Want To Build A New Healthy Habit? Don’t Wait For The Motivation
Do you want to build healthy habits for resilience? Don’t wait for the motivation to come.
Huh? Does that even make sense? Allow me to explain…
Whether you want to exercise more, eat healthier foods, develop a new skill or commit to doing something new, it can be easy to procrastinate while you wait for the motivation to come. It seems logical that once you are motivated, the momentum will come. But in fact, sometimes you need to create some momentum in order to find the motivation.
Developing new habits are often difficult, especially when the costs (or the effort) outweigh the initial benefits. For example, think of how easy it is to stay in bed rather than get up early to do some exercise, especially on chilly winter mornings! But if you start small, make it achievable, and link a new habit to something you like or already do (like listening to your favourite music), you might be surprised at how quickly you can start to build momentum.
And the progress you make will spark the motivation.
So instead of staying in bed because exercising in the morning is “too hard”, do you think you could commit to ‘just 5 minutes’ of exercise, and do it every day? If that’s too hard, start with 2 minutes, and commit to doing it every day. Blast your favourite music to make it more fun, and you might be pleasantly surprised at how quick the time passes, and also how good you feel afterwards!
Make it easy, and just get started!
Curious to learn more about the science of building healthy habits for resilience? I highly recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear – the most comprehensive guide on how to change your habits and get 1% better every day.