Last week I asserted that you are an athlete even if you don’t play sports. At the end of the tip, I suggested that you consider how your daily eating, moving, and sleeping habits aligned with what you think a traditionally-defined athlete would do given your goals and then commit to implementing a single change for the better.
Instead of moving on to a new topic this week, I’m going to do two other things:
- Encourage you to consider that suggestion/question if you haven’t yet done so and, in either case, to start the practice of re-committing every morning to doing what you decided to do (while also remembering that specific actions can depend upon circumstances).
- Link to a number of prior related tips. If you’re new to Trainer Tips Tuesday, this will give you plenty of material for ideas of what you might implement. And if you’ve been reading for a while, refreshers are always a good thing!
Happy people have projects
On the encouragement front, I’ll turn to a passage from Sonja Lyubomirsky (a psychology professor at UC Riverside) in her book, The How of Happiness:
In 1932, weighed down by the sorrows and agonies of his self-absorbed and aimless clients, an Australian psychiatrist named W. Béran Wolfe summed up his philosophy like this: “If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert.” He was right. People who strive for something personally significant, whether it’s learning a new craft, changing careers, or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person, and you will find a project.
There are two important points here. First, happy people have projects. Second, it doesn’t much matter what the project is as long as it’s important to you.
The reason for both is that projects give us something to do.
Whether at work or home, making some amount of progress every day on meaningful tasks causes us to feel accomplished and hopeful. And those feelings lead to a sense of satisfaction and, subsequently, happiness.
Which makes a lot of sense if you spend another 30 seconds thinking about it. The only way to accomplish a goal or finish a project is to take small, consistent steps toward its completion. And the positive feelings that come from having taken those steps is what keeps us doing them, especially if we’re not particularly fond of the steps themselves.
All of which is why you should re-commit every day to both your goals and the process required to reach them. It not only keeps the important stuff at the top of your mind but also promotes the feelings of happiness which perpetuate the cycle.
Speaking of projects, below are a few prior eating, moving, and sleeping tips for you to peruse. Most of them also link to other related tips (which link to even more tips), so you can go quite a ways down the rabbit hole…
- Why Making Nutrition Targets Fun Improves Adherence (links to the three simplest nutrition tips you’ve probably ever seen, the science of hope, and the benefits of play)
- How Eating Slower Can Improve Weight Management (about the benefits of eating slowly)
- How to Train Effectively After 40 (and Before) (links to a simple workout template, basic training principles that promote long-term progress, and what you might want to do when you’re 100)
- M&Ms for Cardio? Understanding HIIT, Long Slow Distance, and Power Repeats (links to heart rate, energy systems, and cardio training… but not M&Ms)
- How Changing Your Lightbulbs Can Improve Your Sleep (links to other sleep-related ideas)
Putting it into practice
The human mind is both amazing and rather predictable. On the predictable front, it likes to remain in its regularly-grooved pattern and “conveniently forget” about decisions to change unless it’s regularly reminded of said decisions.
So, right now while you’re thinking about it, write “Re-commit” on a note card or sticky note, and affix it to your alarm clock or bathroom mirror so that you see it almost as the first thing every morning.
Then do what it says whenever you see it. The pattern will become second-nature before too long.