In order for you to change your negative bad habits, you have to understand what they are and recognize you need to change, to ever be happy with yourself.
Some of these bad habits, like smoking, over eating and excessive drinking, are the obvious ones, but others may be less obvious.
Sitting all day at your PC or in front of the TV is damaging to your health, even if you do get in some exercise daily because being lazy in your mind, means being lazy with your habits. Depriving yourself of eight hours sleep because you have eaten too much, too late or overdone the boozing, for even a short period, is going to play havoc with your health and wellbeing.
Forming a new healthy habit takes repetition and determination, so if your attention is elsewhere you will fail when attempting to adjust to new more healthy behaviors. Of course the most likely place to be when you decide to change is when you hit rock bottom with your neck stuck down a bottle, your liver about to fail or immobilised by obesity or ill health. In order to change the way you behave before you reach this point, you have to reprogram your mind and this happens by implementing a well being lifestyle that rewards your good choices.
It is a really great tool to be able to learn to visualize your desired outcome, i.e. if you desire a lean healthy body, you must see yourself as this person in your mind, until it happens for real. This can be done by learning to switch off from your everyday life by meditating each day in a field, by a lake or on a beach, always outdoors so you have the sound of nature to help you get there. It is important to understand when you are attempting to change your bad habits you start with a few small steps to begin with, so as not to be over whelmed by the work and change it takes to achieve. You are beginning the process of training your brain to do something completely different to what you have become used to, so take small steps daily and never run before you can walk.
Free will is the key to choices and you are in control of these choices, so begin this journey of change with one personal victory at a time. This means setting a small goal like walking for 30 minutes daily until you gradually increase the time spent walking to one hour per day. Walk instead of driving whenever you can and enjoy the outdoors as much as you can, especially if the sun is out because fresh air and vitamin D, both act as feel good factors. Only eat food when you are hungry not because your eating habits are determined by the clock. Still eat three meals but make them smaller and not at regimented times. Never miss breakfast, the most important meal of the day and drink plenty of water, instead of fizzy sugary drinks or alcohol.
Overtime these small baby steps to change your habits and routines, will have a really positive effect on the way you feel in yourself and will boost your confidence levels because achieving anything, is better than achieving nothing.
It is time to stop procrastinating in your comfortable routines and begin to realize, victory only occurs in awareness, so understanding why you keep doing what you do, is the way to fast track yourself into making changes. If staying up late and watching TV is the routine that leads you to eating chocolate and drinking too much wine, switch of the TV and go outside for an hour walk, this will change everything and get you your desired result of becoming fitter.
We are all two people, the one we think we know and like, the kind, mature, thoughtful, healthy person we believe we are. In life coaching or talk therapy we have to get to know the other person, the one with the habits we deny because it's easier than changing.
Writing down your feelings when they happen, paying attention to the triggers for the habits you want to change allows you to separate the truth from your fiction and catch the behaviour before it happens.
Start your journal and make a list of all the times you feel sad, hungry, angry, tired or just unable to motivate yourself, this is when you are at your weakest and by monitoring your feelings, you will see clearly what triggers the bad habits which make you feel like a failure. You have the power within to make massive changes in how you feel, how you look and how others interact with you, so recognising your patterns, that lead you to fail, is the key to your success when it comes to making big changes in your habits.
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