Since I’ve been working from home I’ve made it a daily a habit of stretching every morning (anywhere from 30-60mins).
This is a behavior I would love to do for the rest of my life.
Think of something, that’s aiming to improve your health that you are currently doing or would like to continuing doing for the rest of your life and listen up.
So far, as a “healthy habit” and behavior my stretching has been going really and its a great addition to my morning routine post training and nutrition.
However, this week has been especially busy for me.
I’ve had to wake up earlier to ensure I’m following my morning routine all because I’ve needed to start work nearly 1 hour earlier!
So what has this done to my health habits (which are part of my morning routine)?
Well this is what I wanted to share with you.
Absolutely nothing..
Everything is as is.
Why?
Because I don’t have the ‘all or nothing mindset’ – let me explain.
The all or nothing approach looks like this.
If I can’t allocate my usual 30-60 minutes a morning to stretching then I’m going to skip it all together. I have to start work earlier so I just can’t fit it in.
I guess I’ll just try and do it tomorrow – this is where the problem starts.
A break in habit chain occurs.
We don’t want this.
Here’s what you I should do.
Implore the opposite to the ‘all or nothing approach’.
The opposite of the all or nothing is ‘consistency’ – no matter low little effort is put in.
O.K so I can’t do 30-60 minutes of stretching, so how about I pick the most important stretch in my routine (FYI it’s the couch stretch, if you don’t know what that is, google it, it’s the best!) and do 2:30min per side.
I didn’t do my usual 30-60 minutes but I haven’t broken the chain for that habit.
Tomorrow if I have more time I’m going to get back onto my usual 30-60 minutes.
Other examples could be not being able to get to the gym so you block out 10 mins in your calendar and hit some squats and push ups – chain not broken!
But these don’t have to just be related to health and fitness.
You may be working on a particular skill and some days it’s harder to practice that skill then others. remember, just show up and get your reps in and don’t break the habit!