Ever been this person?
Starting tomorrow I’m going to: Wake up early, eat a healthy breakfast, workout, not eat any sugar, eat more vegetables, be more positive, walk 10k steps, stay off my phone, meditate, take all my vitamins, do that task I’ve been procrastinating, and drink more water.
Only to wake up a little later than you wanted, miss your opportunity to make that healthy breakfast, decide to skip the workout and then figure you’ll just try again tomorrow?
Sometimes when we’re trying to make changes we get this feel-good fantasy that we will somehow wake up the next day and be an entirely new person without any of the struggles that we’ve been dealing with. We go to bed truly believing that tomorrow is the day that it ALL changes.
The problem is: We are creatures of habit— our brain loves the path of least resistance. And all of our habits (whether good or bad) can become so deeply engrained in us that they become second nature. When we struggling to change these habits, we then start to think that we just don’t have enough willpower or discipline— when the true problem is we’re just trying to make too many changes too fast.
Even if we can make it a few days with a drastic overhaul, the likelihood that these will now be changes for LIFE is very slim.
On the other hand: Small changes can feel insignificant. If we say starting tomorrow we’re going to eat a vegetable at every meal, it often doesn’t come with that same feel-good story that ends with us being the perfect human like our drastic overhaul does.
But let’s zoom out a little bit and ask yourself this: What do you think will have more long-lasting, positive effects on your body…
A. Eating perfectly, drinking all your water, taking all your vitamins, and getting 8 hours of sleep for 2 weeks.
Or B. Consistently hitting one of those habits every day for a year?
When we zoom out we can start to see the big picture and how 1 simple habit could actually change things in a big way for you. And when that 1 habit becomes second nature? Now we can add on a new habit… and slowly but surely we can make big waves in our life in a very simple, but powerful way.
You got this. One habit at a time.