HOW TO CREATE & KEEP HEALTHY HABITS
Happy New Year everyone! My last post of 2018 was all about goal setting and the method I used to crush my goals during the last half of the year. In the same vein, I thought I would start out 2019 with a two-part series on how to create healthy habits in your personal life and break some bad ones in your work life.
Habits are a double-edged sword. Bad habits can form without us even being aware of what’s happening. If you’re anything like me it only takes a little stress and one bag of cookies to prove this. Good habits seem hard to form as, in most cases, you have to unravel an unhealthy habit in order to create the new healthier one.
So why take the time and effort to form healthy habits at all?
Our brains love familiarity and routine. When we create healthy habits our brain will cue healthy things on autopilot. For example, I made the choice to start making my bed every day. It was kind of a drag at first but once I developed the habit, I literally can’t not make my bed. 5 years ago I started making green smoothies most mornings. Now when I go without a green smoothie for a couple of days I start to crave green smoothies!
I’m not going to lie, developing new, healthy habits can suck. Your brain starts rebelling and coming up with a lot of BS as to why things should stay the same. I made it my goal in 2019 to kick my sugar addiction to the curb. As I’ve started to build in new healthy habits to replace the old ones my brain has come up with a million reasons my new plan won’t work. I expect to slip up but I have a plan for that too: I’m going to get up and keep going, one foot in front of the other until I’ve created healthy habits in place of my current default habit of turning to sugar to process emotion. I’m excited about the journey because I know it will be one of self-discovery and growth.
Check out this video where I walk you through 3 proven strategies I’ve found personally helpful in creating healthy habits.
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Check out the transcription:
Hey guys, I'm Annie of wholeassistant.com, and today we are talking all about how to create healthy habits in order to support our goals. In the last post of last year I discussed goal setting. And how I had this huge goal in 2019 of kicking my sugar habit. Well, today I'm going to share with you how to create healthy habits so that you can achieve your goal.
So the first tip that I have for you is to get your mind right. Write down why it's important to create the habit in the first place, and then write down the person you wanna become. And then also think about who you are now, and how that's different than the person you wanna become. And then live from a place of having achieved that goal. So you really wanna live from ... So for example, my goal of kicking sugar, my husband and I were traveling home from somewhere, I think we were out on a date, and he asked if I wanted to stop at my favorite ice cream place here in Denver, Bonnie Bray. Bonnie Bray ice cream and I love that ice cream, but I didn't want the ice cream at all. And that was a huge victory for me because I can't imagine a life where I don't want sugar and I don't want ice cream. But I didn't at that moment. So I'm just really trying to live from that place of not even wanting sugar, not even thinking about it, like I don't think about smoking 'cause I'm not a smoker.
So that's what I mean when I say that we want to envision the life we wanna have and then write it down so that you can actually have it in your mind. So I wanna be a person who doesn't want sugar at all. So I was really excited when I didn't want sugar that one night. And then we wanna create a plan. So we wanna get our mind right, and we wanna create a plan.
So first of all, my plan includes education. So there's this book by Sarah Wilson called 'I Quit Sugar' and that was step number one for me. I read that book, I learned some recipes, and already have started creating those recipes that help you step back from sugar. And then for me, a big piece of this is also not surrounding myself with temptation. So making sure that our house is clear of sugar and candy and that sort of thing. And that I'm not bringing sweets into the house, because I'm the sweet bringer, my husband is not so much into sweets, but I'm the person who brings the sweets into our house. So that's another step in my creating a plan.
I also wanna build healthy triggers for myself. So whenever I experience that sugar craving, instead of going to sugar, I will actually, it's a trigger for me to pause and consider why I want the sugar. Is it because I am feeling excited or stressed? What's the emotion behind wanting the sugar? So those are ways in which I have set up my personal plan for quitting sugar. And whatever your goal is, we can create healthy habits around them. So I would ask you to consider what are the habits you wanna create in your life and then really, really dive into that, and really consider how you're going to get there by creating habits.
And then I also plan for roadblocks. So what is a roadblock? For me they're birthdays, they are food pushers, you know those people who want you to eat certain foods because they know or think it'll make you happy or you'll enjoy it. And then cravings, obviously I've already discussed that with the emotional aspect of eating. So I created a plan for all of those contingencies. And to be honest with you, my plan includes eating sugar on birthdays because I'm going to make cakes for my family and whatnot. So it includes that as well.
I want to visualize how it's going to be. So when people offer me sweets and they're being nice and everything, it's gonna suck. And I need to know that it's gonna suck. But my plan is to still say, "No thank you," or to take it and figure out what I'm gonna do with it later. But those are ways in which I plan to deal with those certain scenarios and just realizing that it will be hard and it's going to suck at certain times.
And guys, we're in our new office space, so we've got painters and everybody coming in and out. It's really exciting, this is my first post from our new office space. But there is some work going on behind me, as you can tell.
We wanna celebrate the victories too. So we don't want it all to be bad news, so say you've got this healthy habit of working out four, five times a week. When you reach that goal, you should celebrate. Maybe with a bubble bath, or with a nap, just those things that are good, you actually need to acknowledge those too, all those healthy habits, and all those goals. If you get one step closer, that's a good thing, those need to be acknowledged and celebrated.
So while I have no intention of celebrating with sugar, I do have a list of things that are celebratory for me, like bubble baths are a big one for me, and a glass of wine with my husband is a big one for me. A red wine, because it'll at least be a little bit healthier. And yes, I'm fully aware it turns into sugar in my bloodstream, but I really don't crave wine on a consistent basis. So there you have it.
And then really the small wins build momentum towards long term success. So I'm really excited to hear from you guys, what are some habits that you want to have and to set in 2019 and beyond? And I look forward to hearing about them in the comments below or pop me an email in response to this video. And I look forward to talking with you guys later, bye-bye.
