When you are going through phases in your life without a lot of motivation, it’s one of the hardest times to change your lifestyle, but also one of the most important. You might have it in your mind what changes you want to make based on what you feel is missing in your life or bad habits you want to get rid of, but how do you find the motivation to do it? These tips can help.
Find Another Reason That Inspires You
Your lack of motivation might not be laziness or not having motivation in general, but more because what originally inspired you to make changes no longer applies. For example, if you started changing your diet because you wanted to lose weight and that is no longer a goal, then it can be hard sticking with your diet. But if you can find another reason to be healthy, like a loved one who experienced a heart attack or stroke due to their unhealthy lifestyle, then suddenly you are more motivated.
Consider the lifestyle changes on your mind and write down every reason you can think of about why you want to incorporate that change. Does anything jump out at you? What makes you feel the most inspired? That is a good place to start.
Pick Just One Healthy Habit to Incorporate Into Your Lifestyle
A good way to star with your healthy lifestyle change is to pick just one habit and work that into your routine. Don’t try to change your entire morning routine or add 5 habits at one time. All that is going to do is cause burnout and make you feel overwhelmed. If you have a pattern of changing too much at one time, and then quitting shortly after you begin, that is the cycle you need to break.
Incorporating new habits into your routine should happen slowly and intentionally. Choose one habit that aligns with your lifestyle goals and add it to your routine where it makes sense. “Stack” the habit into your routine, where it follows another habit.
So, if you want to be more active, think of a time of day when it would be most convenient for you, and follow a similar habit. Maybe you already have a habit of spending your morning outside to get some sunshine and vitamin D before you start your day. This would be a great time to go out for a walk and add on to that habit.
Organize and Purge
If you are lacking motivation to make positive changes in your life, you can start by improving your environment. When you live in a chaotic, disorganized space, your brain also feels chaotic. This makes it really hard to stick to any new lifestyle change.
Don’t focus too much on your lifestyle changes or goals just yet. For now, just try to organize the spaces you live and work in. Go slowly from one room to the next, purging and getting rid of anything you don’t need or no longer have a use for. Organize spaces the best you can, trying to find a place for everything you own.
Once everything is organized, you might have already found some new motivation to add healthy lifestyle habits into your life. Try to keep these spaces organized and you might notice a big change in how long you can keep up the new habits for.
Force Action When You Feel Lazy
When nothing else works, sometimes you just have to force motivation. Not in a way where you feel like you are punishing yourself and doing something you don’t want to do, but more as a way to get into the mindset of “act as if”.
This is where you take actions as if your thoughts were aligned with your actions. So, if you want to be someone who loves to cook healthy meals, then act like someone who loves to cook healthy meals. It might be hard to get started and you may not be interested in it just yet, but the more you do it, the more you can get into the right mindset and start creating this habit.
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