You’ve dropped your bad habits, but the urge is still there. Go easy on yourself – this is normal and expected. What can control the urge and even stop it is creating an environment that’s conducive for change.

Remember, our environment influences our habits more than you think and we often compete against it. Making a conscious effort to control and create your environment can make changing easier. Here are some tips on how to create a conducive environment for change:

• Create friction. Focus your energy on making it hard to continue bad habits. Move your television out of the bedroom to promote healthy sleep habits. Take another route to work to avoid your favorite coffee shop. Stock the fridge with water to stop yourself from reaching for a soda. When you do this, it makes healthy habits easier to do.
• Control your environment. Controlling your environment means equipping it with everything you need to succeed in implementing the change that you want. It is more than removing temptations, it’s about yourself to exercise, drink water, or practice healthy motion.
• Task association. Task association is a way to train your brain to complete a task automatically. Light a scented candle at night while practicing mindfulness. Each time you do, your brain will associate that task with that scent. This can also be practiced in other ways. For example, if you frequently eat at your desk, remove all snacks from near your desk to associate your desk as a place of work, not eating.
• Healthy support system. All of these tasks are more difficult when you start to implement change, yet don’t have support. Continue to build your health bubble and promote optimal health and wellbeing. When others are aware of the lifestyle you are leading they will either align themselves or be considerate of the efforts you are trying to make.

Ask me, your OPTAVIA Coach, about other ways to creating conducive environment on your journey to Lifelong Transformation, One Healthy Habit at a Time^®.

From OPTAVIA Newsletter 2/3/20