Taking Control of Your Health One Habit at a Time

People tend to want to make several big changes at once when they are feeling motivated. But even making one change, such as starting to exercise, actually involves adopting many new habits. You have workout clothes to keep clean and ready to use, you have activities that you might need to do at different times than before, and then you have the exercise itself.

Taking Control of Your Health One Habit at a Time

But, you might not be thinking of exercise as your goal. Your goal might be to adopt a healthier lifestyle, including cutting down on alcohol or coffee, eating better, sleeping well, and exercising five times a week.

These are all great things to do, but they are also separate goals and accomplishing each of them will require a strong dose of self-discipline. Taking them all on at once would be daunting, even for a professional athlete. You have to face these changes one by one, and incrementally build the required habits for each, to successfully adopt a healthy lifestyle. It might take you a year or more to get there and that’s totally normal.

To get started, pick one thing, say exercise, and don’t worry about the other ones until you’re exercising regularly. We even recommend breaking down individual goals to more manageable milestones. 

If you want to workout five times a week but currently do none, shooting for the stars is much more likely to result in failure than starting with one workout per week. Lock one workout into your schedule and only when you have established consistency and confidence should you add the next one to your week.

You will get to five workouts per week more quickly this way than if you are too ambitious in your goals and end up falling off the bandwagon. Successfully establishing a habit, like becoming more active, also helps you feel more motivated when you are ready for the next change, such as eating better.

Take all of your self-discipline and pour it wholeheartedly into the first change you want to make. If you try to establish many new habits, you’ll need to divide your efforts between them and none will stick. 

Instead, go all in on exercise. Then, go all in on improving your sleep schedule. It might take months before you’re able to even think about working on the next habit. That’s okay though, because you’re in this for life. 

Hint: Forget about how long it takes you to get “there” because there is no “there”. Lifestyle changes are an ongoing process; you will never “finish” making the change. Rather, you will become the change, you’ll own it, and no longer think of it as a change.