Rekindle Healthy Habits.
Shift Habits Slowly, They’re More Likely to Stick.
If you’re like most American’s, over the past few months you’ve been in hibernation mode. Drinking a few more beers than you need, eating more sweets than normal and probably not getting to the gym (or even out for a walk) as often as you would like (because who wants to go out in that cold anyhow!?)
Now, January is officially here. It’s finally 2020 and all of a sudden you realize that all of your healthy habits got lost in a snowbank back in mid November.
The best news is, rekindling healthy habits is mostly a momentum game and the best time to hop the healthy habit train, is to start today.
One of the easiest ways to rekindle healthy habits is NOT to try to do everything at once (AKA: Decide to swear off sugar, alcohol, dairy, eat only steamed veggie buddha bowls, and get up at 6am to run 3 miles everyday.)
Trying to change everything at once is a recipe for defeat.
The better choice is to choose one habit to shift at a time. If you choose a keystone habit, like exercise, or writing down what you eat once a week (yup, only once a week!), research shows you’ll be much more likely to choose healthy habits in other areas of your life. You’ll probably find you start to have more energy throughout the day, need less sleep, and generally feel a little bit happier and upbeat about life.
The best part? By choosing to change one habit at a time, you won’t have to feel guilty about not being able to hold yourself to your own insanely high standards and then think F-it at 3pm and treat yourself to a banana-nut muffin because, “I’ll never rekindle these habits anyway.”
Learn How to Fail Small, Not Big.
In the book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives Gretchen Rubin (which we highly recommend you read!) suggests looking at breaking bad habits in an even smaller scenario. “Thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big.”
Basically, if you ate one more cookie after lunch than you wanted to, that doesn’t mean you have to skip your walk or decide to have three beers after dinner.
Most things in life are about being able to begin again. judgment of how you think you’re doing or focusing on past failures won’t help you to do your best.
Be kind to yourself and focus on the next “quarter” of your day. You’ll rekindle those healthy habits in no time and you’ll feel healthier and happier too!
find an accountabiliity buddy.
Creating new healthy habits takes effort, but once they’re established you’ll actually spend very little willpower to keep them in motion, because they become part of your daily routine — a habit! While you work to establish new habits, it can be helpful to have an accountability buddy — this shouldn’t be your spouse or significant other as they’re more likely to let you off the hook. Instead, find a friend or colleague who’s also looking to implement new healthy habits and serve as each other’s accountability buddy. You can then use negative or positive reinforcement to help you obtain your goal — like planning a fun weekend getaway, or buying each other lunch.
You might also look into joining a wellness cohort.
Think about it like this, if you want to improve your physical health, you hire a personal trainer. If you want to improve your financial health, you hire a financial planner. If you’re committed to improving your health and wellness goals maybe it’s time you hire a wellness coach — or join a wellness cohort.
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