7 Ways to Keep a New Habit

June 29, 2011 by

This post is by Benny Hsu of Get Busy Living.

Have you ever tried to keep a new habit only for you to stop a week or a month later? It happens to all of us.

Don’t worry—you always get another chance to start again. The next time you want to start new habits in your life, try a different approach for success.

Here are some tips to help you to keep your new habits.

1. Know why you’re doing this

Having a strong reason why you are doing something is stronger than how you will do it. Knowing why will keep you focused when you’re tempted to quit. Let me give you an example.

If there is a board ten feet long on the floor and I tell you to walk on it, will you? Of course. If I put that board connecting the top of two buildings 40 stories up, will you cross it? Most likely not. Now if your child was on the other roof and it was on fire, would you walk across? You bet you would.

The situation stayed the same but your reason for going across was the motivator. It’s what drives you.

This is why many New Year’s resolutions fail so quickly. There’s not a meaningful reason for the change. It’s just something you feel like you should be doing.

Really know why you are making this habit and want to keep it. The ones who succeed in making new habits and keeping them are the ones that have a deep reason to change. Find yours.

2. Mark an X on your calendar

When working towards making positive changes, one way to keep you going is to chart your progress. Sometimes the physical progress is harder to see because the changes are gradual. You may need a way to visually see that you are making progress.

When I was training for my first half marathon, I printed out the training calendar and put an X after each day I trained. Once I started, it was rewarding to see so many Xs and to know how far I’d progressed. I wanted to keep those X’s going. I didn’t want a blank box.

At the end of a month, I couldn’t believe how many days of running I’d actually accomplished. Seeing it motivated me to keep the momentum going.

3. Don’t break the habit

Of course that seems obvious, but it’s more than that. You don’t want to do perform your habit for two weeks and then stop for two weeks and then decide to try again. Why?

When you consistently do something with regularity it keeps the momentum going. Doing it everyday keeps you in the routine. Once you stop for a period of time it’s harder to get that rhythm again.

Make an effort to stay consistent each day. Remember slow and steady wins the race.

4. Blog about it

Instead of being accountable to just one person, take it one step further if you have a blog and post your goals on there! You’ll get encouragement but also you’ll also have report to them.

Pat Flynn recently finished a 60 day workout program with amazing results. He said one of his biggest motivations was the people checking in on his progress. He didn’t want to let them down.

5. Don’t punish yourself for falling off the wagon for one day

Earlier, I said don’t break the habit. However we are are human and good habits are not easy to keep. If you skip a day or fall off the wagon, don’t think it’s the end of the world and you’re a failure.

Look at the big picture of how you’re doing. If you are doing something for a whole month like exercising or eating healthy and have one day where you feel lazy or eat a whole pizza, don’t be too hard on yourself.

If you’re trying to cut out soda but you had one at a friend’s house, it’s okay. One day won’t ruin everything.

Focus again starting tomorrow. You’re trying to incorporate this habit into a lifetime change so you’ll have plenty of time to stay on track.

6. Get money involved

Money is always a motivating factor for most people. Here’s one way to do it.

If you want to start a new habit of reading 30 pages of non-fiction a day, four days out of the week for a month, find a friend or relative you can trust and give that person $100 at the beginning of the month.

That person will give you $25 back every week you complete your goal of reading. If you fail to complete it, the person keeps $25. If you complete a week, you get $25 back. Keep going till the end of the month.

Don’t make the amount too extravagant, but don’t make it too small, either. If you do, you won’t care if you don’t have it. Also, make sure you’re honest with your results. Lying about it defeats the whole purpose.

7. Reward yourself

Set a time frame for rewarding yourself throughout the process, not just at the end. You should reward yourself because keeping a habit isn’t easy.

At the end of your set time, say a week or two, if you’ve been doing a great job sticking to your habit, reward yourself with something you want. A day at the spa. A trip to a baseball game. A shopping trip. It’s completely up to you.

Then at the end of a longer timeframe—say a month—give yourself a bigger reward, like a small vacation. If you’ve made it that far, you truly deserve it.

Keep that habit

Studies have shown that it takes three weeks to form a good habit. Take the list above and find the ones that will best motivate you to continue. Developing better habits will lead you to more success and happiness in your life.

Benny Hsu blogs at Get Busy Living where he’s inspiring others to live a remarkable life, explore ways to help people get unstuck and find what excites them everyday. You can also follow him Twitter @Benny_Hsu.

How to Break the Downward Spiral of Negative Thinking

June 28, 2011 by

This guest post is by Dan Lippmann of the Mood Switch Method.

Have you ever noticed how easy it is for your negative thinking to spiral out of control?

“I wonder if I’ll be able to meet that deadline.
If I don’t meet the deadline, my boss will go crazy.
He’ll give me a bad evaluation.
I’ll end up getting fired.
I won’t be able to pay my bills.
I’ll lose my home.
I’ll be out on the street with no money.
My life will be over.”

You start out by thinking one upsetting thought. In seconds, that thought leads to another, until you’ve produced a whole chain of negative thoughts. When combined together, these thoughts steal your sense of well-being, leaving anxiety and fear in their wake.

The most important thing for you to know is this: You don’t have to go along with whatever negative thoughts are triggering up in your brain. You can learn to direct your thinking in a way that will be helpful instead of harmful to you.

Breaking the chain of negative thinking

Picture your negative thoughts as a chain of associations. Your goal is to break the chain after the first link and then keep new links from being added.

This is easier than you might think and doesn’t require superhuman effort—only a little bit of awareness and practice.

You may be surprised to learn that your negative thoughts aren’t usually random. Often, there’s a specific underlying emotion (sadness, anger, jealousy) or theme (money, death, health) that triggers your negative thinking and serves to link your thoughts together. Once you’re aware of your personal patterns or themes, it’s easier to break the associations or links.

I realized this a few weeks ago when I heard on the radio that a TV personality from my childhood had died. I immediately felt mildly sad, and then I realized that my mind suddenly wanted to make other “death associations.” If I had allowed my thoughts free rein, they probably would have played out something like this:

“My mother’s dead.
My father’s dead.
I’m the same age as my father when he got sick.
I hope the same thing isn’t wrong with me.”

…and on and on!

If I had allowed this line of thinking to continue, I would have been in a down mood in a matter of minutes, and maybe spent the next few hours, or even days, feeling badly.

Fortunately, I recognized where my mind wanted to take me, and made a conscious choice to stop my thoughts in their tracks. I simply refocused my thoughts on something neutral – the tastes and smell of my breakfast – and then switched the radio to a music station that I like. I was able to stop the downward spiral before it began and to get on with my day.

So the next time you experience an upsetting feeling, ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Is there a benefit to thinking about this situation?
  2. Is there a benefit to following the chain of associations arising from this situation?

If the answer is no, turn your thoughts to something neutral, interesting, or uplifting. You might be surprised at how easy it is to avoid a downward spiral.

It might even save your day.

Dan Lippmann counsels clients from his two Chicago-area offices and is the creator of the Mood Switch Method, an easy to learn technique that breaks the painful cycle of negative emotions, such as anxiety, down moods and anger. Download his free eBook, Beyond EFT: 7 Steps to Banish Stress, Worry, Fear and Anxiety, and sign up for his weekly tips at www.danlippmann.com.

A Shortcut to a Happier Life

June 27, 2011 by

This post is by Nihara of Doing Too Much.

For a while, my daughter was coming home from preschool completely distraught and dejected. “Nobody wanted to play with me,” she would report day after day. Her sad little words crushed me. I imagined my lonely baby girl, sitting in a corner with no one to keep her company as she painted on canvas or built towers out of wooden blocks.

When I reached out to my daughter’s teacher to share my worries, she assured me that my little girl was playing “beautifully” with many of the children in the class. Her teacher even began emailing me a daily report, telling me exactly who my daughter played with each day. I finally realized that there was nothing particularly bad about my daughter’s days at school. The problem was one of perception, not reality.

My little girl was spending all of her time focusing on the minor slights that are part and parcel of preschool life, and not enough time cherishing the happy parts of her day. We humans all suffer from exactly this same tendency, says positive psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman. In his new book, Flourish, he writes that “[w]e think too much about what goes wrong and not enough about what goes right in our lives.” Analyzing negative events can sometimes be helpful for personal development, Seligman acknowledges. But he argues that “people tend to spend more time thinking about what is bad in life than is helpful.”

Changing your mindset with the what-went-well exercise

We can’t press a button and magically create a happier life. But we can feel happier by changing the way we look at our lives. Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of our days, Seligman explains that we can teach ourselves to “get better at thinking about and savoring what went well.”

He recommends the ridiculously simple “what-went-well” exercise. All you have to do is reflect daily on three things that actually went well that day and why they went well. You don’t need to find three big or important things (like a promotion or a marriage proposal). Just think about three positive events, however small or simple (like making it to work ten minutes earlier than usual, or having your favorite sandwich for lunch). Seligman claims that if you stick with it, you’ll probably be “less depressed, happier, and addicted to this exercise six months from now.”

So what does all of this have to do with the story of my sad little preschooler? Well, after unsuccessfully trying a few different tactics for cheering her up, I decided to test-drive the “what-went-well” exercise on my four-year-old. We called it the “three good things about your day” game.

Before she left to school in the morning, I told my daughter that she needed to find three good things about her day at school, like getting a good color at the play dough table or hearing a nice song at circle time. Even if she was having a really bad day, she still had to report three good things about her day (in addition to sharing her troubles).

The very first time we tried the “three good things about your day” game, my daughter returned home from preschool positively exuberant. She excitedly listed three good things that had happened to her before I even had the chance to ask. The “good things” were all very simple (like the fact that she and her best buddy painted on side-by-side art easels), but they made her beam from ear to ear. What was amazing was that she didn’t stop at just three good things. She had five happy things to report that day.

We continued the game until preschool ended last week. The same child who was coming home from school dejected and distraught was suddenly delighted and eager to share the good news of her day. Nothing about school had changed. The only thing that was different was her mindset.

The moral of the story is that you too have the power to have a happier life, just by focusing on the positive instead of dwelling on the negative.

What three things went well in your day today?

Nihara is (slowly) figuring out how to make the most of her time and her life—and you can too. Read Nihara’s thoughts on how to live a better, saner life at Doing Too Much.

FeelGooder Asks: What Restores You When You’re Sick?

June 24, 2011 by

In my part of the world, everyone’s coming down with colds and flus as we grind our way through a cold old winter.

I’ve had a chest infection for the last few weeks (!), so I thought I’d get your opinions:

What restores you when you’re sick?

Image courtesy stock.xchng user alex27

My approach is multi-pronged:
  • Feel sorry for self.
  • Stay in bed all day.
  • Get up only when the fire is lit, swaddling self with blankets on the couch.
  • Complain of headache/sore throat/etc. to solicit sympathy.
  • Accept offers of snacks, hot drinks, etc.
  • Blearily read or watch a movie.

It’s all a bit pathetic, isn’t it? But for me, accepting that I’m feeling pathetic and letting others look after me is what restores me when I’m sick. To know that others are there for me is really important—the best medicine, I’d say.

What restores you when you’re sick?

How to Right-Size Your Life

June 23, 2011 by

Seize the opportunity! Leave no stone unturned! These have been my mantras for the past three years as I’ve built my social media presence as a fitness expert.

“Opportunities are rare and may not come again,” I would tell myself after someone asked me to collaborate on a project. This would cause me to immediately say yes—to just about anything, really. It was about getting exposure, of course, but it was also brand new to me, and fascinating, and fun, and cool, and … you get the idea.

I realize I’m one of the lucky ones. I make a decent income from social media—enough that my family has some breathing room and we can actually afford to take vacations again. My social media career has also helped my “real” business—my Pilates studio—which has gotten more local press (which means more clients) because of the presence I have online. I am thankful every day for what I’ve built and thankful that people have responded to it so well.

But boy was I burned out

There is always a tipping point, and for me the last straw was when I agreed to take a Director of Social Media job. Here was an opportunity to show the world all I had learned, plus it paid really well. I actually think I did a decent job growing the number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers for the client, as well as catching the attention of some stores who later started carrying the product and working some connections for press coverage.

It was definitely working. But my brain was goo. On top of running a studio and a blog, it was just too much. I had to pull back.

Right-sizing my life

The big life lesson that I learned here is that I was given opportunities that I didn’t seek out. I wasn’t looking for a social media job when it was offered to me, but it was so cool I wanted to try it. There were other opportunities like this that I was also saying yes to. But they weren’t in the direction I truly wanted to go.

I’m going to get all “woo woo” on you for a second, so bear with me. I’m in my 40s now and I’ve learned (and relearned) that if you don’t follow your heart, you’re not going to be happy. Yes, you need to make a living, but there are scads of ways to do that and still follow your heart.

Let’s face it: anything you put out there in social media is completely in your control. All you have is your time (hours and hours of time), so why would you spend it creating a persona or going in a direction that isn’t you? You’ll only be a big pile of goo like I was.

I realized my error(s) and started to divest a lot of stuff. I’ve pared my life down to my studio, my blog, and FeelGooder, and I’m feeling out some writing projects that I want to pursue. I’m looking forward to seeing how my career develops and I’m also looking forward to going home tonight and relaxing with my family. Boy will that feel good.

Have you ever had to right-size your life? How did you do it?

Finding Time For Me

June 22, 2011 by

This post is by Nicole Avery of Planning With Kids.

In a recent survey of 4,000 mums across Australia by Kleenex Mums, just under half said they could do better in terms of taking some time out for themselves. Taking time out for yourself as a mum lets you rest, recharge, and reassess. In short, it helps you be a better mother and for me, having time to myself has been crucial to me keeping my sanity in the chaos that can be life with a young family.

Image is author's own

I am a mum of five, I write a blog, and have just had my first book published. One of the first questions people ask me is ‚ do I have any time for me? And the answer is, “Yes I do!” I haven’t always though, and it has taken learning, adaption, and planning on my part to make sure that it happens.

The burned chop

Back in my early corporate days, I attended a self-improvement workshop specifically designed for women. My memory of the workshop is vague, with the exception of one analogy that the trainer made. She said mothers tend to always give themselves the “burned chop”: if they overcooked a chop while cooking dinner, they would eat the burned chop themselves. In other words, mothers put the needs of others above their own.

This analogy has stuck with me over the years. There have been (and will probably continue to be) instances where I forego things that I’d like to do in order to fit in all of my family’s needs. Compromise is always necessary within families, so I don’t expect that I always have my needs met first. Planning time for myself, however, means that my needs are not always last on the agenda, either.

Taking the burned chop every time is not the example I want to set for my kids. Setting my own goals, and allocating time for myself to achieve them, models for my kids the way I’d like them to approach looking after themselves. I don’t want them to think that, as a mother, my needs are not as important of those of other family members.

How to avoid eating the burned chop

Over the years I have worked out that just saying “I want time to myself” won’t make it happen. I have found there are three key steps I need to take to succeed in taking time out for me:

1. Set personal goals for “me time”

I needed to know what it was that I wanted. What did “time for me” actually mean? There are no set answers to this question and it is something that changes over time. Right now, for me, it means getting to the gym for an hour five times a week. Exercise has such a positive impact on my life:

  • It makes me less cranky.
  • It helps me sleep better.
  • It gives me more energy.
  • I have some time to just have my own thoughts, without lots of questions from little people!

All of these things then mean I am in better frame of mind and state of health to parent my kids and relate to my husband. So although this is “time for me” they also receive indirect benefits from it as well.

2. Set an activity plan

Once I knew what I wanted, I then needed to talk with the family about ways that we could make it a reality. There is always a need for compromise and negotiation where there are many competing needs. My husband and I agreed on my gym times: Monday to Friday from 6.00am to 7.00am.

We explained these times to the kids, so they would be aware that they will most likely wake those mornings and mum won’t be home. My husband does everything possible not to schedule early morning meetings that will cut into this time with the kids. It does occasionally happen, but he will give me as much notice as he can, so we can arrange another time for me to get to the gym.

Gaining the support and commitment of the rest of the family was critical to setting an activity plan that would let me achieve my goals.

3. Stick to it

With the family on board, it is now down to me to make sure I actually stick to the activity plan we created. This means setting the alarm each night for 5.45am. If I sleep in and leave late, I lose some of my precious hour at the gym, so I needed to be disciplined. Previously when I have been doing early morning gym sessions, if I went to bed late, I would go to bed with the mind set of “it’s a late night, I will see how I feel in the morning”. Before I had even lain down in bed, I had given myself a leave pass not to get up.

This time around I have approached it quite differently. In my mind the 5.45am wake up call is not negotiable. If I go to bed late, then I am just tireder in the morning when I get up. It is not the morning start that I need to change, it is the evening before. Through this discipline over the first few months, I have now created myself a good habit. Each night before I go to bed, I do the same things:

  • Set the alarm.
  • Get the gym gear ready.
  • Fill up the water bottle and grab the gym towel.
  • Make sure the iPhone is charged and the headphones are with it.

Having all these things ready means I have no excuse in the morning when I am tired and sometimes would prefer just to lie there! I have taken away as many obstacles as possible and I focus my thoughts on how good I feel at the end of the session. It is a powerful motivator to get me up and going.

How do you approach finding some “me time” in your life?

Nicole Avery is the master organiser behind the popular blog Planning With Kids, where she shares tips and tricks to organising the chaos of family life. Her first book “Planning With Kids” was released in May 2011 by Wright Books.

How Your Family Impacts Your Relationships

June 21, 2011 by

Reading this heartfelt and honest piece by Kylie Ladd on Mamamia.com.au last week, I remembered something that I had long-forgotten from when my husband and I did our pre-marital education course a few years ago. Ladd talks about the restrained family upbringing her husband had, and how it has impacted his emotional connectedness with her today.

It’s called Family of Origin theory: the family that you are raised in impacts enormously on the person you turn out to be. Your habits, your emotional expression, your way of interacting with loved ones … right down to how you sort your cutlery drawer, even (spoons to the left, thank you very much).

The idea is that each person brings with them into a relationship their own idea of how a family operates, based on what they’ve had ingrained in them over the years. This can prove problematic if two different systems start to clash.

Different attitudes, value systems, rules, customs, and taboos may cause friction between partners, or may turn out to be so hardwired that they prove hard to change, even if you want to.

If you are starting your own new family together—whether that’s just two of you, or it involves children—it’s worth talking it over first to make sure expectations are managed and any potential sticking points can be sorted out early.

How to talk about it

The exercise we did was a great way to get on the same page about what life was like for each other in our childhoods. It involved a huge sheet of butcher’s paper each and a few colored markers. We divided our sheet up into eight panels by making folds.

If you’d like to play along at home, here is what each of the eight panels featured:

  1. Family Tree: Draw your immediate family tree, showing your parents, you and any siblings you have.
  2. Communication: Write down some key points about what communication was like in your household. Was it quiet and calm or energetic and chaotic? Were you listened to? How was affection demonstrated?
  3. Roles: What role did your mother play? Your father? You? Your siblings? Was everyone happy with the roles they played?
  4. Family Values: What were some overarching family values? Some examples from the sheet I have kept include generosity, striving for excellence, care, and respect. Also ask: Was appearance important? Were possessions important?
  5. Conflict: How was conflict managed in your household? Was there yelling? Was there silent treatment? How quickly was it resolved?
  6. Rituals and Culture: When was family time? Did you go on holidays often? Was dinner always at the table? How were Easter, Christmas, and other events treated? Was there close community that you socialized with as a family? Any cultural traditions that were observed?
  7. Money: What was the attitude towards money? Did you feel financially secure? Who was in charge of the finances? What did money get spent on, as a priority? Were you aware of any money problems?
  8. Education and Work: Was education important? What about higher education (College/University)? Were good grades encouraged? Were your parents happy at work? Was job satisfaction emphasized?

Sit down separately and answer all these questions on your sheets, then bring them together so you can talk about them. After each panel, ask each other what you like and would like to keep for your own relationship and family, and what things you intentionally would like to change.

It turned out that my husband and I come from families with very similar family values and traditions, but the way each communicated was completely different. It definitely shows in our own interactions—Denis doesn’t back away from conflict at all; in fact he kind of seems to enjoy it. I prefer to keep quiet and mull over problems rather than get them out there. Our upbringings in regards to money, among other things, are also extremely obvious.

You may be surprised at the new level of understanding you gain of your partner after doing this exercise.

Do you and your partner come from similar families? Share similar values?

Share Your Passion for Reading with Your Family

June 20, 2011 by

This post is by Jennifer Wagner of Connect with your Teens through Pop Culture and Technology.

Reading can be a very enjoyable and entertaining activity, not to mention educational. If your kids have not realized this yet, what can you do to help them?

The huge growth in Young Adult literature gives teens so many more reading choices than they’ve ever had. I wrote about this trend in Have Young Adult Books Become More Popular and Respectable?

With so many more books geared toward the teen and tween age group, there has got to be something that even the pickiest reader can enjoy.

Let your kids see you reading. Even better, read a young adult book that they might like. Many recent YA book series, such as Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games, have been just as popular with adults as they have been with teens and tweens. Young adult books are beginning to be read by a wide range of adults, not only parents, teachers and librarians. So there should be many books that you can enjoy as much as your teens. If your teens pick them up, you can have great discussions about the books.

What do teens and tweens love to do more than almost anything else? Socialize. They spend a great deal of time online on social websites. There are many social websites for teens that revolve around books and reading. If they read about books that their peers love, teens will be much more apt to give them a try themselves. Sites I like include:

To only read books that have been assigned from school makes reading seem like a chore. To read a book because you heard good things about it or the description sounds great is so important to enjoying it. My whole family still discusses the Harry Potter books together to this day. We are now reading The Hunger Games series. I love having a family that enjoys reading.

Does your family love to read?

Jennifer Wagner is the creator and author of the blog, Connect with your Teens through Pop Culture and Technology.  She also has a second blog, My Recommended Websites, contributes articles to Technorati, Blogcritics, and the Yahoo Motherboard, and is a Lifetime Mom.

FeelGooder Asks: Who Made You Feel Good This Week?

June 17, 2011 by

I know: happiness is a state of mind, not a confluence of external forces. But that doesn’t mean that good stuff—good news, good fun, good people—doesn’t help us feel good too.

Who made you feel good this week?

Without wanting to sound too corny, the writers here at FeelGooder and ProBlogger made me feel good this week. Really!

One great aspect of my job is that I get to correspond with some really thoughtful people—and people who can express themselves well and freely in writing.

email

Image courtesy stock.xchng user ubik2010

So for every lax, uninterested correspondent, there’s at least one engaged, appreciative author who takes the time to inject a little personality into their emails. Here are some of the comments that have made me feel good this week:

“I appreciate how responsive you are—and how warmly the community has welcomed my writing—it’s nice to get all that feedback!”

“Thanks for the kind words, Georgina!”

“It’s really exciting to see the post up today!”

“Thanks for the welcome, I like working with you guys. You’re the most laid back editor ever.”

“Thanks once again for working with me! I’m very thrilled that the piece will make it onto your site, and I’ll be anxious to see it live.”

You know, listed there en masse like that, they make me feel even better!

The authors who write for us made me feel great this week. What about you? Who made you feel good?

Make One Small Change That Matters

June 16, 2011 by

The dire warnings keep coming at us: virtually everything we do, it seems, will kill us. Maybe it’s because I’m a fitness blogger and I’m always looking for the research studies to comment on, but in the past six months I’ve seen headlines that tell me…

  • Blogging will kill you.
  • Sitting will kill you.
  • Your diet will kill you.

It makes you want to pull the sheets over your head and quiver—but that’ll probably kill you too. Of course, the irony is none of us are getting out of here alive.

Testing the waters of a lifestyle change is scary. The vegans can seem a bit holier than thou. The gym rats look down their noses at the new pudgy guy. The work/life balance people are impossibly smug (and, I suspect, faking it).

Who needs to walk into all that when all you really want is to feel a little bit, well, gooder?

Of course, the vegans are actually quite friendly, most of the gym rats used to be the new pudgy guy, and … well, frankly, I’m still suspicious of the work/life people…

But these are our fears, projected onto the change we want to make—not the actual situation itself. (Guess I’m still scared of work/life balance eh?)

Pick one little thing

Please don’t fling yourself into a huge, new, unachievable lifestyle. Choose small changes and let them snowball.

When I switched to healthier living, my big first decision was to walk to work. You might think that’s a big deal but I only lived half a mile from my Pilates studio. The decision actually cost me zero time because it meant I didn’t have to search for a parking spot in my busy neighborhood, and I burned an extra 100 calories or so a day.

That’s it. It’s not earth-shattering. It’s just a baby step.

Then I switched to organic dairy, then organic meats, then a little kitchen herb gardening, then training for a 5km run, and so on. All these changes took place over the period of a year, and I barely noticed how much my life had changed. I did notice that I was feeling a whole lot better and sashaying around in jeans a size smaller. My clients noticed my new energy and business actually picked up. (That was a nice bonus!)

What would your first step be? I’m sure something has already popped into your mind. Do that. Don’t think too much, just do that one thing! If it doesn’t work you can always ditch it after a couple of weeks and try something else. Nothing is irreversible here.

Let me know what your first change to healthy living was if you’ve already started—and please share with us what you’d like your next change to be. Be impulsive and just throw it into the comments below. That tiny commitment from your keyboard will help to boost you towards a better life. It might also give others a few ideas…

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