We always find that February is when we truly start our year. Kids back at school, workload building and our bodies are craving routine! Here are 3 ways that we have learned to form better habits, for a better year.
1. Do not bite off more than you can chew!
We all set intentions for 1st January (or a Monday or the beginning of the month!) but when 1st Jan was near we would indulge wayyyy more than normal knowing deprivation was fast approaching! A few days later we slowly started to rebel against the strict goal/intention we had set, which lead us to resent the intention (or ourselves!), which then made us feel guilty for not achieving it and THEN said we would ‘start again on Monday or next month!’ and the cycle continued!
Until we read Atomic Habits by James Clear. The principle that resonated with us was the ‘2 minute rule’. When building a new habit, it should never take more than 2 minutes. Instead of overcommitting to reading a chapter of a book at night, read a page. If you want to eat a healthier breakfast, take 2 mins to cut up fruit the night before, if you want to start running, wake up and simply put on your running shoes. Clear says that the 2 minutes will set up a system where once you start doing the right thing, it will make it easier to continue. But making it simple to start is KEY!
For us, the changes we incorporated were not giving up caffeine, just replacing our 2nd one with LUKA. Committing to the gym just twice a week instead of 5 times or meditating for 10 mins instead of 20mins.
- 5am wake up time.
Eye watering we know, especially when you have young kids or work late. HOWEVER as Benjamin Franklin says “The early morning has gold in its mouth.”
if you have Ever woken up super early, before the rest of the world there is a huge sense of peace and calm in the air. We both have kids who wake up at random times (sometimes at 5am too!) but the one way we can ensure that 70% of the time we get “me-time” is waking up at 5am. We learnt this in the book The 5am club by Robert Sharma and tried it and it was surprisingly incredible how much energy we had, not less! It also meant that we went to bed earlier knowing we were waking up early resulting in a deeper sleep!
We drink our lemon water, meditate, work on LUKA, exercise and we have to say, we feel pretty proud being awake when the rest of the world sleeps…
- Eat more, not less.
Instead of focusing on eating less of the bad things, focus on eating more of the good things and it will change your whole mindset. We particularly love this mentality when it comes to eating more plants.
The key to incorporating more plants and in particular veggies is to find an opportunity at every meal to do so! Pop some zucchini into your morning smoothie, add spinach to your curry, roast a big tray of vegetables on Sunday and add them to meals throughout the week, grow fresh herbs and sprinkle them over dishes. These little things sound so simple but plants add so much extra nutrition to your day, fill you up faster and help make you look better too (yes please!). Given half the chance, your body will heal itself in the right environment especially when eating plants in season.
One of our favorite books that discusses the power of plants is Dr Michael Greger, he opened our eyes to the astounding health benefits that simple dietary choices can provide when you add more plants into your diet. This inspired us to create a plant based drink that we knew was providing more plants into our diet in a delicious way!
Here's to an incredible 2022
Xx
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