you book in time that morning or afternoon to get outdoors that same day.
You could REPLACE the activity with a different one that achieves the same goal. If you’re focusing on running more, but it’s raining when you had planned to go for a run, do some cardio exercise inside instead!
Lastly, you could REFOCUS on another goal and habit entirely. Maybe you’ve fallen sick and can’t exercise at all, but you can still use your usual workout time to prepare some healthy food for the week ahead. Just stay flexible, there’s always a way forward.
Take Action!
Now that you’ve got a few new ways to take on your habits more powerfully, it’s time to put it into action. Remember, the key is progress over perfection!
If you’re not sure where to start, just pick something and try it out for 30 days. If you don’t like it then stop, you haven’t lost anything by giving it a shot. But experimenting with a new habit every month means you have trialled 12 new habits a year, and even if only 3 stick then your habits are still 25% better than last year!
Get started today, your perfect health and lifestyle is just around the corner!