It’s the little habits that count

Human beings are essentially walking sets of habits because habits are who and what we are. Routine is something we all gravitate towards either consciously or unconsciously. Changing the status quo is something your body and mind will resist, at least at the beginning. The issue I see the most often, and this is a mistake a make as well, is that we want to implement either too big of a change or too many changes at once. We simply get lost in doing this and then revert back to the old self.

My solution for this problem is a small number of small habits. You want to introduce physical activity into your life? Start with brisk walking twice a week for half an hour, after 3 weeks increase that to 4 times a week for 45 minutes. If you feel like you can handle more, then by all means do so, but keep in mind that you will need motivation in the beginning until it becomes your routine. Once it is your routine you will no longer need motivation and this is what some people call discipline. Motivation comes and goes, but habits are always there because they are a part of your everyday life.

Let us look at a standard case of big changes and too many changes at once. “I’ll start on Monday. I am going to go to the gym, eat healthy, go swimming and read a book because I heard it’s good for my brain” Okay, young and ambitious lady, I am very glad that you want all this, but what are you actually going to achieve? You skip a pool session here and there, you skip gym a couple of times, you eat 3 or 4 donuts from your favorite donut joint and you go right back to your old habits whilst the books collect dust on the shelf. The second scenario: “Tomorrow I’ll start going to swimming classes twice a week” – this young and ambitious lady actually sticks to the twice weekly pool schedule for two months or so and then it becomes something she doesn’t have to think about. Her week simply isn’t complete if it doesn’t happen. She slowly introduced 2 or 3 gym workouts a week and after a while that too becomes a part of her routine. If we analyze these two ladies, we will see that lady 1 lived like a health-conscious and personal development fanatic for a couple of weeks and then went back to her old self whereas lady two had achieved minor progress in the beginning, then built more success which ended up yielding positive outcomes. Imagine the same but in a longer period, say 5 years. Lady 2 became a fitness instructor at the gym, eats healthy, reads a new book every week and has social life while lady 1 lives the same 5-year-old life with the only difference being TV shows she watches because the old ones got cancelled.

I think it’s a much wiser option to look at habits that impact your health, quality of life and sense of accomplishment as a game you play your entire life. It seems weird in way because it is way too “simple” but most people can’t make themselves do the little things because they think they are “too good” for them and that they can handle everything at once. Just stop and think for a second about what happens when you quit because you were overwhelmed with changes or even better, think what will happen in the long run if you persist with the small changes and habits. My favorite way to describe this is similar to the snowball effect, just like a snowball you throw down a hill, it has a slow start but grows in terms of significance and size. You will be confused and amazed by the results these little changes can bring. Try this out in the coming months and then come back and tell me if you became A Tiny Bit Better.