It’s time to challenge yourself to reboot your body and your mind. Think beyond your reasons for doing the refresh and consider the habits you are trying to change.
What are habits?
Habits are simply an automatic set of behaviors we do during the day. Our morning routine is a well-established habit that we do on auto-pilot. What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Maybe brush your teeth, or go to the bathroom?
How do habits work?
To figure out how to change habits long-term, we should understand a little about how habits work. A cue triggers habits. For example, feeling hungry is a cue that triggers eating. But, the habit itself (eating) isn’t what our mind is seeking. The reward is the thing at the end that we desire. When we eat, we want to feel physically rewarded through our taste buds and our eating experience.
This is the habit loop. Cue – Routine – Reward. To change our habits, we need to insert a new routine in the middle of the loop that provides us with the same reward.
How should I reset my habits?
Your 7-Day Reset is the perfect time to work on your food and exercise habits to build mental resilience. The first step is to create awareness around the habit loop and test what works best for you.
Then, shift how you think about failure. If you look at any big success story, it seems easy because we don’t see the mountain of failures the successful person had to overcome. Failure is a necessary part of success. Just read about people who have achieved great success in their lives. Walt Disney was told he lacked creativity. Einstein couldn’t speak fluently until he was nine and was kicked out of school. Elvis failed his music classes and was told he couldn’t sing.
Here’s the thing, you can either be standing on top of a mountain of failure or buried beneath it. Changing our health behavior is difficult. Pretending it’s easy only makes you more likely to fail. Instead, embrace failure and cultivate awareness around your routines. Take this refresh and make it a personal challenge to get yourself on the right path. A path that will lead you to achieve great things with your life.
