Why became really important when I began to architect habit change for my health.  I needed to dig into my motivation to prioritize new habits to heal. My first priority was to uplevel my relationship with food.

For many years I snacked to self soothe. I ate on the way to teach yoga, not from hunger but to calm down. I munched when I was bored or unhappy. I knew this coping mechanism had to go, excess weight was hurting me, but somehow snacking stayed.

Old patterns can be heavy and sticky, hard to shake off. When I became really sick my habit of emotional eating became an immediate liability. I had a huge opportunity to help myself and my clients make changes for thrive.

“If people who’ve faced a life-threatening illness can’t prioritize their own self-care, we have a real problem in our society.”  Michelle Segar author of No Sweat: How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness. What is the struggle all about?

Old Habits are Strong & Sticky

Our brains are on the front line of decision making. They look for patterns to ease the workload. New behaviors take the most processing power, but a habit or pattern is pretty efficient for the brain to manage. Our brains like efficiency so much they reward us when we default to habit with a release of dopamine. Dopamine is a feel good neurochemical.

source: sideplayer.com

The brain’s drive for efficiency creates side effects, makes it a little quirky, and gives habits big power. Sometimes our brains create stuff that isn’t there because of subconscious patterning. We fill in the blanks and create optical illusions. We recognize the familiar in the strange and will even make up patterns where none exist (pareidolia). Habits mold our lives.

If a habit exists the brain will often unconsciously default to it before there is time to consider an alternative. The key then is to replace unhealthy habits with healthier one to break out of our unconscious behavior. Try the healthier habit, repeat it to develop a pattern, then keep repeating until the new habit becomes the default option.

Habit Change Starts with the WHY

An abstract association of “ 3 meals of healthy food creates health” didn’t have the power to anchor me in new behavior. I had to go deeper to overwrite my habit of emotional eating.  To start I needed to shine a light on my motivation.

So What Motivates Change?

What you think makes sense might not work. Even success doesn’t guarantee you will stick with it. Weight loss relapse is a great example. Early in my life I lost and gained over 100 lbs more than once. Why? Changes could and did happen. I would relapse to old eating and snacking patterns.

I am not alone in this. According to the National Weight Loss Registry, 80% of people who work hard and lose weight will regain it within 1 year. Logically success, health, and feeling good should cement the new habits in place, but even this may not be enough. Here’s what the 20% who maintained weight loss (I count myself among them) did to make it work:

• They had deep strong motivation,
• A great why and put a structure,
• And healthy habits in place.

A get real why will get you to the table to build a structure for change. Getting healthy and free of pain got me to build the structure for new healthier habits. I felt and feel the connection between what and how I eat and how I feel. Strong self love and desire to thrive shifts my focus and provides tangible real time motivation to sip water or breathe instead of eat.

I still connect this on a daily level choice by choice and thought by thought.  I have taught myself to ask “Does this choice support the health of my tissues and bring balance to my nature?”  My why keeps me on track climbing, kaizening out of old unhealthy behavior towards evolving health.

Examine what inspires you to make the changes you seek.

Why needs to be a close companion that you can see and feel in your heart.  Spend some time to refine you why. Your why is your why, no shame and no blame involved no excuses needed.   Dive deep and examine what got you where you are? Does your why align you with your goals in this moment.

My favorite words to describe my why are motivating, consuming, touchable, immediate, and concrete.  What are yours?  Make a list of the qualities that motivate you. Identify the truth of your why. Why needs to touch each day and connect to the big picture and purpose, come from the inside not the outside.  What do you really want to uplevel in your life and why?

Use why to keep you moving when you feel like your feet are off the ground.  Make small steady improvements. When you need to exercise discipline (tapas) until the new habit anchors and gains power.

“Life without Tapas is like a heart without love”  – BKS Iyengar

Why empowers you to architect habit change.  Tapas or discipline puts the structure in place for habits to thrive.  Motivation is the touchstone to reach for when things get rough.  Scroll down and share your new healthy habit and how your why keeps you on track. This will help make the groove deeper and help you make this habit stick!

What holds us back from making the most of these potentially life-changing moments?

…our own story.

How often have you tried something new and it didn’t stick?

How many habits do you know you “should do” but don’t.

Are your past failures holding you back from becoming more?

This story actually goes back thousands maybe even millions of years to our lizard ancestors. It’s not just our own memories that hold us back but generations of ancestors that learned to survive on what worked. They survived by playing it safe. When the life decisions in your day are all about who is “having you” for lunch, playing it safe is commendable.

Today our decisions are of a different magnitude. Most often our decisions are not life threatening although they can be life-saving.

Which of these sounds familiar to you?

• I tried meditating but it didn’t stick, I just couldn’t keep my mind quiet.
• I bought a gym membership to be more active, but never went.
• Green smoothies are great, but I don’t have time to make them everyday.
• I try to go to bed earlier, but end up just staring at the ceiling.
• I want to journal at night, but I’m too tired.

This is where Kaizen becomes your miracle maker.

Kaizen Habit Change for the Better

Kaizen is a Japanese phrase for change for the better. Kai = change, Zen = better.

After the second World War, the phrase Kaizen became synonymous in the industrial world for continuous change for the better. Factories in Japan starting using the technique of small simple changes performed by everyone to make the whole drastically better. If you can imagine everyone on an assembly line cutting costs by a few pennies or getting a few seconds faster the results would add up to a huge benefit for the whole company.

How does Kaizen relate to you and your goals?

Kaizen becomes the mantra for us to make small simple changes that will add up over time to huge growth.

The Secret to Making Big Changes

The secret to making big changes – is to start really, really small.

This all relates to our base brain, our reptilian brain.  Our base brain is our safety system. As humans we are programmed to resist change. This is why changes have not worked before and why it will this time. When we make a change our reptile brain kicks in to hold us back, it’s just trying to keep us safe, but what that really means is our base brain is holding us back…

The biggest irony is that as humans we naturally seek to change things. We are constantly coming up with ways to change the world, but we are wired to resist change.

Our reptilian brain kicks in everytime and says – whoa there – we don’t really want that! We are good just as we are.

So how do we sneak past this guard dog, or guard dragon perched on our shoulder? I like to think of mine as as looking like the dragon from Mulan…

Kaizen Habit Change in Action

Take for example a client of mine, Lissa, who had tried to meditate daily for years. She joined the 21 day meditation challenges,
made New Year’s Resolutions, and tried several times on a self-guided attempt but each time she would not make it past the first week or at the end of the attempt revert back to her old habits again.

During our first health coaching session together the Kaizen lightbulb went on. A meditation does not have to be 20 minutes long. Who has an extra 20 minutes in their morning routine just sitting there waiting for meditation?  20 minutes was too big of a change, it activated her limbic brain into putting on the brakes.

So we started at 1 minute. Can you spare 1 minute in the morning? That one short minute was enough to set her day up completely different. She had a new, calmer reaction to starting up her computer each morning.

After a week her morning meditation grew to 2 minutes, and by the end of 10 weeks she was up to 10 minutes and was hooked on this habit for life. Plus the success of this simple change has inspired her to further changes in walking or running every morning, shifting her diet, and changing her sleep habits. All fueled by the huge success of being able to meditate 1 min in the morning.

I just checked in with her this week and after almost a year she is meditating for 15 minutes every day and the connection and wisdom she receives has propelled her business and her clients business success.

Kaizen Is Your New Best Friend

If you have tried to start a new healthy habit but the “busy-ness” of life takes over and you revert back to survival mode. Kaizen is your new best friend. It doesn’t matter if you have tried before and failed, in fact that’s perfect – you know the consequences of taking “too big a step.”

With Kaizen we pick the simplest, smallest thing we can do. This tricks our subconscious brain, our limbic brain into thinking everything’s ok.

What is the change you want to make?

What simple, small step will get you started and feeling your success?

Think for a moment and then half that step to give you a good place to start. Give it a try for a couple days and if it’s not working, perfect, make the step even smaller.

After you feel comfortable with your new tiny step see if you can add on another small simple step. After a month or a year remember to look back along the path and see what amazing changes resulted from that one simple step.

Want more guidance on choosing the smallest, simplest steps that will set you on a path for success? Check the list for the Yoga Health Coach that best meets your needs and set up a consultation to get you started on your path to wellness and growth.