Looking for a time-saving approach to your physical activity self-care component? I've created short, follow-along exercise video series, like the Recommended Daily Activity series, to make taking care of yourself an easy time investment for your daily routines!
TIME Management is STRESS Management
It’s been said that depression is a consequence of living in the past while anxiety is a result of overthinking the future, and to be at peace one must live in the present. In order to allow ourselves to live in the present moment, we have to learn from the past and plan for the future but not dwell on either for too long. Using some time-tested strategies, we can ensure a healthier, happier state of mind that exists in the present moment. Applying these strategies will increase confidence in ourselves, our abilities, and the action plans we’ve built – and, cyclically, further enhance our ability to enjoy the thrill and passion of life by putting our minds at ease and reducing day-to-day stress levels.
Behavioral management and motivational strategies
Accomplishing any worthwhile goal requires time-, behavioral-, and self-management practices. As it is with learning a new coordination pattern or skill, before we can ever hope to make a behavioral change, we first have to develop awareness of and be willing to analyze the way we currently behave. Once we have a better understanding of our preferences or tendencies, we can then practice eliminating or modifying that behavior. Through practice and lots of repetition with small increments of change we can develop new behaviors. Over time and with even more practice and application, these new behaviors will become more dominant, automatic, and habitual. By majority, it’s not a short or easy process. It’s more often a journey that comes with barriers inside obstacles before hitting seemingly impenetrable walls with more barriers and obstacles behind it. But it’s those very same barriers that help us identify our shorter-term goals, which give us opportunities to celebrate our achievements more frequently. Recognizing our progress and celebrating our achievements, especially with other people that have helped us along the way, is really the central goal. Enjoy the ride! Honor our dedication and accomplishments! And don’t forget to offer ourselves grace and understanding in those longer-term pursuits, because once we’ve achieved the goal, we’re going to need to find something else to work toward.
Helpful tips to prioritize our passions and operate with high levels of motivation
The following are strategies to apply in your pursuit of any goal:
- Write out what we want to achieve and put it somewhere highly visible: this is like deciding the destination for a vacation; we can't make plans until we know where we're going. Writing our long- and short-term goals out and reminding ourselves of them frequently is a tried-and-true method of increasing our overall awareness and motivation to persevere and keep working toward accomplishing them.
- Create Objectives: list the exact steps you're going to take to achieve those short-term and long-term goals. For example, "To pursue my physical health goals I'm going to do X type of exercise Y days per week for Z amount of time each day." For lengthier, loftier goals try breaking them down and being as detailed as possible in your objectives. Check out this blog for more on SMART goal setting and self-tracking for your health and wellness journey.
- Identify Barriers: Most of us know some of the common obstacles we encounter on the journey through fitness and making exercise a lifestyle priority. We know the excuses we give ourselves and the external barriers that often pop up in our paths. By identifying them ahead of time, anticipating them and utilizing strategies like all of those listed above we can give ourselves more self-confidence to overcome those obstacles when they begin to take our attention and effort away from our pursuit of our goals.
- Set time to plan ahead: A little time-management goes a long way. Set time aside to occasionally re-evaluate our goals, adjust our plan of action, manage our calendar, write in our journal, or to research or seek advice on something new to assist in our pursuit.
- Self-tracking: Similar to planning ahead, checking up on and tracking our exercise routine with a journal, an assessment, or tracking some kind of realistic, related metric over time is a vital aspect of staying motivated, on-task, and being real and honest with ourselves.
- Visualize it: Create an image in our head of what achieving that goal looks like, how it’s going to impact our life, and imagine what it will feel like to achieve it. Remember to take yourself back to that state of mind often throughout the process.
- Make it work for our schedule: Do we feel more motivated in the AM, afternoon, or PM? Schedule our pursuits when we know we'll have fewer barriers in our path toward getting it done!
- Set it on our calendar: Setting aside and writing out this time on our calendar demonstrates the recognition that self-care is important to us. Creating that time for ourself ahead of time is as, if not more important, than all the underlying science of learning, skill acquisition, behavioral change, or stress management. By setting it on our schedule, we’re placing value in it and lower our chance of compromising.
- Set reminders: Let's be honest, even when we set it on our schedule, we don't always remember or have the right motivation level in the moment to tackle a task. Using technology to set reminders is an excellent way of telling yourself, "Hey, remember the action plan and how important this task is for us to reach those long-term goals."
- Create the environment: Whether it's a home gym, a local park, or an actual exercise facility it's important to consider the environment we'll be exercising in. Especially for those of us working out from home, our motivation levels for starting an exercise routine can be easily influenced by where we're doing it and what's around us. Try to establish a positive environment that's conducive to giving ourselves that time to focus on our bodies by filling that space with the things we enjoy! Some examples might be the type of music you are playing, bringing some natural light and plants into the space, or putting a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door to minimize distractions.
- Make the investment: For some, the best accountability comes from knowing a portion of our finances are being dedicated to our wellness pursuits. Maybe it's a membership or a new piece of exercise equipment. If the drive from your investment begins to burn out or isn't enough to keep us honest, change it up. Don't be that person who pays for the gym membership but never uses it!
- Build a support system: Tell our trusted family members and friends that we've started a new pursuit and how we believe it will benefit us. Tell them what we're hoping to achieve and ask them for their support. This could also be a new community we've joined, a walking club, a gym, a therapist, another support group, etc. Not only will we gain support, but studies are showing more and more the significant impact social interaction has on motivation and longevity and quality of life. Just like writing out those goals and envisioning them, expressing our goals with those we're closest with can have tremendous effects on our self-accountability, and will hopefully open the door to a support system that can help build us up and celebrate our accomplishments with us.
- Find a workout buddy or "tribe": Teamwork can be the best motivation and accountability. Either by giving or getting support, we are able to celebrate our successes more often and lean on others to help overcome barriers when needed. Again, research has shown that achievements made as a group can be much more impactful than those made on our own.
- Rewards: Never underestimate the power of a reward system. Even the smallest recognition of our hard work invested goes a long way. Maybe it’s our favorite home-cooked meal after a week of successfully completed dieting and exercise routines. Maybe a trip to the mall or the ice-cream shop (everything in moderation, eh?). Or maybe it’s just taking a day completely off to recover and relax. We all know how sweet it is to check an important goal off from that “To Do” list, but it’s always better when there's a prize waiting at the end!
Wellness Work Challenge
Dedicate 10-20 minutes of free time to create just one week of a thoughtful, well-planned routine which takes care of all those regular appointments and responsibilities we have but adds an additional well-being / self-care, lifestyle challenge to at least three days of the week. Choose something you know you're not as motivated to do; something you have struggled with self-accountability. This could be an intermediate "small change" challenge as short and simple as:
five minutes of a breathing exercise,
ten minutes of stretching,
twenty minutes of walking outdoors,
twenty minutes learning a new skill (language, art, music, dance, etc.), or
Thirty minutes of reading a positive book.
... or a bigger, more advanced and difficult pursuit as challenging as:
connecting with an old friend or family member,
focused meditation,
going for a run or bike ride,
prepping foods for healthy snacking, or
a well-rounded exercise routine.
... or it could be a combination of those items listed above. Now, put that time-management to the test! Plan to make an adjustment every so often, modifying and building off the template you've now created for yourself.
Stay updated and find more expert exercise guidance by SUBSCRIBING to my YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/@AaronWyantMS. And check out my quick, no equipment needed exercise routines at: www.AaronWyant.com/onlineprograms.
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