When it comes to looking after ourselves consistently, so many of us seem to struggle to make it a priority. Why is that? And more importantly, what can we do to get better at building healthy habits?
There are many wonderful things about living in an age of abundant information. We have so much access to knowledge. And yet, every day there is another study about how damaging social media may be to our mental well-being. Cognitively, it seems, our evolution hasn’t kept up with the times. Overwhelm and burnout are very real issues when navigating the modern world. We now expose our brains to so much information to process every day that our ancestors probably took several years to experience.
Are we overwhelmed with choices on how to spend our time?
It’s easy to lose our focus on what it is WE want to achieve any given day. For example, you might be a parent who wants to plan a few activities for the upcoming school holidays, so you pick up your phone in a quiet moment to see what’s on in your local area. You notice a notification about some news event, and then 5 minutes later, you’re deep down some rabbit hole, and completely forgot why you picked up your phone in the first place. Sound familiar?
Our modern world is designed to distract us, to sell us things, to tell us they have the answer to what you’re craving. If I’m honest, the reason you’re reading this might be the result of falling down one of those rabbit holes.
Constant context-switching all day on our devices takes up space in our brains and can easily crowd out the part of us that has a quiet but firm sense of what we want to put into the world. Slowly we can become disconnected from our own rich inner life, replacing it with this noise
Do you really need to do ALL the things?
As health coaches, we work with the science of positive psychology and motivational interviewing, and a regular concept we ask our clients about is; “What does a great day look like to you?”
You already know everyone’s answer will be completely different. It’ll be based on their values, what makes them feel alive, what makes them feel connected, what excites them and fills them with awe. And it will also depend on where their current mindset about what’s possible in their life.
When I’m coaching someone, I’m working to get them connected back to what’s important for them and detach them from what they feel they “should” be doing, in order to get healthy, or feel a spark about their day.
Does your need to feel a sense of achievement with other things get in the way?
I know I struggle with this constantly. I think a lot of busy people who wear several hats struggle with the feeling that there just aren’t enough hours in the day and our list is so long. If I’m not careful this can keep me up at night with a narrative of ‘I’m not enough’ or ‘I’m not capable’.
For example; You set yourself the goal to get up at 6 am to go to the gym. When the alarm went off, you actually got up, but by the time you found all your gear and were ready to go it was 6.45 am. Suddenly you felt there wouldn’t be enough time for the workout you wanted, so didn’t go. Instead of berating yourself that ‘you can’t set a goal and do it’, look at what you did achieve – you determined to go first thing in the morning to the gym. You set your alarm and actually got up! You got ready to go! This means you have the willingness and energy to achieve the goal. Maybe you just need to tweak the ‘getting ready’ part by preparing your stuff the night before.
Related Post: Balancing Life’s Demands
I have a simple mindset shift that helps put me back in control of my thoughts, helps calm the stress response and realize I have created momentum in the day. I take stock of what I HAVE achieved in the day. Even if that is ‘I made a healthy breakfast’. Or ‘I wrote two paragraphs of a post’. Or ‘I learned half a monologue’.
It may not be ‘I completed…’, but all those activities add up, moving the needle closer to my end goal. Consciously acknowledging them, whether that’s through writing them down, or telling a loved one all that you DID manage to do in a day, starts to build proof to ourselves that we are pursuing our goals, that we are capable of showing up for ourselves.
Do you suffer from an All-or-Nothing mindset?
All-or-nothing thinking is a cognitive distortion explained here in greater detail. The issue is that it doesn’t help you notice nuance and work-in-progress when it comes to the effort you have made towards your goals.
For example; You are following a nutrition plan, and you have followed the plan exactly until you’re thrown by a surprise afternoon tea at work. You reason to yourself – you’ve hit the 3 pm slump, and one sweet buttery pastry can’t hurt. Then the all-or-nothing thinking kicks in. As you’ve been in restriction mode and that one pastry wasn’t part of the plan, you suddenly feel like you’ve ruined all your hard work. Suddenly your ability to moderate goes out the window, and you have another. Then seeing as you’re fully “off the wagon”, on your way home you decide takeaways will do for dinner, and you promise yourself to start again tomorrow. Or at least on Monday.
All-or-nothing thinking or black-and-white thinking is all about being perfect. If we think this way when we’re trying to grow, it is so easy for us to give up on ourselves when we stray, even just a little, from possibly an over-restrictive plan. It can stop us from making small steps, achieving incrementally, and sustainably towards our goal.
To summarize: What’s the best mindset to adopt when trying to prioritize your health
Switch off the noise – take some time to let all your thoughts slow down, and minimize input. Let your own inner wisdom be heard for a moment. Figuring out what it is that you want to achieve and how you want to feel can only come when you give yourself space to hear your thoughts.
To get healthier, you don’t need to change everything, all at once. In fact, the experts don’t recommend it. Accepting that getting healthier is a process of gently changing one habit at a time. This will also mean you’re less likely to fall back into old habits that no longer serve you, and won’t get you to where you want to be.
When you set yourself a goal, and you feel you have fallen short, focus on what you HAVE achieved. Look at your efforts through a compassionate lens, and reframe them as opportunities to learn from. How you can make it easier to achieve that goal next time?
Accept that you’re not going to be perfect in your efforts to change a habit. It’s a process, that can get easier the more times you repeat it, and occasionally you will stray in your efforts. But one slip-up doesn’t mean you should throw it all in. A habit is a behaviour you do MOST often.
How to work with me on prioritizing and building healthy habits into your routine
As I work with my clients on their goals, we address mindset obstacles that come up for them while working on healthier habits. I also dig deeper into what prioritizing means for them. We explore things that they do prioritize currently. We start to build a greater understanding of what the client’s values are and what motivates them.
With this knowledge of their values and motivations, we might look at what would it mean for them if they achieved their health goal and explore what that looks like. Alignments in their value system usually start to appear and the client realises why this change in habit is so important to them.
When I work with my clients, we keep coming back to these deeper motivations and values to help them build the person they want to be. We essentially change how they identify with themselves and what they believe they are capable of. I feel really honoured to work with people on this level, and it’s really exciting.
If you’ve tried to change your habits before and struggled to keep a consistent and sustainable routine in place, working with a health coach to uncover that obstacle could make all the difference. In fact, it could make it easier.
I offer the first discovery session for free – this helps us both work out if we’re the right fit – and it might mean you come to understand what’s tripping you up on prioritizing your health.
