It’s ironic that when I begin to turn my attention towards obstacles we could possibly face that I hit a big fat f’ing wall of burn out.
Sickness, tiredness, time – these are some of the top excuses we find not to commit to things – to let our good habits slide and our bad ones come to life. And to be honest, on days like this one when I find myself day dreaming of naps and seeing just how low I can keep my step count, I’m tempted to just let things slide. Who cares? Watch an entire season of Girls? Yes, please. Two blocks of chocolate? They’re on special and I live a 1 minute walk from the supermarket, so yah. Uber Eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Sign me up!
What’s stopping me? My past self - damn her to hell. She prepared for this very moment. The obligor in me feels obliged (obviously) to you to keep going; to continue my Sun Salutation challenge and to write this blog. Even though it quite probably doesn’t affect your life in the slightest, I have that push to continue because I publicly stated that I would.  Could I just lie to you and say “It’s going so well, I didn’t feel like shit at all Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, here’s how you can feel amazing all the time too...”? Sure, but the reality is that knowing about your tendencies, the habit loop and celebrating small wins makes committing to habits simple, not easy! Some days you will be sick. Some days you will sleep through your alarm. That is the reality of life. So what can we do?
If we can prepare for things that may trip us up, then we can catch ourselves before we stumble. One way to do this is to consider making things convenient or inconvenient. For example, when I began my Sun Salutation Challenge I removed the process of “getting ready”. I practiced without a mat and usually in my PJs. Now this may or may not have started out as laziness, but it’s actually transformed into making doing my challenge everyday more convenient. In the past, the act of getting dressed & laying out my mat had the potential to stop me from practicing at all. Whereas if I can remove that process, just roll out of bed, meditate & then begin my challenge; starting is much easier.
Food prep is a very common “convenience” method to assist in the habit of healthy eating. Other convenient strategies you can use to help form habits are;
Place your running shoes/yoga clothes/workout gear at the foot of your bed the night before so when you get up, you simply put them on and go.
Keep a container of nuts and seeds handy rather than sugary treats for when you feel the urge to snack.
Write down groceries as you run out of them so your shopping list is full of things you need and less likely of things you want (on that note; NEVER shop while hungry!!!).
While convenience is a very strong method for forming habits, inconvenience should not be underestimated in the power it has in habit formation. 7:30pm, the kettle boils. If that was 7:30AM, that would be my cue to start meditation, but at 7:30PM it’s a whole other cue; sugar craving. My mind races and starts fantasising (yes, fantasising) about all the desserts I could have WANT. Peanut butter cups, chocolate covered caramels and Nutella filled donuts are some of the favourites. So I open up my cupboards and NONE of those items are there. Now you’re probably thinking “it’s your house, shouldn’t you know that you don’t have those things?” Yeah I do, but don’t you try to tell me that you’ve never looked in your fridge for something to eat, found nothing and then 5 minutes later opened it again! The key here is I try not to keep those things stocked in the cupboard because if I have to walk across the road to Woolies, that’s inconvenient and I’ll just settle for my cup of tea. There are of course some days where I do accept the challenge and I am in that store like The Flash, but the reality is most days I can rely on my lazy old self to not leave the house when I’ve already traded “work” pants (pssst, that’s yoga pants for me) for PJs.
So how can we use inconvenience to our advantage?
Don’t keep chocolate or lollies stocked in the cupboard.
Put your phone/alarm clock in the next room or at least out of arms reach where it will wake you but you MUST get up to turn it off. If you can place it on top of your exercise clothes, even better.
Remove apps such as Facebook and Uber Eats from your phone so it’s not as easy to access them.
Sadly there is no magic formula that will work for everyone; these are all just suggestions. You must find methods for creating habits that work for you. Once you start to become aware of your own habits, when you do them and why, you can start to take control over them.
You’re thinking of Nutella donuts right now aren’t you? Sorry.
