We’ve all been there — whether it’s New Year’s Resolution time, the start of some sort of competition, or we feel the overwhelming need to make a change in or an overhaul of our life, we commit and jump feet first and plunge enthusiastically into whatever life-changing project; we start off extremely gung-ho and then after a few weeks, the enthusiasm wanes, usually as we become overwhelmed by the cold-turkeyness of the whole thing, and we slip back into old habits and then life returns to normal, generally with some feelings of guilt and failure.
The truth is that we’re more likely to be successful at making permanent changes in our life if we make small changes in our life one at a time over a period of time. Like Weight Watchers™ leaders are fond of saying, you didn’t put the weight on overnight so you can’t take it overnight; the same is true of habits. You simply can’t expect to become a whole different person in 24 hours because you want it. It takes time. Some studies say that it takes 21 days to change a habit.
In my Living Well class, every week, we’ve been making Action Plans for something each week that we wanted to accomplish toward improving the quality of our lives. One woman has started keeping mood & food journals plus walking from her living room to her front door (she is currently stuck in one of those scooter things). One woman has started going to aqua aerobics plus stretching. A couple has been bicycling and walking and is now making adjustments to their diet after a diabetes diagnosis.
The first week I dropped my caffeine to 12oz a day; the second week, I added 24oz of water a day. Since that was such a struggle, I kept that as my action plan for the third week. For my fourth week, I’ve increased my water to 40oz a day and added 3 days of long walks with Pugly (2 times the length of my street).
The steps for making an Action Plan are as follows:
- decide what you want to accomplish; it should be something reasonable, something you can expect to be able to accomplish in a week and behavior-specific; you should be confident that you can accomplish it. (drink 40oz water and walk street 2 times)
- look for alternative ways to accomplish this goal; be prepared to be flexible and problem-solve or substitute should obstacles arise.
- add Totally Light 2 Go drink mix to water
- walk dog
- find walking trail
- start making short-term plans by making an action plan or agreement with yourself,
- What are you going to do? (drink water and walk)
- How much will you do? (40oz and the length of the street twice)
- When will you do this? ( 5days and 3 days, respectively)
- How often will you do the activity? (see above)
- What are you going to do? (drink water and walk)
- carry out your action plan
- check the results,
- make changes as needed, and
- remember to reward yourself.
This morning, Pugly and I went out for a 30 minute walk and about half way through that second length of the street he was starting to tire out, but I kept pushing onward. He’s got 2lbs to lose and I’ve got 50lbs that I could stand to be without. I’m working on my second day of 40oz of water. I’m still only drinking 12oz of caffeine a day. I’m feeling pretty good about the changes and I feel like they’re accomplishable since I’ve been making them slowly. I recommend making one change a week for a better life.
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