I must have missed the memo but it seems as though April has suddenly become a healthy habits month. Many of the health and fitness influencers I follow have spent the weekend posting about challenges and programs built around the idea of creating healthy habits. 

While I love the idea of creating a challenge to help with the process of building healthy habits, does one really need yet another challenge to help with behaviour change? If you’ve ever signed up for a challenge before, and you’ve completed that challenge successfully, how many times did you have to self-motivate to complete the challenge? Did you ever have a day, or maybe even multiple days, where you couldn’t meet your goals pertaining to the challenge, only to feel like a failure? 

I personally just completed a 3-month workout challenge. I never missed a day of the workouts, but there were many days spent giving myself a pep talk to just do the thing without overthinking. In the end, I’m glad I ended up sticking with the program, and I was a bit sad to see it end. On the other hand, I definitely had to coach myself through the process so that I could feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in sticking to my commitment to myself.

If you are hoping that signing up for challenges or programs will help you to hit the reset button, there is a very real possibility that the next program or challenge you try could be the thing that sticks. But there is also a very real possibility that the next program or challenge you try won’t be the magical solution you hoped for in the way of meeting your expectations.

We’ve posted various blogs on the topic of goal setting and building healthy habits, and perhaps you’ve missed some of those blogs. Today, I’m going to share one of our older blogs with you, hoping that this will encourage you to just “get back to the basics”. 

This blog post will help you to identify your “dial mover” actions, help you to learn more about navigating through things that go wrong, and identify the one thing that you can do today to help you feel like you are truly building sustainable, healthy habits.

If you give the 3 step process a try, as outlined in the shared blog post, I’d encourage you to also use this “Bright Spots” tracker, created by Precision Nutrition. This tracker will help you to record moments where the smallest of actions worked well. It will serve as your reminder to record all wins, no matter how small the wins are. This tracker will also help you to identify what’s working well versus identifying potential triggers.

As you work towards building new healthy habits, you can begin to train your brain to look for success! Celebrating bright spots helps you build on behaviours that feel good versus those that feel like punishment or ultimately won’t be sustainable.

Rather than signing up for yet another program or challenge, how about using this Bright Spots tracker for the next 30 days? See if this helps you to build your self-confidence and helps you to create healthy habits that you can stick with for life! We’d love to hear more about a change you’ve committed to as a result of our blog and hear more about how identifying your bright spots has helped you to feel more positive about the process! 

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash