Creating habits can feel overwhelming, and if you have tried in the past and not been able to create a new habit from your efforts, you know how frustrating and defeating it can feel to have put in all that effort to fall back to where you started a few weeks or months earlier.
One of the common mistakes we make when setting new habits or changing old habits is that we often rely too much on willpower. We think we need to grit our teeth and push through the hard times, hoping we will break free to the other side. Unfortunately, what usually happens is we burn out before that ever happens.
To have your best chance at success, you need to change your current environment to reflect the changes you want to make. Two simple ways are:
Make it easy and make it harder.
We like to do what is easiest, not what is best. When we are tired, we need to make our new habits very easy to accomplish or make them harder to fall back into.
Examples of this:
New Habit: Drink more water
Find what is problematic about drinking water. For me, it is having to refill my water throughout the day and trying to remember how much water I drank already.
Solution: Make it easy. By a water bottle that holds the amount of water, I want to drink each day.
New Habit: Snack less
When I get bored, I search around the house for things to munch on.
Solution: Make it harder. Only buy healthy snacks or don’t buy snacks at all. If you have to purchase snacks put them in an inconvenient place like in the bottom of your freeze in the basement/garage.
If you want new habits to stick, think about how you can make your environment easier so it will stick. For habits you wish to change, think about how you can make your environment more inconvinious for you.
Your Fitness Sherpa,
