Health is not just the good condition of the human body; In many ways, it is also the behavioral patterns and lifestyle that are behind that good state. Therefore, to feel good physically and emotionally It is key to learn to adopt healthy habits
However, starting from scratch to integrate these routines into your daily life can be quite a challenge. Therefore, in this article we will give you some practical advice so that the project of going to the gym does not become too difficult for you, start eating healthily, put aside the addiction to tobacco, manage your sleep better, etc
Keep these key ideas in mind if you are committed to adopting healthy habits and maintaining them in your life for the long term.
1. Calibrate well the balance between your capabilities and the ambition of your habit
If the routine that you are considering transforming into a new habit is too similar to what you already do every day or what you already know perfectly well that you can do, it is possible that applying it to your daily life will not bring you anything, or even throw you away. the towel due to lack of motivation (since you will not be leaving your comfort zone).
On the other hand, if the goal you have set for yourself is too difficult and greatly exceeds your capabilities, you will probably become frustrated and you end up not only throwing in the towel, but also giving up making modifications to your plan so that it better fits your talents and knowledge
Therefore, it is important that you try to find a balance between what you know how to do (or what you have already gotten used to doing) and what is a huge challenge for you. To get it, you can make a SWOT panel, that is, a table divided into four other squares in which you can briefly and summarizely write down your Strengths, Weaknesses, Threats and Opportunities in relation to the goal you set for yourself. With this in mind, it will be easier to correctly predict the level of difficulty you will have to face.
Of course, don’t get obsessed with making it perfect; Just getting closer to a realistic and reasonable notion of the tension between your abilities and your goal is enough. If you turn this first stage into (paradoxically) an almost impossible mission due to the degree of accuracy to which you aspire, you will not be able to move forward and move on to practice.
If your way of estimating what your healthy habit project will cost turns out to be too unambitious or too complicated, you can always make corrections as you go but at least you will now have a backbone of the difficulty curve that you had estimated to, from this, make the appropriate modifications.
2. Segment your new habits into short-term goals
To enhance your capacity for self-motivation, it is important not to stay with the simple abstract idea of the habit you want to embrace: Concrete as much as possible. Remember that abstract goals are also goals with diffuse limits, which can be modified “at convenience” and place you without realizing it in your comfort zone.
To avoid this, make your objective concrete in a chain of specific sub-goals that provide you with very short-term sources of motivation. That is, make sure that this new healthy routine is divided into goals within hours or days, so that you always have the next one on your radar.
This will not only help you motivate yourself (since you will know that in a very short time you can feel the satisfaction of having made progress towards your final goal); In addition, it will help you detect errors on the fly and avoid procrastination
3. Visualize your success
Visualization is a technique widely used in psychotherapy both as a self-motivation tool and to overcome fears and personal complexes It helps to focus on the goal to be achieved and to get rid of the fears that could be paralyzing us or were tying us to a passive attitude that prevented us from breaking the routine.
To put it into practice, set aside several minutes to close your eyes and imagine as vividly as you can the situation you aspire to reach.
4. Schedule a series of reminders
Speaking of procrastination, it is important that you keep it at bay by setting several reminders and alarms.
Remember that the chances of you giving up on improving your lifestyle habits increase if you are not able to foresee situations in which there is a high risk that you will forget to do the corresponding task ; Once you have started skipping exercises or actions that make up that routine, it is easy for the following ones to also end in the same way.
So that, Create a detailed schedule and hang it in a place where you will see it often, and each morning or night set several alarms as a reminder for the next few hours.
5. Reserve moments to measure your progress and detect failures
Especially at the beginning, you need to pay close attention to the extent to which you are moving from desires to practice, so that if you are not managing to implement a routine as you would like, you can correct the situation in the first days. If not, when you realize that you are not reaching your goals you may become discouraged and completely give up on transforming your habits.
Therefore, it is essential to detect as soon as possible the signs that we are not making adequate progress, so that changing some actions and routines that we are implementing does not cost us a great effort (especially considering that we start by proposing relatively simple sub-objectives). ). In this way, we prevent problems from accumulating.
If you are interested in enhancing your effectiveness when taking this measure, always keep a diary of your progress in which you record what you are doing day by day and the next sub-goal that you must achieve, so that it is easy to compare both.
6. Share your achievements with others
If your healthy habit has to do with exercising, it is usually positive to do it in the company of other people ; The presence of people who accompany us in this process of physical and/or personal development is very motivating.
Additionally, it’s also good to keep your friends and family up to date with your progress. By doing this, you will help them bring up this topic often, congratulate you at key moments, and ultimately motivate you and at the same time act as a reminder of your goals.
You may be interested: “Types of motivation: the 8 motivational sources”
7. Secure the first 21 days
It is estimated that The average adult needs about 21 days to integrate a new habit into their identity that is, the way in which you conceive your “I”, what is known as self-concept.
Therefore, when you are trying to adopt a new routine to your daily life, keep this time reference in mind to know when that chain of actions that you want to get used to will begin to become part of your daily life without you devoting so much attention to it. , since after that number of days, it will come out of you more automatically and spontaneously. Which means that the habit will go from being a project to a consolidated reality.
Related article: “Self-concept: what is it and how is it formed?”
