By MaryAnn Jones
What if your habits hold the key to your health?
By now we all know that eating more veggies, drinking water, taking vitamin D and exercising are self-care habits that contribute to longevity and vitality. These habits enable us to have ease in our lives — more energy, less pain, more confidence, fewer mood swings.
Unfortunately, knowing healthy habits is not actually implementing them into your life. So how can we evolve our thoughts and habits to propel our success toward our health and wellness goals with effortless effort?
Prioritize
Self-care IS health care. Putting yourself first is the greatest gift you can give the world and the people who love and rely on you. You are setting a great example, walking the walk – talking the talk and reaping the rewards that enable you to do more for others.
What habits do you currently have that help you care for yourself?
My list includes taking my vitamin D after breakfast, scheduling my exercise classes, and applying essential oils before bed. How about you? I am sure you are already habitually doing things that promote your self-care: hydration, hugging, prayer, meal preparation, etc. Just do more of that!
What habits are sabotaging your efforts?
Confessions of a health coach: I stress eat at my computer, play way too many word games on my phone and “forget” to floss. Taking a hard look at our daily actions can yield clues, and just that simple awareness can begin to create a shift in our motivation in order to spend less time feeding the bad habits that steer us away from our self-care.
Plan
You already have personal habits that make you great at planning. You show up places on time, you complete assigned tasks, you schedule appointments and Amazon deliveries. You are a highly functioning human who has been planning all your life. How can you use your superpower to plan your self-care? What tools do you use for planning? What support do you initiate to get tasks done?
When my kids were in high school, I would plan their tutor appointments. This felt so good to me. I was setting my family up for success with someone who provided support and guidance. It helped me realize that if I wanted to succeed in a new area, I should employ the same strategy. Making appointments and enlisting support has completely evolved my fitness habits and my body!
Practice
Yes, if we want to get better at something, it requires dedicated practice. We did not emerge from the womb as experts in anything except sucking – ironic, I know. As we developed, it took good, old-fashioned practice to learn how to walk, talk, type, hold a yoga pose, process code (bless you if you do this), not find objects in the dark with your shins, well, I still do this, but I’m improving!
If you want to be better at meditating, then you have to meditate. If you want to get better at meal prep, then you have to prep your meals. And, yes, you will likely be bad at it initially. The secret to making the practice a habit — is to make it easy and pleasurable; a reward helps as well.
So, follow me here. You practiced walking because you wanted to move around like all those big people in your life that had the freedom to go places and reach things. You took constant and inspired action in your yoga classes because you wanted to feel strong, confident, and desire the reward of shavasana. But here’s the thing, during each journey, you were probably supported and encouraged along the way until you reached your goals.You can accomplish difficult things, if you know you will benefit from the work required to get to the point where it becomes a habit — or what I call: effortless effort.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
How can prioritizing, planning, and practice inform your daily habits, provide moments of joy, and improve your health?
If you don’t know where to start, I’m happy to help! Schedule a free, no-obligation 15-minute session with me to learn how to develop these essential healthy habits!
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