Do you ever fall asleep at night without brushing your teeth?
Are you ever so tired that the idea to get up from the couch or under the covers to wash your face is just too much?
You’re not alone! I always hear this from customers and members of the community.
Whether it is brushing your teeth, drinking water, taking vitamins, washing your face or getting enough sleep, finding the energy for these healthy habits can feel hard.
If you are busy every second of the day, take care of everyone and everything else, these are some of the first things that are cut.
Although they are small and not taking much time, it is still such a challenge to fit them.
But you want to Unpleasant.
You know you’ll be Feel better If you do that.
And at least, or perhaps even more importantly, you can stop thinking about how you don’t do them, because That is tiring.
But how?
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How do you fit these things?
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How do you find the energy?
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How do you follow or do you just not investigate so far?
Well, I have some ideas.
Last week I walked through these exact strategies with two customers who wanted to drink more water and take their daily vitamins.
This is what we did …
First identify the healthy habit that you want in your life – new or old.
Do you have one in mind Katelyn? Now you are ready:
1. What is it that this is important to you?
What about drinking more water, for example, is important to you?
Is it because you think your skin does not feel so dry, it can help relieve the headache you have received, or because your doctor encourages you to drink more water for health reasons? What do you hope you will win?
Wouldn’t it be useful to know if those assumptions are really true? Don’t you want to stop asking? Drinking water is the only way to get that data. If it works, great! Now you feel better. And if that is not the case, you now know that you can get it from your list and look for other solutions.
2. Where are you getting stuck now?
For my client, while in the Nitty gritty we are grabbed from where she got stuck in not drinking water, it was that her water bottle was too awkward and cumbersome. It was also not leak -resistant and so she chose not to take it with you to work and instead set instead of coffee or not drinking anything all day.
It might be difficult to be so honest with yourself, but that is there always A reason behind your inactivity. What stands in the way and are you willing to remove that obstacle (get a new water bottle, in this case) so that you can follow your healthy habit?
3. Set your future self for success
In the same way as an executive assistant paperwork for signature could be prepared by placing a post-it note on the dotted line and leaving a pen at the top, how can you prepare the tools that make it easy for your future self to continue?
This same customer realized that she drinks more water when it contains lemon. But in the pressure of the mornings with two children, she never has the time to cut and squeeze lemon into her water bottle. So she decided to add lemons to the shopping list, cut them in advance and store them in a container in the fridge. Now she can just grab a lemonwig every morning and drop it in her bottle to help herself drink more water.
4. Let go of what it looked like before
Maybe you used to be really good at your healthy habit. Maybe you used to drink a lot of water before life got busy and it was no problem to bring a large water jug wherever you went. But that was before diaper bags and pump bags and managing many other people and things in your life. Your life now looks different and so the way you set up to follow these healthy habits will also look different.
And that’s okay. If the way you did things no longer works, it’s time to try something new. Seasons change and so should our tools and strategies.
Remember that coaching is about showing someone else your blind spots. Someone with a new perspective to help you see where you might be stuck and brainstormed ideas, changes and shifts that will make following so much easier.