How To Develop Good Habits

Good Bad or Whatever……….

I am chronicling my journey to a healthy lifestyle. I figure that we are the best advertisement of ourselves. As a life coach I have decided to ‘coach’ myself into adapting healthier life and well-being habits. Habits are difficult to break irrespective of whether these are good or bad habits. I pick up ‘bad habits’ so easily but find it difficult to adapt healthier habits. I don’t know anyone who would like to break a good habit. We generally want to break bad habits. Break seems to have negative connotations and with negative connotations come negative emotions, feelings and all that go with them. So I think I would rephrase it to adapt better healthier habits period. I think whilst I am at it, I will change the term habit to behaviour. It might be semantics but it makes me feel better.

Habits are behaviours that are repeated regularly until they begin to occur subconsciously. They are so hard to break because when our resolve breaks we resort to them unconsciously, when we disengage our brains and react to circumstances rather than think them through. With time, through repetition and lots of it, learned behaviours become routine and before you know it, several adaptations of unhealthy habits will become to healthier habits

It is easy for people looking on from the outside not to appreciate the difficulty involved in changing habits you would rather not have. They took a long time to develop to the extent that they can be carried out unconsciously and it will take some time to amend these until the amended versions also become unconscious actions.

This was brought home to me yesterday when after a day spent clawing my way out of a migraine, I was in no mood to think about diets or cooking and resorted to ordering a takeaway. My subconscious mind took over and I ordered my regular takeaway. By the time, it was delivered, my conscious mind had kicked back in and I realised how far away the takeaway was from my resolve to eat better.

In the past, I would have become resolute and despondent. It is not in my nature to throw good food away, so that was not an option. I did not want to resent myself with every chew, knowing that this was one of my rather unsavoury habits, I decided to embrace it think about how to go about changing this habit.

Do I go back to resignation and a sense of failure tinged with other negative emotions, no not this time, it is time to use this as an opportunity to amend my habit and start amending my behaviour. So I decide to see how I could amend future orders to make them less calorific and identified alternatives on the menu for the next time I place an order. Instead of a large side of fries, I could have the rice and instead of anther battered side, enjoy some coleslaw. This resolve made me feel better and I was not only able to enjoy the meal that was ordered, but was also able to split the meal in half and save the other half to enjoy at another time. Something I would not have previously done.

 I know that next time and there will probably be a next time, I would order something healthier swapping the fries for rice or make some other change. I intend to use the whole affair as a form of training, training for a better future, using the past to develop a healthier future.

The sense of relief was unexpectedly great, more controlled, more relaxed and best of all more positive.