Where To Start With Habit Change

Sometimes, even the idea of starting a new habit can be overwhelming. If you weren't exercising, for example, and you wanted to start this as a daily habit, where would you start? I've got a simple method you can use. It works for starting any new habit. Let's get into it.

Hey there. It's me, Kore. And you're listening to Exercising Self-Control: From Fitness To Flourishing.

If you're not exercising daily, there's a certain amount of time every day that you'll need to make available for that exercise. Every minute of every day, you are doing something already, even if it's just sitting with your eyes closed. The exercise you plan to do will take some of those allotted minutes.

That's the simple first step. Set aside the time in your schedule for the exercise you plan to do. Set the when and the where that works for you. Commit to this. Make it achievable. Start really simple. Even if it's only three minutes a day to start, schedule those three minutes. Where is it happening? Put it in your calendar, or your schedule, and commit 100% to following through every day. As silly as that sounds. Three minutes. What's the point?

When the time arrives, you don't have to do anything other than not anything else. What I'm saying is, all you need to do is stand in the space you've designated as your exercise area for the full three minutes, every day. That's it.

Now, likely, just standing there isn't all you'll do. But that's all that's required in this first step. Keep that up for as long as it takes until you are ready to exercise in whatever capacity is right for you. But, to be clear, you can't do anything else during those three minutes. No reading a book, no scrolling the socials, no chatting on the phone. So this can be a non-exercise exercise session. Until you're ready to start exercising during those three minutes, you don't need to do anything else. Until you're ready, that's it. Simple as that.

What you're doing, even without actually exercising, is training the behaviour of making the time to exercise. This is progress. There is a cost for every choice you make. Making the choice to exercise will cost you doing something else at the same time.

You can make this even better by using this new better habit to replace an old unwanted habit. Start doing something better in place of something worse. This makes your investment of time twice as effective.

Again, remember, this works for any new habit. You can start a new set of behaviours without doing the actual behaviours at all. You just need to set aside the time, commit to it, and then you may not do anything. At least that's what it might look like, but you're following through, you're taking time away from other possibilities, and you're creating space for yourself to incorporate this new set of behaviours that you want to do.

That's it for today. Catch you next time.

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