| In this episode of Wellness in a Chaotic World, we explore how identity influences our habits and why approaching change as an experiment can help us move beyond old patterns and discover new possibilities. |
Where to Listen to Wellness in a Chaotic World
| What If Changing Your Habits Didn’t Have to Be a Test of Your Self-Discipline? You’ve decided you’re going to start exercising regularly. Or eat differently. Or finally make time for yourself. And this time, you’re really going to stick with it. Except a week or two later, you’re right back where you started. Sound familiar? It’s frustrating enough when the changes we want to make don’t happen. But what can make it even harder is the story we start telling ourselves about why. I’m terrible at being consistent. I have no self-control. I guess I’m just not the kind of person who does these things. Before long, what started as an attempt to change a habit has become another piece of evidence supporting what we believe about ourselves. |
What If You Treated Changing Your Habit Like an Experiment Instead?
| Think about what happens when you approach a change as an experiment. Let’s say you decide to start exercising at 5:30 every morning. You manage it for four days, and then you stop. If you’re measuring success by whether you stuck to the plan, you might consider that a failure. But what if you got curious instead? Maybe you weren’t getting enough sleep. Maybe mornings aren’t a particularly good time for you. Or maybe the exercise you chose wasn’t something you enjoyed enough to keep doing. That’s useful information. And it’s information you might miss entirely if you’re too busy beating yourself up for not following through. |
The Stories We Tell Ourselves Matter, Too
| Sometimes the things we believe about ourselves become invisible boundaries around what we’re willing to try. I’m not athletic. I’m not a morning person. Group fitness classes aren’t for me. But are those things necessarily true? Or are they conclusions we’ve drawn from past experiences? When we start approaching change with curiosity instead of judgment, we create opportunities to discover something different about ourselves. And perhaps even surprise ourselves along the way. |
A Different Question to Ask Yourself
| The next time something you try doesn’t work out the way you hoped, consider asking: What did I learn, and what might I try differently? Not every experiment is going to work. That’s the nature of experimenting. But every attempt can give you information that helps you make a different choice moving forward. And maybe changing your habits doesn’t have to be about proving you’re disciplined enough to succeed. Maybe it can be about discovering what’s possible when you stop letting old stories make your decisions for you. |
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