When it comes to getting and staying healthy finding the right motivation can empower you to create enduring healthy habits. So many of us know we should be eating better, exercising more, getting our entire family adjusted and living healthier, but why, in some cases, is that not happening?
When there is a mindset shift from should do or have to do over to what we can or want to do, the results will be tremendous. The problem is we are bombarded with more and more messages about the importance of a healthy lifestyle, but at the same time, we collectively get fatter and sicker.
To address this issue, I am going to outline 5 key strategies to help you stay motivated. The basic idea is to do more of what makes you feel good and stop what makes you feel bad.
5 Key Strategies for Staying Motivated to Get Healthy
1. Why Do You Need to Be Healthy?
Start with the reason you need to be healthy. Practical goals or reasons for lifestyle changes, such as disease prevention or improved fitness, sounds great, but the outcome exists in some vague future.
We tend to burn out long before we get there because the promise of a brighter day somewhere down the road doesn’t make us happy now. Our brains are hardwired to respond more readily to immediate gratification than to the benefits we have to wait for. This is why the wrong “Whys” don’t work.
In contrast, when you choose activities and ways of staying healthy that feel good to you, you will be more motivated and want to do them -again and again. To find the right why, focus on what makes you feel good now.
By choosing lifestyle changes and applying them in ways that feel good to you, other goals like long-term health will be natural byproducts of prioritizing enjoyment.
2) Clear Your Head Of “Whys” That Are Undermining Your Health Efforts
Once you choose the right “why” health can feel like an absolute gift rather than a chore. To transform your experience of health from a task to a gift you need to get rid of all the beliefs, expectations, and wrong “whys” undermining your relationship with healthy living and your motivation to stay healthy.
One way to do this is to choose activities and changes that feel good.
Another tactic is to reframe the meaning behind an activity. For example, if you view exercise as a way to lose weight and get fit, you get no immediate gratification and, therefore, have no real reason to exercise today. However, if you think of exercise as a fun activity, put on your headphones and listen to your favorite music in a great environment with friends and family, and then you might be more motivated to get out there and exercise more often.
3. Believe That Self-Care Is Essential
To successfully integrate the wellness lifestyle into your daily routine, you need to start thinking that self-care is essential to you. Caring for others and working with passion and dedication are great impulses that contribute to a meaningful life. But when caring for others overshadows your daily needs and quality of life, you lose the balance you need to generate your own energy and well-being.
Ask yourself, what do you have to do every day to ensure that you have the energy you need to take care of what matters most?
If you think you don’t have time, observe the difference between a day when you meet this need and a day when you don’t. Living a 5 Essentials wellness lifestyle:
- Is revitalizing
- It makes you happier
- It reduces stress
- It helps your mind focus
- It helps you resiliently face challenges
- It powers your most cherished roles and responsibilities.
When you identify healthy living as something you choose to do because it feels good, it will become a non-negotiable daily habit
4) Everything Counts!
When you realize that everything counts, you begin to look for opportunities to make changes. So, give yourself credit for what you are already doing and for the small things you can add or take away.
Maybe it’s changing out toxic products in the house, getting a new toothpaste or cleaner. By making these small changes every day, finding the opportunities to move, staying on track with your chiropractic and giving yourself credit for doing them, you are building a bridge to consistency. It is much more motivating to know that every little bit counts and create your healthy routines from there.
5) Keep a Learning Mindset
The reason we have community dinner, health workshops, recipe nights, health resources, progress evaluations, webinars, etc. is to help you keep learning. When you are always learning and adapting this is known as a learning mindset.
If you adopt the perspective that you are always learning, then there is no such thing as failure. Everything you do is part of an experiment and gives you the data to learn from. As you learn and apply these things to your life, you begin to understand what works and what doesn’t work and avoid the trap of feeling like a failure.
Shame does not motivate. So don’t beat yourself up on the days you don’t eat right, don’t exercise, don’t sleep enough, miss your home exercise; use that as a learning experience to make appropriate changes in your life.
Your learning mindset reinforces your best possible why for staying healthy to build a sustainable cycle of success. So, get to every event and always be learning how to improve your life.
Is Your Lifestyle Killing You? Learn the Wellness Lifestyle
Join us at our next community wellness event at our chiropractic office in Rocklin:
TUESDAY 3/29/16 @ 6:30PM
GUESTS ARE WELCOME- SIGN UP TODAY!!