5 Tips for Successful Habit Building

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5 Tips for Successful Habit Building

Building habits is hard work. If it were easy, I wouldn’t be writing this article. In fact, human beings are hard-wired to perform actions in a repetitive way. Rinse, wash, repeat. The challenge is getting yourself to get rid of the bad habits and replace them with the healthy, life-affirming ones.

We’ve had a lot of experience in the field of habit building, so we’ve decided to share with you our 5 most effective habit building tips.

Reward Yourself

1. Reward yourself

This comes as a surprise to most people – but just as important as adhering to your goals is rewarding yourself for your intention to do your best. That’s right – the reward comes whether or not you’ve successfully achieved your goal that week. That means that for every week you are setting out to build a habit, you should also be give yourself a treat. These treats can be anything – like getting a massage, visiting a museum, or sleeping in on Sunday.

 

Start small and realistic

2. Start small and realistic

Start with small and reasonable goals that you think you have a high likelihood of success. If this means only striving to do something once a week, that’s perfectly fine. It’s much better for you to succeed at making a change once a week then to set a goal of 5 times per week and only do it once. You’ll eventually start beating yourself up and may give up all together. Don’t strive for perfection; instead, do the best you can, and remember, tiny improvements quickly add up over time.

 

Focus on no more than two actions at a time

3. Focus on no more than two actions at a time

We strongly recommend that you focus on no more than two health actions at a time. Our extensive research and background in the field of habit building and wellness has shown us that most individuals can successfully incorporate a maximum of TWO new habits into their life at any time. Set yourself up for success and focus on one or a maximum of two habits at a time.

 

Be social

4. Be social

Get support from your friends and family. Tell them about what you’re doing and ask them to encourage you! And, if you’re feeling down or having trouble that particular week, seek support from your community.

 

If you are having trouble, change your goals

5. If you are having trouble, change your goals

Notice when things are becoming a bit too difficult and you are starting to feel frustrated. If you can’t achieve the action you set out for yourself, you have a few options:

  • First, reduce the target frequency. If your goal was to do something 5 times a week, try instead for 3 and see if you’re able to do that.
  • If changing the target frequency doesn’t work, go ahead and pick a different health action that you might be more likely to achieve.

Remember, success breeds success! Choose reasonable and realistic goals that you can actually achieve and grow from there.

For more tips and tricks related to habit-building for wellness, we suggest you download Mountain Trek’s brand new Habit-Building & Goal-Tracking App in which we guide you through the process of turning health actions into habits into lifestyle changes.

What is Mountain Trek?

Mountain Trek is the health reset you’ve been looking for. Our award-winning health retreat, immersed in the lush nature of British Columbia, will help you detox, unplug, recharge, and roll back years of stress and unhealthy habits. To learn more about the retreat, and how we can help you reset your health, please email us at info@mountaintrek.com or reach out below:

Habit Building for Wellness

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Habit Building for Wellness

You’ve decided you want to lose weight, get fit, reduce stress, sleep better? That’s great! The next step is figuring out how to start. A quick search on the internet might lead you to the latest diet fad or the newest fitness gurus, each with their own personal recipe for success.

Perhaps you might get overwhelmed by all of this and wonder when did health and fitness get so complicated? Well, it doesn’t have to be!

Related Article: 3 Steps to 10x Your Success Rate

Achieving wellness can be as simple as making small changes in your life on a day-to-day basis and taking incremental steps towards something that will ultimately lead to big changes in your life.

It’s all about turning actions into habits. Let’s break this down.

Actions repeatedly regularly over time = habits

To put it as simply as possible, to turn an action into a habit, you have to repeat it over and over again until it becomes second nature.

Like brushing your teeth: you brush your teeth at least twice a day when you wake up and before you go to bed. But, you weren’t born this way; your parents drilled it into you from when you were a toddler, and then you did it every day, twice a day, for years until it became a habit and you stopped thinking about it.

The more you repeat something, the easier and more ingrained it becomes. Building a habit is a simple as repeating an action again and again until it becomes habitual.

Accumulated habits = lifestyle changes

The thought of making big lifestyle changes can be overwhelming, but when you break it down, lifestyle changes are simply collections of tiny actions repeated over and over again that then become habits. When you think about it this way, it may seem more manageable and less overwhelming.

Rather than focus on the lifestyle change or large health goal you want to make, what about instead breaking it down into discrete actions and focusing on them one at a time?

One action repeated regularly over time makes a habit and an accumulation of habits makes lifestyle changes.

Lifestyle changes = wellness goals

From these actions which we transform into habits and which then leads to lifestyle changes, we bring ourselves closer and closer to our wellness goals. It’s these lifestyle changes that ultimately bring us to our wellness goals, whether that be weight loss, reduced stress, detoxification, fitness, or better sleep.

For more tips and tricks related to habit-building for wellness, we suggest you download Mountain Trek’s brand new Habit-Building & Goal-Tracking App in which we guide you through the process of achieving your wellness goals through habit building.

What is Mountain Trek?

Mountain Trek is the health reset you’ve been looking for. Our award-winning health retreat, immersed in the lush nature of British Columbia, will help you detox, unplug, recharge, and roll back years of stress and unhealthy habits. To learn more about the retreat, and how we can help you reset your health, please email us at info@mountaintrek.com or reach out below:

Digital Detox Tips For A Stress-Free Life

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Do you spend more time checking your phone than looking at your lunch date? Or find yourself checking social media frequently and experience anxiety if you forget your phone at home? You’re not alone – the Western world is dependent on technology, and we don’t go long without checking a screen. But we can make strides towards a healthy relationship with technology using these digital detox tips.

7 things you can do to digital detox:

1. Get reading

Go back to an original paper book and put down the ebook!

2. Live theatre

Give your eyes a rest from the screen and treat yourself to a night at the theatre or opera.

3. Stretch

Have a good stretch; whether 10 minutes sitting in a chair, or going to a local yoga class, we could all use a little more stretching.

4. Get some fresh air

Go for a walk, hike, or a bike ride – even for just a few minutes, the fresh air revitalizes immensely.

5. Get creative

Paint, draw, pottery, or make a blanket fort with the kids! Accomplishing a creative endeavor brings a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. It can be a tangible, beautiful result of time digital detoxing.

6. Cook

Make a big batch of soup for the freezer for ready-meals, or make a bean salad for dinner and a few work lunches. This is a great opportunity to create a healthy nutrition plan for your week!

7. Have company

Engage in any of the above with a loved one! Face to face interaction rather than online interactions has been proven to uplift mood, reduce more stress, and release endorphins. So rather than chatting online, go out for a tea or a walk!

Try having one digital detox day per week. Turn off the computer, phone, and Netflix to see what fun you can have without being plugged in and how you feel after having that cleanse.

Digital Detox Tips

Technology as friend, not foe

Integrate some digital detox practices into your life to promote a healthy relationship with technology, rather than a dependant one. 

Health apps: More applications exist for our smartphones than we could ever dream up. The Mountain Trek App can support you on your wellness journey.

Alarms and reminders: if you spend the majority of your time on or near a computer, use it to your advantage! Set reminders or alarms to remind yourself when to have that healthy snack, or when to get up and go for a 15-minute walk to stretch the muscles and get some fresh air.

Tip: Use your computer or phone’s calendar to organize your week; when you’ll go swimming at the pool, when you’ll go to that pump class, and you can even schedule in the time to go for an after-dinner walk with your partner. Treating all these aspects of your health as ‘real’ and important appointments will make you less inclined to ditch them.

Your digital detox, like any detox, is important to cleanse and grow towards more desirable habits in your every day. Learning to use technology as a tool towards our goals, as opposed to addiction is sure to benefit us in the long run. And who knows, while you’re not online, you may just discover something fun that you love doing, unplugged or not!

What is Mountain Trek?

Mountain Trek is the health reset you’ve been looking for. Our award-winning health retreat, immersed in the lush nature of British Columbia will help you unplug, recharge, and roll back years of stress, anxiety, and unhealthy habits. To learn more about the retreat, and how we can help you reset your health, please email us at info@mountaintrek.com or reach out below: