How to Create a New Habit

By Lauren Miller

Do you have a health habit that you would like to create but for some reason you are having trouble creating it?

For example, you set the alarm early so you have time to exercise. However when the alarm goes off, you are overcome with sleep, and the comfort and warmth of staying in bed overrides the need to get up and exercise. Worse, you feel defeated and guilty for not getting up.

Next, you hit the snooze button to go back to sleep and you don’t create the new habit to wake up early and exercise.

I’m sure everyone has experienced not being able to get out of bed early to exercise, yet some people are able to maintain the habit of getting up early to exercise consistently… and have been doing it for years.

Let’s suppose all the excuses, the holidays, no time, no gym membership, no training partner, too old, bad knee, etc., are not really what’s stopping you… and by the way these really are just excuses.

In order to change a behavior, you need to replace the belief or feeling about the current behavior with one that is stronger and more desirable.

What drives you to change? Your brain works in a way that it will choose the feeling or behavior that drives you the most.

Let’s take the same example of wanting get up early to exercise. If you really believed your life would be better if you changed this behavior, and you believed that the consequences of not changing would produce undesirable consequences, you would be driven to change. Changing would not only feel good, it would feel better.

So how could you replace the habit to stay in bed under the warm covers?

Maybe the new habit would feel better because of the results that getting up and exercising elicits… having more energy throughout the day, less body fat, looking and fitting into clothes better, and you would no longer feel guilty and defeated from sleeping in and not taking responsibility to get in shape.

Any time you want to change a behavior, the intervention is to replace or move towards a new behavior by associating the new behavior with good feelings…feelings that will override the feelings you had for the behavior you need or want to replace.

How can you create a new habit that would feel good and benefit your health?

Lauren Miller is a Professional Life Coach and Certified Personal trainer who specializes in coaching for weight-loss. Her company is Your Partner For Change. When Lauren made the shift from personal trainer to wellness coach, her clients were more successful… with just a simple regularly scheduled coaching phone call. Why? It’s not the exercise or nutrition plan you follow… there are different ways to get your desired result. What is most important is what keeps you motivated to stay on your plan. That’s what coaching with Lauren will do for you. You can sign up for her FREE Best Body Makeover E-BOOK and receive a 30 minute FREE strategy coaching session by going to http://www.bestbodymakeover.com/ Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lauren_Miller