A Healthy Relationship with Habits
Healthy Habits. A vibrant, sparkling, adventure of a life full of hope, enjoyment and empowerment. I didn’t start out with this AT ALL. Yet slowly, over time, that is what I finally I have begun to experience more and more. Over the past few years I’ve pondered what is making that difference. What creates the shift from an overwhelmed, exhausted mess to someone who loves her life and has tools to create anew? In the past 5 years as I’ve grown my Heart Nature DoTERRA business, I’ve watched others on their own journeys as well. Some seem to consistently making progress toward the life of joy and wellness they desire, while other seem to struggle to gain traction.
The question is: How do we experience REAL change? Most of us recognize that to change our lives, we have to change our habits. Whether cutting back on sugar or starting to meditate or exercise, we know these things make a difference! And yet, truth be told, we often don’t do them. Why don’t we all just choose the habits that serve us and get on with it?
I invite you to get curious here. That’s the BEST mindset to explore and ponder and learn with. Let’s look at what’s getting in the way. I’m talking about the underlying beliefs that we have--that are so stealthy that we might not even notice them and their effect on our attempts to grow and change. What we believe informs everything we do--and don’t do. The stories we tell ourself and the tapes that play in the background of our mind are the stealth drivers of our action or inaction and what we experience as a result. The soundtrack in the background of our lives makes our habits and our attempts to change either a horror movie or a delightful rom-com. What’s been your experience recently?
Maybe you can relate. We choose to exercise. We are determined. We decide we will go to the gym 7 days a week for an hour a day. We are pumped, get the membership and the sneakers. The first week we go daily. YAY! The second week we miss two days. We know we “should” go, but now we feel BAD and GUILTY and not so good about ourselves. We broke our promise. Now we have to decide, do we go back to the gym or put it off? We miss a few more days and we beat ourselves up about it. The F word enters our mind--FAILURE. We give up and decide that we are just not good enough to do this. Another year with the same aches and pains, knowing what we “should” do and believing that for some reason, we just can’t make it happen. Sound familiar?
Here’s what really happened behind the scenes. We “know” that our success is defined by doing something FULL OUT and doing it perfectly and that we get there by will power. Anything less is failure and means we suck. When we define our worth based on how successful we are, we will avoid failure at all costs. Which means when we can’t do it perfectly full out, we avoid it. We blame and shame and judge ourselves and are worse off than when we started!
Can you think of a time this happened to you?
Through my years of experiencing this cycle again and again, I tried lots of different things until I finally had a eureka moment! There really IS a different way of approaching this that is fun, effective and soooo much more useful. Healthy Habit formation starts from a whole different belief system. The belief that you are of worth and good already. That life is about learning and about growing, a process--not a destination. When we opt into and operate out of this belief system, new habits can look something like this: Assess, get curious, choose and make it do-able and track it. Then celebrate your success and build on it or acknowledge roadblocks and learn from them. Or both! Rinse and repeat. Do this enough times and you’ve baby stepped your way into a whole different life.
Are you ready to shift your mindset? To release those beliefs that don’t serve and to create new habits in a FUN, Joyful, light way that leaves you with energy and momentum to tackle the next adventure?
Join me in our Heart Nature Life Habits group to participate starting in mid-January, because the first is just a day. We can start new habits any day we choose! We’re going to use simple habits to practice rewiring our brains and walking confidently into the life of our dreams.