Episode 54 The Power of Daily Habits in Achieving Health Goals

In this episode I focus on one of the the secrets to achieving health goals; the power of daily habits.  By concentrating on what we can add to our lives, rather than what we want to eliminate, we set the stage for natural and sustainable change. Forget the fleeting allure of the quick fix; commit to the slow and deliberate march towards a healthier you.

I offer insights into the art of patience and persistence in the face of wavering motivation - approaching our health like an elite athlete in training. Setbacks will happen; they're part of the process. 

This episode strips away the myth of motivation, redefining it as a conscious, daily choice.  These are practical strategies to making new healthy habits that will help you achieve your health goals.

Learn more about Fiona's speaking, radio and consultation services at Informed Health: https://informedhealth.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay

Transcript

Fiona Kane: 0:31

Welcome to the Wellness Connection podcast with Fiona Kane. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today I'm going to be talking to you a little bit about goals and habits. I was inspired by.

Fiona Kane: 0:44

I was listening to a podcast I think Chris Williamson's podcast which I really enjoy, and he was actually quoting I think he was quoting James Clear from Atomic Habits and he said you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And I thought, well, that's from a business point of view, that is very true. But then in my mind I was translating that into a health perspective and while systems are useful, of course, from a health perspective, I would say it's more in regards to your habits. So I would say from a health perspective. I was just looking up some other kind of famous quotes and things around habits and I saw a few different ones, but essentially the ones that I saw were all about the fact that your habits had to be something you do daily. So it sort of was along the lines of you're never going to change anything in your life until you change what you do daily. So what you do every day needs to be what changes to achieve your goals. And going back to the first quote, the James Clear one, about the unless you change your systems. He was actually in that. He gave an example and he was talking about a hundred meter race and he said that everyone who stands at the start line for a 100-meter race has exactly the same goal. So what is it that actually helps them win? And that's where he's talking about systems, or, in my idea, from a health perspective, systems, yes, but I think just more habits, where I think about the things that you do daily, because it's what you do daily that makes all of the difference. So we might be able to sustain things short term where you might go and do, you might do a fast or you might go to a retreat and you might do those kinds of things, which is great if that works for you. However, if you just do that and you don't do anything else, it's not going to be long term, whereas the daily habits, the things you change, do make quite a difference.

Fiona Kane: 3:01

So some people, when they're doing things to improve their health, they'll do it all at once and they do it wonderfully and they change everything, and good on those people if you are able to do that and that works for you, that's fantastic, but for most people what actually really works is that day-to-day just changing habits, bit by bit. So it's kind of the what is the hair versus the hair against the snail. I can't think it's a hair in the cell, oh geez, I'm terrible with remembering those kinds of things. But yes, it's essentially the person who goes out and does it. All you know, huge and big, straight up. That can be great, nothing wrong with it. However, that person can often burn out really quickly, whereas the person who just incorporates little bit, little bit, little bit, little bit, those little bits all add up.

Fiona Kane: 3:48

So you know, if you incorporated something that took you two or three minutes per day and you did that every day for a year, that's something you know. And you did that every day for a year, that's something you know. If you did it every day for a month, I think it depends on what data you believe. But it said that you know it's 21 days to change a habit, to make something into a habit. I've heard other things that say it might be more. It might be more like six weeks or something, but you know, let's just say a couple of months of doing something new. It becomes a new habit. Whatever exactly that looks like, then it does become a habit and you do bit by bit. It's a bit like whether it's if you think about learning a language or learning how to ski, or learning how to drive, or learning how to walk or all of the things. You get better at it because you do a little bit, little bit, little bit bit more, bit more, bit more or, in some of those cases, a lot, a lot, but you're doing it regularly. Every day you're doing this practice.

Fiona Kane: 4:46

So changing habits is a huge part of achieving a health goal is changing those habits. And the other important thing to remember about habits is there's a couple of things. One, when we bring in new habits, they tend to displace the older habits that we had, the other things we were doing that maybe weren't so beneficial. So sometimes, when people are focusing on bringing in new habits or when they're focusing on making a change, they focus a lot on getting rid of the old habits. And the problem with the getting rid of is, if you are focusing purely on what you can't do, then what you focus on gets bigger. What you can't do, then what you focus on gets bigger.

Fiona Kane: 5:37

So, my friend Linda Campbell, the hypnotherapist. I've been referring to her a lot lately. She gave me an example and she said well, if I tell you, whatever you do, don't think about the blue elephant. You're thinking about a blue elephant. Now, right, and that's because when we tell our brain to avoid something so it knows what to avoid, we actually have to identify the thing we're avoiding. So essentially you say to your brain whatever you do, avoid. That. It's a little bit like a poster up at an entrance to let the security know who not to let in. You've got this picture of what to avoid in your brain because you don't have a poster up on the wall and so you've got to keep it front and center all of the time.

Fiona Kane: 6:18

So if you're trying to change a habit and you're trying to have less sugar or less soft drink or you're trying to quit smoking or whatever the habit might be, but if you're trying to do less of something or quit something, and I say, whatever you do, don't do it, and you've got a picture in your mind what it is, you can see how you'd be thinking about that thing all of the time. So sometimes a better way of doing it is actually to bring in new habits and to focus on bringing them in. So you're not thinking about moving something out, you're thinking of bringing something in. So, for example, if it's a food related thing, you know you might just bring in a different snack, a healthier snack, right? So you're still having a snack, you're having a healthy thing.

Fiona Kane: 7:03

But you're not thinking, whatever you do, don't eat the chocolate or whatever it is. You're just thinking, oh, I'm hungry, oh, yeah, I've got the snack that I've already prepared or that you automatically get used to getting all the time, because we automatically get used to opening up the fridge and pulling out the chocolate or the thing or the chips out of the cupboard or whatever it is we get used to. So if you get used to getting out the can of salmon and eating that, or getting out a piece of cheese, or making yourself a salad, or just eating some leftover protein from last night's dinner, or making a protein shake or smoothie or whatever it is, whatever it looks like for you, depending on which meal, which time of day, all of that jazz, but once you get in the habit of doing that, you're doing that and you're not thinking about not having the other thing, you're just thinking about doing that and that will tend to fill you up. It takes up your time, fills you up. Then you get busy doing the next thing. You're not thinking about the chocolate.

Fiona Kane: 7:56

So it's not about don't think about the chocolate. It's about bringing this new habit, this new ritual, this new thing you do, and as you bring those things in, they kind of crowd out the other thing that you were doing before. So the change in the habits is a lot about just bringing in new things. Or it could be something completely unrelated. So if you might be going and looking for food but you're not really looking for it because you're hungry, well then it might be bringing in something else altogether. And it might be bringing in, you know, put your favorite song on and dance around to it. It might be distracting yourself with something, it might be going for a walk around the block, it might be lots of things, I don't know. But all it is is just like you just bring in some new things that you do and the new things you bring in are things that are beneficial, positive to your health, or at least not detrimental to your health if the other thing maybe was detrimental to your health. So it's just kind of like bringing in some new things.

Fiona Kane: 8:54

The other thing that's useful to know, also in regards to changing habits, is that and this is all about changing habits to achieve your health goals, or to achieve whatever goals really but talking about health goals specifically here is you've got these things called neural pathways in your brain and I've talked about them before. I'll talk about them again. But essentially, in our brain, we are born without all of the neural pathways being fully developed, and I'll tell you what I mean by that and explain what a neural pathway is. So when a human is born, we don't know how to walk, but when a giraffe is born, they do know how to walk. So their neural giraffe is born, they do know how to walk. So their neural pathway is already developed, it's already there. But for us, we actually have to develop that neural pathway that teaches the brain arms and legs, whatever all of those parts of our body to connect up, to link up and to know how to walk. So we build that up slowly, though. So we build it up over time.

Fiona Kane: 9:54

So first of all, a baby can't really do anything much, and then it can. You know, it can just turn its head from side to side, whatever, but eventually it's able to hold its head up. And then you sort of do tummy time and they sit on the floor with their head up and they strengthen those muscles in the neck and then they might start sort of popping themselves over, rolling themselves over. So they go from side to side until they figure out how to roll themselves over and then until they know how to roll themselves back right. And then if I'm getting the developmental stuff in the right order, but you get the gist of it, but then not long after that they might start pulling up their arms and legs, but not doing anything with them yet. But then eventually they pull up their arms and legs and they're crawling, and then eventually that turns into standing and that turns into walking right. So all of that actually creates the neural pathways in the brain to allow you to do that. And it's like that with a lot of things. It's exactly the same with learning how to play the piano or any of those things. You're laying down new networks and new neural pathways. So habits are the same thing.

Fiona Kane: 10:58

So if you are used to responding to a certain situation a certain way, it's almost like a neural. You just automatically do it. So if you are used to I don't know when I finish talking to a client or when I finish a specific letter project, whatever it is you do in your job, when I finish talking to a client or when I finish a specific letter project, whatever it is you do in your job, when I finish this section of this job, what I do or when I have my break, I walk over to the vending machine and get a chocolate bar or a Coke or whatever it is that you do. And if you're doing that all the time and you've been doing it for years, it becomes almost. It is like it's embedded. So it probably is like a neural pathway where you just automatically do that.

Fiona Kane: 11:39

Or if you would have talked about things like stress and emotional eating before, if it's like I have a stressful event, I have an upset, or I feel stressed or I feel angry or I feel sad or whatever the feeling is, which is quite often it's just any sort of strong emotion I go to the vending machine or I go to the fridge or I go to the bakery and get a chocolate cake or whatever the thing is, we do that quite automatically and it's a program slash neural pathway, slash whatever. But it's a programmed thing that we kind of just automatically do and the only way to change that is to change a program and start doing something else on a regular basis until that's not the normal thing we do anymore. Because with neural pathways what happens is they get stronger and stronger and stronger with use. So if you've been to the vending machine a thousand times and you've been to the fridge to get a salad or whatever the alternative might be or just some other distraction, once you're going to have a lot stronger pathway, you're going to have a thriving motorway with 50 million lanes that goes to the vending machine and it's only very. The pathway going to the healthier option or the, the distraction or whatever the other thing is, is going to be very hard. It's not going to be much there.

Fiona Kane: 12:50

You know, and I often describe it with my clients. I talk about it like it's a um, like a track, like a dirt track or something, and there's a dirt track and there's no pavement yet, there's no asphalt yet and and there might be a tree falling down in the way and a couple of potholes, and so when you first use that pathway it's harder to use, it's a bit harder to find, it's a bit hard to find your way, it's a bit tricky. You've got to work harder to get through it and and so it seems harder to use in the beginning because it is harder to use in the beginning, but then you use it again the next day and then use it again next day and then you know, and eventually over time it gets smoothed out and the you know, the obstructions get removed. Then you know, ultimately that becomes a stronger pathway for you. And if you could think of any example of anything in your life where you've changed Like people who have given up smoking or they're not drinking anymore or whatever things that they've changed, they will tell you. Like you can think back to the time where you used to do that thing all of the time and it was so automatic to you and now you wouldn't even think to do it, but it was really really automatic for a long time.

Fiona Kane: 13:57

So what I'm saying is it is possible to create healthy new habits and to change habits, but it's just bit by bit by bit and there has to be that, whether it's programming and neural pathways and all that time thing, but it has to be. There's just that time where you're building up that road and you're building up that neural pathway and you're building up that program that says, in response to this situation, this is what I do. Or when I get up from my desk or get out of my car or driving home from wherever, whatever it is you're doing, you don't go through the drive-thru, you go to the supermarket. Or you go home where you've already been to the supermarket and you've got food at home. Or you don't go to the vending machine. You go to the fridge where you've got food at home. Or you don't go to the vending machine. You go to the fridge where you've got your snack that you've put aside. Whatever, it is getting used to the new thing right. So this stuff takes time.

Fiona Kane: 14:51

Building new habits takes time, but it certainly works a lot better when you do it on a regular basis and when you not so much focus on the thing you're not doing, focus more on the thing that you are doing. The other thing, too, is you know and I talk about this a lot, but it is just worth adding in here is one is just forgive yourself when you don't get it right, because if you are used to doing something a certain way, it will be quite automatic for you to keep going back to that way. So it's not about oh well, you know, I completely failed because I fell over and I went back to doing it the old way. That's okay, that's really normal, it's going to happen. So you just get up and you get back into it and you start going the other direction again, right? So we get so caught up in doing things perfectly, trying to do perfection, that we just don't allow ourselves any space just to fall over, get back into old habits. Whatever it happens, it happens very easily. We get back into the old habits and unfortunately, it's so much easier to get back into them than it is sometimes to get into the new ones. So forgive yourself for not being perfect, for not always getting it right, for falling back into old habits. Just keep moving forward, though, because otherwise you've just got an excuse just to never do it. If you can only do it when you do it perfectly, you're not going to do it. Essentially, if you think of anything you've achieved, whether it's the job that you're doing now, whether it's a study that you know if you went to university or college or school or whatever. If you've learned to play the piano, if you've learned to do code for computers, whatever it is anything that you have learned. You did it by creating really healthy habits and just doing it over and over and over again.

Fiona Kane: 16:39

The other thing, too, is that I have talked about quite a bit in the past is I have talked about things like motivation, and it's important to remember that motivation. I think that people somehow think that they say they've got no motivation, and we say and I'm guilty of this too I've got no motivation, like somehow though it's going to come out and just land and you're going to have motivation, and it doesn't work that way. I think motivation is just when you don't have motivation, but you just still do it. Motivation is you just keep showing up for yourself. That's what motivation is, and you show up when you absolutely don't feel like it. You show up when you're tired, you show up when you don't want to and when you don't want to be there, and that's what motivation is. Motivation is not something you know. Maybe there are some people who walk around with huge amounts of energy and huge amounts of motivation, and good on them, but I think most people we don't, and it doesn't work that way, or certainly not.

Fiona Kane: 17:36

Motivation for things like looking after our health. We might be motivated about a job that we want to do or a course that we want to do or a band that we want to go and see saving up for a holiday. We might be motivated about things like that. But in regards to the looking after our health stuff, which feels a lot like drudgery a lot of the time, we don't always feel super motivated by that and, as I've said in the past, my motivation is ultimately what my, what I want my outcome to be. So my outcome is for me that I want to be independent and strong and functional for as long as I live, and hopefully that is a nice long life, but however long that is going to be, I really hope for myself that that's what I have, that I'm independent and functional and stay strong, and that's my ultimate motivation.

Fiona Kane: 18:23

But turning up and showing up and doing it is is, um, you don't wait for the motivation bug to hit you. It's just not going to. It's the motivation is just doing it. It's just not going to. The motivation is just doing it anyway. It's just showing up and doing it anyway, over and over and over just doing it anyway, and that's how you get good at it.

Fiona Kane: 18:40

And you only have to ask someone who you know like a professional swimmer or someone like that, who you know some of them, I probably get the numbers wrong, but I've heard them say things like they swim for six, eight hours a day or something, and they do that from when they're I don't know children all the way up to these athletes, for the time they're at the Olympics or something. They might've been doing this for 15 years. Six hours a day, swimming. I am sure there are many days that they do not feel like getting going swimming, especially in winter. Right, I'm sure there's many days that they don't want to get themselves out of bed and they don't want to do it, but they do it. That's not because they're feeling motivated, it's because they do have a set goal.

Fiona Kane: 19:18

But also they kind of just know it's got to become habit, it's got to become automatic pilot, and those healthy habits which help you achieve your goals are the little things that you add in every day, all of the time, and they all add up to a big thing and they all add up to a big change, because those little bits, little bits, little bits do add up A little bit like a savings account. You put a little bit, little bit, little bit in and one day you look at it and go, wow, there's so much in there and it's because you just push a little bit, little bit, little bit. So the habits are exactly the same thing and so so, yeah, motivation is not going to just come. You just have to show up for yourself, essentially. And but the little habits make a really, really big difference, and it is your daily habits are what makes a change for you. So it's the thing that you do every day that matters. It's the things that you do every day that matters. So focus on those little habits for every day, because they are the thing that are going to give you the best results in the long term.

Fiona Kane: 20:20

Anyway, I think I will leave it at that. Please, on either side here, you've got a subscribe button on one side I can't remember which side it might be this side and then you've got the next video on that side. Please go and check out my other videos and if this is, if you're on YouTube or if you're on Rumble, or please check out my other podcast episodes if you're listening to this anywhere else. But please like, subscribe, share, tell other people about it, share this with your friends and, and you know, get, get this podcast out there for me. I would really appreciate you do that. Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you next week. Thank you, bye.