Focusing 100% on building healthy habits is why you keep failing to stick to them
Health habits & life need to be built together, focusing 100% on a new habit is why it eventually feels too hard!
A lot of people approach new healthy habits like it’s something to focus on 100% or nothing at all. And at first it might feel like you’re getting yourself on track, but that idea is where things also start to fall apart. Because health is not separate from your life. It exists inside of it. And if the way you’re building your health habits doesn’t fit into your life, it’s not going to last when other responsibilities and obligations need your attention too.
This choice to give everything you have to health habits might be exactly what it keeping you from feeling like living a healthy lifestyle is achievable for you. When you give all your attention to it, the rest of your life feels like it’s falling apart, and evidently this makes healthy habits feel further away. Like you could never have the energy and ability to do it all.
But really, the problem here is that you didn’t slow things down and grow your health habits to fit into your life. So here is how to make a change to not see this same mistake again:
Why It Feels Like a Whack a Mole Game
This is something I hear from patients all the time. Every time they focus on their health, other areas of their life start to slip.
They get consistent with workouts, but feel disconnected from their family. They clean up their nutrition, but fall behind at work. They build a routine, but lose time for the things they actually enjoy.
So they pull back, and think healthy habits are too much. Or they push through to the point of burn out and again think that healthy habits just won’t fit into their life. And then the cycle repeats. It starts to feel like a whack a mole game. You fix one area, and another pops up needing attention. But this isn’t a sign that you’re doing something wrong. It’s a sign that you’re trying to treat your health like it exists in isolation.
If your approach to health requires everything else in your life to shrink, it’s not sustainable. You might be able to maintain it for a short period of time, but eventually your relationships, your work, your responsibilities, and your need for enjoyment will start asking for your attention again. And when they do, your health habits are usually the first thing to go. Not because you don’t care, but because they were never built to fit your full life in the first place.
What Actually Works Instead
Instead of trying to level up your health as fast as possible, the goal is to build your health and your life at the same time. Not separately. Together.
This means when you’re adding or changing a habit, you also consider how it fits into your relationships, your schedule, your energy, and your priorities. It will feel slower, and that’s a good thing. Because what you’re really building is capacity to hold your habits alongside everything else that matters to you.
Let Everything Evolve Together
Letting your health and your life evolve together specificaly means not to overhaul everything at once.
Sure you can write down all your big goals so you are clear about what health habits and lifestyle changes you want to see in your life. But each major goal should be broken down into small steps that are taken one at a time. You make a small change, see how it fits, adjust where needed, and then build again.
You stay aware of the bigger picture instead of focusing on one area so intensely that everything else gets pushed aside.
What starting small actually means
To become healthier and see results, you do not need to jump to level 10, and I would argue that is killing your long term success. Here are suggestion on who to slow down:
for diet this might mean focusing on improving one meal at a time, or improving plate structure, increasing your fibre, increasing your protein, replacing refined sugar, using food or meal delivery services.
for exercise this might be exploring types of exercise and routines, going for family walks after dinner, having a body weight routine you can do on your lunch break.
for mindfulness this could be gratitude statements while you brush your teeth, driving meditation, reducing screen time, creating healthier work-life balance.
for sleep this could look like avoiding screens before bed, intentionally going to bed earlier, taking the TV out of your room, keeping your phone out of your bedroom.
There will still be times where these changes feel chellenging, that good and normal, and possibly an opportunity to ask if any adjustments are needed. How you can make things feel easier? Maybe you need to dial something back. Maybe you need to simplify. Maybe you need to shift your expectations for a season. Maybe you need to delegate other tasks.
Why This Matters for Long Term Change
If your health habits pull you away from your life, you won’t keep them.
Even if you see results.
Because ultimately at some point, you’ll want your time back, your relationships back, your sense of balance and ease back. And when that happens, the habits that didn’t fit will fall away. But when your habits are built with your life in mind, they don’t feel like something you have to fight to maintain. They feel like part of who you are.
Ready to Go Deeper?
This is exactly the kind of mindset work and step-by-step changes we focus on inside Mindset Medicine. Learning how to build habits that actually fit into your life so you don’t have to keep starting over every time things get busy or unbalanced.
See if mindset medicine might be right for you.
Or think you might benefit from clinical hypnosis to help you stick with healthy habits? Check out the MelloWell hypnosis and recipe libraries!