Making drastic changes to our life is difficult. It almost feels like the human body and mind can’t actually cope with large sweeping changes because we always revert back to our old habits. Unless you have an incredibly stable mind and you can motivate yourself, it’s hard to make changes unless they are small enough to be almost unnoticeable.
But improvement comes with small changes. Learning how to become a healthier person doesn’t happen overnight, and those new habits need to be adopted slowly. Don’t rush when you want to change your lifestyle because you could end up getting fed up and giving in. To assist you in making changes to your life, here are a couple of things to consider.
Replace bad habits with something a little worse
Don’t replace bad habits with good ones—that’s a drastic change. For instance, if you’re going to try and cut down on soda, don’t change by drinking tea or soda water. Instead, try and cope with the taste of diet soda. Once you’ve been drinking diet soda for a while, you can then switch to perhaps flavoured sparkling water, water, or even making your own healthy soda. Another example is smoking. The most common way to cut down on smoking is to have a similar replacement, such as buying yourself the best cheap dry herb vaporizer you can afford and try vaping instead. It’s all about trying to cut down on the bad stuff, and sometimes you have to trade an evil for a lesser evil before finally switching to something healthy.
Dealing with personal issues
Whether it’s health issues that you’ve been ignoring for some time or stress associated with a job or person, then you need to try and make small changes to deal with those problems.
For starters, make sure you visit a doctor. If you have a fear of your doctor or if you dislike your doctor, then consider switching. Make these small changes one at a time because doing something drastic, as mentioned before, can be hard to swallow. Look for new doctors in your area that are more trustworthy, and then seek their professional advice to help you overcome your health problems. Going from online diagnosis and trying to deal with your own issues to seeing a doctor can be a big leap, but it’s a small step that’s required to give you peace of mind with your health.
If you have issues with someone at work or if stress is a big factor, then start by eliminating those stressful situations one at a time. For example, ask to be transferred to a different department, try and actively avoid that person or situation that causes you stress, and take small stress relief actions such as meditating or listening to music to help remedy the situation.
Don’t overwhelm yourself
The biggest problem that most people face is that they try to make too many drastic changes at once. If they want to lose weight, they’ll completely cut their favourite foods and workout for 3 hours a day, only to burn out a week later and revert back to their old habits.
Making drastic changes it not the way to go about changing your lifestyle. Focus on small, bite-sized changes that you can stick to and focus on the long-term, not the short-term.