How Our Habits Can Set Us Up For Success
This blog contains no life hacks that will magically transform your life overnight, but it will offer some insights on how to incorporate healthy habits into your routine.
And before you roll your eyes at the word habit…(I see you!) developing a routine around our goals is a major step towards achieving those goals.
Healthy habits will mean different things to all of us, but in a general sense, some of the habits I like to explore with clients are the following:
Exercise: Do we move regularly and what kind of movement do we enjoy? Building on what we enjoy is likely to be far more sustainable than following a random plan or doing a class because you heard it was good, it likely won’t become a long term sustainable habit if you don't enjoy the movement.
Nutrition & Eating: How do we fuel our bodies and support our health? As a coach and nutritionist, I like to explore this topic in detail and identify your approach to food.
Hydration: How do we know if we are hydrated and how much water on average do you consume?
Sleep: It has such a huge impact on our overall health. Things I like to explore with clients include: do they have a bedtime routine, on average how many hours do you sleep each night, is your sleep interrupted or do you achieve good quality sleep.
Stress Management: I like to explore what kind of toolkit clients have to help them manage stress.
Social Connections: As a health coach, I like to explore a person's natural support network, as research is evident that our social connections are critical for our wellness.
Learning: I also like to explore attitudes to learning and activities people do that might promote brain health.
Our Habits Support Our Goals
Incorporating habits and using methods of ‘Habit Stacking’ can be a very powerful way to support you in achieving lasting results and getting the most out of your time on your path to success.
Identifying and reflecting on our habits in relation to our goals helps us to become more aware of our triggers and the more we learn about our habits and routines the more intentional we can be with our behaviours to implement desired changes. This is particularly useful if we aim to replace an old habit with a new habit for whatever reason. Identifying the routine around the habit and what reinforces this habit for us allows us to create an award for the new habit we are trying to change. The repetition and reward cycle is useful in helping habits stick.
Habit Stacking, in short, involves adding one habit to an already existing habit…so how is this helpful, I hear you ask! If we break our goal down into smaller bite size chunks. This means identifying smaller steps we can take to achieve the bigger end goal.
Once these smaller goals have been identified, it is useful to identify what behaviours you can engage in to achieve them. Begin with the easiest, lowest hanging piece of fruit, for example, eating a piece of fruit per day, walking to work in the morning, whatever is the smallest easiest to achieve habit. You then add this habit into your existing routine and when you achieve consistency with this step add in a new habit. Continue in this manner until you are ticking off the smaller goals on your way to achieving the long-term goal.
This habit stacking has been proven to be successful and is also self-motivating as we tick off each of the small goals along the way. It also allows us to identify barriers and overcome situations when we might not successfully adapt to a target behaviour change identified, perhaps the goal needs to be reviewed, but using this method allows us to back track one step and prevents an ‘all or nothing’ attitude that often prevents lots of us from realising our potential. Take 1 step back, review, identify the difficulty and start again from this point rather than at point 1. No big goals are achieved simply despite the highlight reels we all see daily on social media!
The incorporation of new habits into your existing routine increases your chances of successfully adopting and maintaining this new routine.
As a health coach, I am here to help simplify and demystify behaviour change, supporting clients to achieve their individual goals and believe in the power of habits to support you on your wellness journey.
If you would like to learn more about setting goals and an opportunity to ask questions please don't miss out on my introductory coaching offer next month, contact me for more details.
