How micro-habits could be the secret to your success

We all know what habits are. Brushing your teeth every morning and night is a habit. Locking the front door when you head off to work is a habit. Getting up every morning, day in and day out, to do your 6am workout is a habit. When it comes to reaching your goals and keeping that positive momentum going, habits are key. Good habits work.

However, the secret to success might be a little different to what you initially believed. I’ll let you in on the secret. It’s micro-habits.

Microhabits are small actions that don’t require much motivation or even much effort to complete. The trick here is that over time, repeating these microhabits will result in something bigger. The real beauty of microhabits is that they’re simple. You won’t need to make an excuse to not do them or decide they’re too hard. Just like brushing your teeth or making a cup of tea.

So, you’re probably wondering how you can add some microhabits into your day to day life. Here are some of simple suggestions for how to make microhabits part of your daily routine:

1. Take the stairs instead of the lift

2. Stand instead of sitting when making a phone call, waiting for an appointment, or watching tv.

3. Cut out one unhealthy item from your diet each week. For example, if you have sugar in your coffee, reduce this from one sugar to half a sugar each week until you don’t need to have sugar at all.

4. Drink a big glass of water before every meal

5. Park at the furthest end of the carpark

6. Pick one day of the week to walk to work

7. Stand up and have a stretch every hour on the hour

8. Don’t use your phone for 30 minutes before bed

9. Lay your workout clothes out the night before

10. Take a daily walk at work, even if it’s just a lap of the block.

You don’t need to try to incorporate all of these microhabits at once. In fact, I recommend following this simple process:

1. Write down a list of healthier options you can incorporate into your life or microhabits you want to start doing.

2. Pick ONE

3. Write this down somewhere you’ll see it every day – on your fridge, the notes on your phone, on a post-it note on your desk or even your phone background

4. Do it every day until it becomes something you do automatically

5. Repeat.

So there you have it, a not-so-secret strategy to speed up your weight loss or break through that dreaded plateau.