We’ve all been in this place before, you want to start living a healthy lifestyle but you don’t exactly know how, and so you end up in a little bit of a limbo state, wanting progress but not seeing it.
This stage can go on and on and on, leaving us feeling frustrated and fed up. Wanting real change once and for all.
Did you know that about 1/4 of all New Year’s Resolutions made never come to fruition?
It’s ok, this is a very human experience and we have all experienced it at one time or another, so try not to feel too bad or down on yourself about being in this stage. The best thing you can do is begin to look forward to real, positive change.
And that’s what we are going to talk about in today’s blog. How you can begin to make such a change in your life so that you can begin to live the healthy lifestyle that you have always wanted to live.
Let’s look at 5 amazing but easy ways to start to make progress, right now.
1. Create Goals: Know What You Want to Achieve
When it comes to living a healthy lifestyle, you need to know exactly what that means for you before you get started. What does a healthy life look like to you? What does a healthy person look like to you?
Once you know exactly what you are aiming for, you can start to create goals for yourself and your own lifestyle around these ideals.
There is no point in starting out on a journey to a healthy lifestyle if you have no idea where you are going or how you will know when you get to the finish point, so your goals need to be tailored to you and your own journey.
When setting goals, try and follow the S.M.A.R.T acronym. Your goals should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timely
Rather than anything random or free-falling, creating your goals in this way gives you the best possible chance of success. And what is the point of setting a goal if it isn’t one that is going to bring you success?
2. Start Small: Look at Habits First
When we start to want to live more healthily, we often think of making big and significant changes first. We want to run a marathon, we want to never get a takeaway ever again, and we want to go sober overnight.
These are great aspirations but they are usually quite unachievable goals right away.
In fact, it isn’t the big things that matter at the start of your journey to a healthier lifestyle. Rather, your success will lie in the small, everyday habits that you adopt. Who you are really rests inside the things you do every day and so that is where we need to start.
If you want a healthy lifestyle, you need healthy habits.
And what these habits are will depend on the kind of healthy lifestyle you are aiming for and what that looks like for you. Some examples could be:
- Reading before bed instead of watching TV
- Having a healthy breakfast before work instead of skipping it
- Drinking only one coffee a day
- Exercising on your lunch break
- Limiting your screen time
We achieve on a small level first, so that is where we need to start.
3. Don’t Go it Alone: Involve Others in Your Journey
It is always harder to reach your goals if you decide to go it alone. One of the best things you can do when you are trying to achieve a healthier lifestyle is to involve other people in your journey.
You could join a running group, start attending a yoga class, join a healthy eating group on Facebook, or connect with other people in any way that you think would work for you. Whatever you do it, you will be supported and aided by people with similar mindsets and goals to you, and this is always something that helps when we are trying to make progress in any avenue.
It’s hard to go it alone, so remember that you don’t have to.
4. Track Your Progress: Get a Journal
As we’ve seen with the SMART goals framework, it is important that our goals are measurable. We need to be able to see our progress as we make it so that we can stay inspired and motivated throughout our journey to a healthy lifestyle.
A simple way to do this is to get yourself a journal in which you will keep track of all of your healthy progress, whether this is to do with daily habits, exercise, food, social activities, or anything that you are working on to get yourself to a healthier position in life.
It is much easier to steadily make progress when we can see it as it is happening and it is also much easier to congratulate and reward ourselves when we do this, too. Sometimes we don’t stop to pat ourselves on the back even when we really should and this can contribute to us losing our way through demotivation.
Keep a track record of all the good work you are doing.
5. Allow Progress to be Non-Linear: Accept Setbacks
If we want to have a healthy lifestyle long-term, we need to know that this is something we cultivate over a lifetime of effort and sustainability, and not something we get overnight. We also need to remember that when we are making this long-term progress, it won’t always be straightforward. There will be setbacks and that is normal and to be expected.
If you can both accept and expect that you will have setbacks, they will be much easier to deal with and you won’t find yourself entirely falling off the wagon because you feel upset or annoyed at yourself.
Let things take time and allow them to be non-linear, that is where you will find real lifelong success.
And that is exactly what we are looking for.