As I engage with members about their day-to-day, a recurring theme is the challenge of remaining motivated to exercise. And I am certainly not immune. Since having my first child 18 months ago, my exercise routine has been impacted & harder to maintain. Like many of you, I want to increase activity, yet struggle to get started. This led me to look into the science of what holds us back from making changes we know are good for our health and wellbeing?

Making changes requires motivation:

Each of us has differing levels of motivation which naturally change over time & for various reasons. A behaviour is easy to do when it doesn’t require a lot of motivation. A great example of this is provided by behavioural scientist BJ Fog:

“If you think ‘Hey, I’ve got to clean my entire house,’ you’re going to have to be super-motivated. But if you tell yourself to tidy one item, all you need is a tiny bit of motivation.”

The take-home message from behaviour change science is to focus on your motivations for making the change and start small. No matter the challenge - a new exercise routine or drinking more water - the science is clear - focus on what motivates you AND simplicity. By increasing motivation and lowering expectations/barriers you increase drive to adherence and reduce the ability to find opt out. 

But how do you do that successfully? Here are six simple steps to making lasting behaviour change

 1. Think about why you want to make a change before diving into the how

Making time to reflect on what is important in your life will help provide motivation. Visualising how your life will be improved will inspire you to keep going - especially on those days you are lacking motivation.

2. List barriers that will hold you back so that you can plan to overcome them

Take the time to confront those excuses that come to mind when you think about making a change to your routine so that you can address them and move past them.

3. Make a plan of what, when and where

Changing our behaviour can often feel daunting and as if it is something that is beyond our control. The research tells us that the simple act of adding a few simple details around what we want to do makes us far more likely to follow through and give us a feeling of control.

An example of a good plan - I will start running once a week on a Saturday morning at 8am down at the park.

Lowering your expectations & removing excuses is an even better plan: I will start by running as far as I can each week until I reach 5km. If I don’t feel like running then I will walk instead.

4. Repeat the behaviour frequently so that it becomes automatic.

Forming new behaviour is a skill, the more you practice the better you become at doing it.

5. Share your changes with your support network to stay accountable.

Experts call this a ‘social contract’ and again the simple act of telling someone we are going to do something increases the probability that we will actually do it.

 6. Reward yourself to associate positive emotion with the new behaviours

We have already acknowledged change is hard, by building a reward into the formation of the new habit we again will increase the habits ‘stickiness’

 E.g. I will have a green juice after my run or meet a friend for a mindful coffee at the end of my run.

So why not grab a pen and paper and have a go at following the steps above? Start small and don’t lose sight of that happier, healthier future you. If you need some inspiration check out the HWFL Life Hacks*, they have been created to help members build up those positive healthy behaviours in small incremental ways.

*You can find information on HWFL Hacks here. The Hacks formed part of a Challenge the HWFL Graduates recently undertook. If you are not already part of a HWFL Facebook Gradate community, now might be a great time to join.