How to cultivate healthy habits that last
Remember the time you went to seven days of free spin classes and ended up signing up for a two-year membership?
I do. I was a uni student on a shoestring budget. I had grand plans of going to the gym five days a week and feeling like a goddess within the month. I bought into the dream of rock-hard abs and the all-new me.
Six months later, though, I had a rapidly dwindling bank balance, and I had been to a grand total of ONE class in my paid membership.
A dwindling bank balance is one side effect of thinking TOO big when it comes to starting a new habit. Image by Emil Kalibradov on Unsplash
We've all done it. We've all picked up something new – whether that's HIIT classes, Lagree Method, running, or meditation – and decided THIS was the thing. We’ve all gone full-out for a week and then lost steam. We've all bought memberships that we barely used; we've all bought running shoes that gather dust in our cupboards; and we've all bought meditation apps and courses that never get another glance.
How does it fall apart when it starts out so well?
It’s a good question, and one I’ve effectively been studying for most of my life.
You see, I was a kid swimmer: I trained two hours a day, five days a week. I swam in competitions every second weekend. I won races in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and more.
And then I lost my mojo in my teens and 20s, struggling to keep any kind of routine in play. I found my way in my 30s, and, through experimentation and research, I developed habits that I’ve stuck to ever since. Now, I want to exercise almost every day. And now, I want to come to the mat to meditate every day.
But the solutions I’ve found aren’t just relevant to exercise and meditation.
They’re also invaluable in other areas of our lives – including family time and our careers. (Ever start a book and get three chapters in before leaving the manuscript to rot in a forgotten folder on your laptop? Guilty.)
This is something I spoke about recently, in a workshop I hosted for the personal training coaches at TSquared Lab. We looked at how to build healthy habits that stick.
It was so much fun, and it reminded me of all the wisdom out there about healthy habits – and how they're the building blocks for creating a life you love.
I had a blast coaching the team at TSquared Lab about cultivating healthy habits
Here are my top takes on why it doesn’t work and what to do differently
1. Start small. When you try to force drastic, immediate change, your brain can't compute. Alarm bells go off and your nervous system instigates safety mode, which means the fastest return possible to behaviours that make it feel ‘safe’ (even if that means injuring yourself). Start with something that feels really achievable – something your mind can’t say no to!
2. Make incremental change. Just 1% change a day amounts to huge change in a year. That might mean starting with 3 to 5 minutes of meditation a day, increasing that to 10 minutes a month later, and so on.
3. Be consistent. Show up at the same time every day – or every other day – and in the same place. Wear the same clothes if you have to. Put on the same music as you’re walking out the door. Take a delicious cup of coffee with you to your desk. By repeating the same actions again and again, you’ll imprint a new pattern and form new neural pathways that will become increasingly automatic.
It’s also worth asking yourself why you’re doing it. What’s your endgame? How do you want to feel in six months’ time? An do you enjoy doing it – or do you enjoy how you feel after you’ve done it?
Getting to grips with your ‘why’ can make all the difference. If you’re doing it because you think you ‘should’ do it, it won’t last. You’ll get far better results if you put your energy into something that matters to you.
4 takeaways from this post:
1. Really consider why you want to build this habit.
2. To build healthy habits that stick, start with something small and safe your brain can’t say no to.
3. Focus on making incremental, preferably daily, progress.
4. Show up consistently, at the same time and in the same place every day, and the momentum will inevitably build.
Love,
Tamsin xx
Are you looking for someone to help you build healthy habits, and to keep you accountable? Drop me a line if you’d like support, or book a session here.