How to Make Change Easy

February 27, 2022
We hear all the time that change is hard.  In fact, I’m sure I’ve said it myself.  I’d like to eat healthier but it’s just too hard to avoid junk food.  I need to get more sleep but it’s just too hard to shut off Netflix.  I want to exercise regularly but it’s just too hard to get up when my alarm goes off.  It's often hard to imagine how to make change easy! 

While we’ve heard the many ways that change is hard, have we ever asked if this is really true?  Is change really hard or do we MAKE change hard?  Do we just not know how to make change easy?  I think this is the case for many people.

When the New Year was fast approaching, the New Year’s Resolution wheels were starting to spin up: “I’m really going to change my diet this year.”  “I’m really going to get my blood sugar under control this year.”  “I’m really going to get into an exercise routine this year.”  I’m really going to cut back on my alcohol intake this year.”  We’ve all said things like this before.  We’re all guilty of wanting to just ‘rip the band-aid off’.  “That’s it!”, we say to ourselves “Starting January I’m going to….”  And this where things may have fallen apart for you.

The primitive brain

Let’s revisit the brain again.  Just like our primitive brain likes to seek calories to prevent it from starving during the next famine, it also likes to conserve energy.  We are wired to do what is easy, convenient, doesn’t take much effort.  When we start something new, our brain is going to automatically say “Whoa there.  What do you think you’re doing?  This seems like a lot of work!”

Now we don’t always feel this way.  There are those New Year’s resolution moments when we are pumped by the prospect of kicking off the New Year as a superhero.  We imagine what our days are going to look like in the future when we wake up, ready to take on the world.  You have a great breakfast, kill it during your morning workout, pack a healthy lunch, destroy your ‘to do’ list and then come home just craving those vegetables you have planned for dinner. 

Riding this high, we make some pretty awesome goals!  No more alcohol, no more junk food, exercise every day, meditate every morning, purge the closets, landscape the yard, spend quality time with our family every day and why don’t we decide on getting that promotion at work as well.  This year is going to be the best year EVER!!!

The Motivation Wave

These are the moments when we tend to set our sights, those times when we are super motivated.  But what happens when our motivation is not that high.  The morning after the dog was sick in the night, your kid had a nightmare, crawled into bed with you and took up more space than a rhinoceros, while your partner’s snoring made it impossible to get back to sleep.  How pumped are you feeling that morning to have a great breakfast, kill your morning workout, impress the boss and leave you excited about those veggies for dinner?  If these things weren’t already wired into your brain as so routine that you don’t even give them any second thought, than the answer is, Not…at… all…  This is when our brain is telling us that change is so hard.

Our motivation is not static, it ebbs and flows.  While we may have big goals, the truth is, they won’t always seem all that important to us.  Especially when we’re comparing them with the instant gratification of NOT doing whatever habit is supposed to move us toward them.  When our motivation is at its peak, we feel we can take on the world and doing the work to get there doesn’t seem so bad.  But when our motivation is in a valley, any kind of ‘doing’ is going to feel really hard.

Strategies to Make Change Easy

1) Go small

But I thought the idea was to go big or go home?  Sure, on the days that you feel like a Rockstar, you can go big but recognize that you are not going to feel this way every day.  You may have a big goal ahead of you, and there is no harm in dreaming big, but what is actually going to get you there are the tiniest little actions, done consistently.

We need to choose actions that are so small that they feel stupidly easy.  Maybe you want to become a morning exerciser but you have a relationship with your snooze button that you just haven’t been able to break.  If we’re not even getting out of bed, how do we go from asleep to a 30-minute workout?  Trust me, just deciding on a super motivating day that tomorrow is the day you are going to leap out of bed and jump into that workout, is not going to be enough to make that happen consistently.  The change is way too big.  On a low motivation day, it’s going to feel really hard for our brain, which hasn’t even wrapped its head around waking up yet, to buy-in to a 30-minute sweat session.

So, we need to start small.  We need to start with just waking up.  Maybe our action for tomorrow is to set our alarm on the other side of the room so that we have to get up out of bed to turn it off.  After you’ve turned it off, you don’t have to work out.  You can curl up with a cup of coffee if you like.  The habit right now that we’re trying to establish, is getting out of bed when the alarm goes off.  That’s all.  If after a week of doing this, you feel like you could do more then perhaps you turn off your alarm and put on your workout clothes.  That’s it, just out of bed with workout clothes on.  After that, maybe you do 5 squats.  Not a 30-minute sweat session, do 5 air squats, right there, in your bedroom, with your workout clothes on.

Do you get the idea?  We tackle an action that is so easy, that we can easily make it into a habit and once it becomes a habit, we can then add on another super easy action.  After a few weeks, it will just feel natural to get out of bed and exercise in the morning.  Your brain won’t even give it a second thought.  Sure, there will still be days when you don’t feel excited about it.  You might even miss the odd day but once the habit is ingrained, you’ll find it easy to get back on track.

2) Start Where you Are

Now maybe you’re reading this and thinking well that’s too easy.  I’m never going to reach my goals sitting on the couch drinking coffee for a week.  Last week I got up and worked out for 30-minutes for 3 days in a row.  I don’t need to start small.
This can be dangerous thinking.  You’re likely on a motivation high right now.  The wave of motivation is cresting but what you’re not prepared for is the inevitable crash.  These crashes are normal.  Even the most elite athletes don’t always feel like exercising, eating well and turning their devices off an hour before they go to bed.  You’re not to blame when motivation wanes. You just have to be prepared for it.  We can’t rely on motivation alone because it’s just not sustainable.  What we need to do is pick something we will do consistently even when our motivation is at an all-time low.

As BJ Fogg says in his book Tiny Habits, “In Behaviour Design we match ourselves with new habits we can do even we are at our most hurried, unmotivated, and beautifully imperfect.  If you can imagine yourself doing the behaviour on your hardest day of the week, it’s probably a good match.”

Now this baseline behaviour is going to be different from one person to the next.  When it comes to exercise, for the person who is trying to establish a daily exercise routine, the worst possible day might look like a minimum 5-minute walk.  For the elite runner, it might look like a 60-minute easy run.

You need to figure out what you can do on your worst possible day and then do it consistently until it’s truly automatic.  Chances are when you head out for that 5- minute walk, there will be days when you feel like doing 15-minutes or even a short run.  That, my friend, is the icing on the cake and a great opportunity for you to pat yourself on the back and celebrate!

Have your New Year's Resolutions not panned out the way you were hoping?  Would like help in establishing new behaviours to support your health goals?  Consider a health coach to guide you in choosing a more successful path.  Book a free 30-minute call to find out if health coaching might be right for you.

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