This month I decided that I wanted to tackle my habit of eating a salty snack when I get home form work. I made the plan to replace the salty snack with fruit and lean protein, honoring that my body needed fuel but making a change to fuel that feels better for my body.
I also decided to make the A Life All In August Touch Point the challenge of Make One Change. I asked the A Life All In Community to join me in making one small change in habit or behavior. To leave behind something that was no longer serving and replace with a habit or activity that would lead to a happier, healthier you. My salty snack habit now had accountability.
All good, right?
Well….
I absolutely kicked the after work habit. I successfully have a piece of fruit and a few almonds or wait for dinner. I proudly reported on the A Life All In Facebook page that I was keeping my commitment. Then I had a my call with my Wellness Coach Mandy Hanson of Altered Self Wellness and before I could even stop my verbal processing self, I admitted, out loud, that the habit had morphed. A salty snack was longer being consumed after work. I did, however, move the habit to an evening snack, a habit that I thought I had kicked about a year ago.
Change is hard. Self-sabotage is real.
Coach Mandy reminded me of something that I have also learned from Brooke Castillo and the Life Coach School (a podcast that I LOVE!) The human brain generally wants to do what is easy, what takes less energy. Generally, that means it doesn’t like change, any change and it will find a way to not let the change happen.
For me this salty snack habit was a hanger on from a general lifestyle shift I have been making over the past year and a half to be on the healthier side of things mentally and physically. And it was a change and my brain didn’t like.
So Coach Mandy asked me two things that I really believe will help others who are struggling to make a change.
-How will you REWARD yourself each day that you follow-through on the new habit? Mine is a piece of dark chocolate or a Netflix reality show which is a HUGE treat. Both of these things will stop me from having a salty snack. The key here is to be honest with yourself about whether or not you kept the commitment.
-What is your “why?” What will it mean when your new habit is intact? For me, it is a real manifestation of a new healthier me. Live into your “why” now. Live as if you are already there. This will not allow room for the old habit.
Change is hard, but we are strong and smart and capable.
We are living A Life All In.
