The Power of Small Habits

Dropping old habits and creating new ones can be a challenging task.  You’re trying to stop doing things that you may have been doing for perhaps your whole life and trying to do things differently. And that is scary.

Rather than thinking “I need to stop doing this and that and start doing this and this” and creating this long drawn out list of new habits that will only overwhelm you and result in failure, you should focus on SMALL habitual changes. And I am talking so small that it almost seems TOO EASY for you to implement them right now.

Let’s give some examples.

Let’s say you’re eating dinner out every single night of the week. Is it realistic to make a goal of not eating dinner out anymore?

To completely stop what you’ve been doing EVERY NIGHT? Absolutely not. Perhaps that new goal would last you a week tops. So how about setting, more sustainable goals. Commit to eating out only 3 times a week rather than 5. That’s only 2 less nights a week that you are eating out. But from a year’s perspective, that’s 104 times less. It’s small changes like that that add up over time and go a long way.

Another example. Let’s say you’ve decided to commit to the fitness journey because you’re finally feeling ready to make some changes. If you currently are not going to the gym consistently (aka more than once or twice a week), it is not realistic to set a goal of hitting the gym 5 days a week! Again, that is only going to last you so long. And we want everlasting change here. Something that you feel you can sustain for the rest of your life. So, instead commit to going to the gym one more extra day a week to what you’ve currently been doing.

Now don’t those small changes sound a lot more doable and sustainable? It’s little things like that that will create the momentum you need. Then once the momentum is rolling, you will be more likely to step it up. You’ll eventually get to the point where eating in is a habit for you and going to the gym 5 times a week is second nature. It’s amazing what you can do when you focus less on the big picture of what you want to accomplish and more on the little changes you can make to get there.

If you can get the habits right, anything is possible.

Comment below and tell us which habits you’ve nailed down and which habits you still are working towards.