How Good Health comes from Good Habits
It’s no coincidence that the logo for HEALTH MindBodyLife is a tree. It is a natural symbol to the principles of the community we are growing. A tree can symbolise many things, in many ways, to many people. We are certainly not the first to use this symbol and we certainly won’t be the last. For us, our tree means consistency, adaptability and growth. These are guiding principles we follow at HEALTHY MindBodyLife; it’s why we do what we do.
Our purpose is to inspire and enable people to live a healthier and longer life. Our intention is to partner with like minded individuals and organisations and build a HEALTHY MindBodyLife community.
Those statements sound wonderful and look great when written on our website and in our core documents. But, they are not very tangible. So, how is our purpose and intention achieved?
“Good Health comes from Good Habits”
We focus on healthy habits. Much of what we do in our lives and daily routine is automated into habits. This is how we, as a species, have evolved to save energy and conserve valuable attention. It is energy and attention that we focus on to achieve our purpose as a company.
You may now be asking: I thought you were a health company? What about the things that will make me a healthier person like nutrition, exercise, or sleep?
Our response to the above questions would be; yes of course we are a health company and of course we look at things like nutrition, exercise, and sleep. However, we also view health as a multifaceted construct, and the most effective way to improve health consistently over time is through good habits. We use guided self-reflection and coaching to help our clients better understand their energy and attention. We then look to create simple and consistent habits to awaken a healthier life.
“Live your health goals in harmony with the rest of your life”
The above quote is a tag line that some may find cheesy. Nonetheless, we believe in it. We want others to believe in it and we don’t want our community to feel like good personal health conflicts with other aspects of their life.
CONSISTENCY
Just like a tree needs a consistent supply of water to grow. We need to grow our health habits with consistency.
Habits are formed by doing things consistently until they require little energy or attention to maintain them. This is much easier if you make a plan of when, where and how you are going to implement a habit.
In our healthy life programs, we use digital calendars to document and plan a healthy habit. An example of this is waking up and doing what we call “activating exercises” – very simple and quick body weight exercises to kick start the day, first thing in the morning. The digital calendar has 30 mins blocked out every morning for activating exercises and therefore the when, where and how is pre-determined and provides a cue to creating the habit. This process is simple, clear and requires less energy and attention to complete. Furthermore, it doesn’t even have to 30 mins, 15mins would provide almost as much benefit.
ADAPTABILITY
Just like a tree adapts to the environment, weather and seasons. We need to have the ability to adapt in order to thrive.
Life can be noisy, life can be quiet, life can be stressful, life can be relaxing, life can be busy, life can be slow. Life is uncertain and life can be unpredictable. The last section spoke about planning habits and making them consistent. In this section we acknowledge that perfect preparation does not exist. But, excellent adaptation does.
Take the “activating exercises” habit used in the last section as an example. First thing in the morning, your child may wake up earlier than expected, you may oversleep and not have time before work, you may be unwell and not able to do the exercises. Unpredictable things happen to everyone, and they can be overcome by being adaptable.
If your child wakes up earlier than expected, adapt the exercises to incorporate play with your child. “Squats with Daddy” for example can be fun and instil the habit of exercise in the next generation. If you oversleep and do not have time to exercise as you are rushing to work, simply move the “activating exercise” time block in your calendar to lunch or the evening on that day. The exercises are short and simple enough to slot in with little time or mental energy/attention. If you are unwell and unable to exercise swap the “activating exercises” to a mediation or revitalising bath. This will aid in your recovery and when you are well again you can add in the exercises again, having not broken the habit channel.
GROWTH
Just like a tree continually grows with adaptability and consistency towards the light and heat of the sun. We need to continually grow to feel fulfilled and like we have purpose.
In our healthy life programs we talk about, and model habit stacking. Habit stacking is how we, as people, can grow with simplicity and consistency. It can easily be overwhelming when faced with lots of change at once. Therefore, layering simple, consistent and adaptable habits on behaviours we are already doing is very effective in creating growth on a larger scale.
In other words, a healthy habit that you have already successfully implemented becomes the trigger for a new one. Using the “activating exercises” example previously spoken about please see below for a few examples of habit stacks:
- After completing my “activating exercises” I will mediate for five minutes.
- After completing my “activating exercises” I will eat a healthy breakfast
- After completing my “activating exercises” I will cycle to work
The power of habit stacking means that the habits do not have to be related and they can also be everyday habits. Examples of this include:
- Before I travel in the car, I will pick up a water bottle.
- When I open a door, I will relax my shoulders
- When I lie down on my bed to go to sleep. I will think of one positive thing that happened that day.
Habit stacking is a simple yet powerful way to create growth over time. With significant time; habit stacking has a compounding effect with life changing and life lengthening potential. In addition, it is even more effective when combined with other powerful aspects that we are researching and incorporating into our healthy life programs. To be written about in future articles no doubt.
LIVE YOUR HEALTHY LIFE GOALS IN HARMONY WITH THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
HEALTHY MindBodyLife are privileged to be able to deliver exercise, nutrition and healthy life coaching services that inspire and enable a healthier life.
Our healthy life programs are designed to maximise and conserve energy and attention. Our programs are designed to refine an individual’s health goals so that they are aligned with all other aspects of life.
Like a tree, we want to embody consistency, adaptability and growth and spread this throughout our community and with our clients.
If you have found this article interesting and would like to find out more about our nutritional therapy programs and how we can help inspire, enable and guide people to live a healthier and longer life, please get in touch.
If you think this article would be useful for someone you know, we welcome you to share it. We aim to share knowledge, joy and inspire a healthy life.
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Best wishes,
Joe
