The importance of core habits

Ever started to feel like you’re in flow, everything you touch just seems to go as planned, you’re eating right, you’re exercising, you’re meditating, you’re treating your head right and it’s just seamless.

Then…almost without any warning, we feel like we’ve fallen completely off track and it's as though we’ve regressed all the way back to square one.

It could be that you’re attempting to start a new way of going about your life for yourself, it could be simply getting in the zone at work or at the gym or it could be recognising how quickly you succumb to stress when a challenge arises. In one way or another - unconsciously we can end up in what I have come to refer to as ‘the slide’.

You felt like you were on top and all of sudden you can’t even recall what being on top felt like. Your outlook shifts, your decision making falters and you begin to return to impulse-driven and unconscious habits. Those old habits that you had been working so diligently to change, the ones that were formed as mechanisms for dealing with times in our lives that have high stress, emotion, anxiety or pain. They were helpful up until the point we recognised that they weren’t. Being based on fear - they couldn’t possibly have continued to be helpful to us as we continued to grow and change.

Our perceptions about the world have changed and we’ve recognised that we want to make some adjustments. The only problem is that these old habits and our brains haven’t. Our brains to some extent follow a simple idea - if a pathway exists use it. The problem is that rather than devoting extra energy to determining if the outcome of that pathway is what is needed, you are impulsively driven into action before you’ve had a chance to notice what is going on. The good news, however, is that we do have the power to change these pathways and almost force our brains into thinking more intently about the problem at hand and deciding upon a more useful and helpful solution to the problem than ‘Get KFC and watch TV all night.

The moments when we are on a wave of success and momentum are when this impact is most noticeable. This is the slide and I think of it like that because gradually we slide back into old habits rather than consciously returning to the habits that had been working to get us to that positive state in the first place. The potential for an upcoming slide is identified through awareness and you will begin to be able to notice the telltale signs. So rather than getting to the edge of the hole and diving right in and sinking back into all of the things you know aren’t in your best interest and need to be moderated - you stand at the edge of the hole, you decide if that is the path you want to take and if not you begin to unpack and unravel how it is that you came to be standing there in the first place, ready to turn to your vices. As you stand there, rather than allowing your vices to take hold you decide to come up with more effective ways to cope and manage the situation at hand.

The path to understanding this hasn’t been easy, it has taken me a long time of checking in with myself in those moments when I don't necessarily do right by myself. It has been even a longer journey of being held hostage by these impulsive reactions and behaviours. Of starting something new with the best intentions only to watch that slip away. Something we all must keep one thing in mind as we continue in our lives and along this particular journey of change is that you simply cannot do it all, all the time. Self-care and balance are essential. Rest and recovery are a part of the work.

So there are a few things that we can do to ensure that we can minimise the impact of the slide or perhaps avoid it altogether. Firstly, become aware of what your telltale signs of a slide are, identify what is your ‘home base’ or core habit as this often is the instigator for the following positivity, the flow state and the momentum you’ve built, recognise what you do when you end up in the midst of the slide and identify what old unhelpful habits that you are returning to, ask yourself ‘Why’. When you’ve begun to be able to identify when a potential slide is upcoming - dial back all that you have on your plate and focus on your core habits. These core habits are our home bases, they’re our starting points - they are the domino(s) that set the other behaviours and habits in motion.

These instigators will act as catalysts as they have done before for your other helpful habits and whilst you are in the midst of what would’ve previously been a major slide and you would’ve fallen in a heap you’ll notice your increased ability to stay on track, to be kind to yourself and to manage the rise of impulses within you. You’ll be focussing on your core habit and almost like clockwork, the others will soon follow. This is when you know that your new pathway for overcoming the slide is in full effect.

The important thing to remember is that as you grow and change. You’ll take on more and you’ll be capable of more but you’ll need to remind yourself to continue to check in on yourself, how are you feeling, have you been kind to yourself lately, have you given yourself some freedom to indulge or have you held yourself, hostage, from another perspective and removed all the enjoyment from your life. Cultivating new habits is about forming healthier relationships with situations and circumstances that challenge and push us, it is about forming a better understanding of balance, cultivating resilience and recognising when it is time to have some rest and recovery.

One of my core habits is my morning routine that involves meditation and affirmations. This is what I come back to when I recognise that I may be about to take a slide or that a situation I am coming up to maybe the catalyst for a slide.

At the start of last year, my entire office was moved to WFH as many people were. We begin delivering all our training remotely. I was able to find great balance, I had more time in the morning, more time in the afternoons and I was in a major period of flow. I was running 10-20kms per week, I was eating right, I had time and energy for all of the important things in my life. Friends, family and I included. I was then required to shift my workspace to a training facility for about 8 weeks to deliver face to face training to a large group of new starters. As soon as I found out about the change I began to reflect on previous experiences of a similar nature and I knew the change in my workspace and the requirements of the delivery to such a large group would take a toll on me on numerous levels.

So instead of trying to do all the things I had been doing such as meditate, run, read, write, eat right, yoghurt and a smoothie every day, catch up with friends, catch up with family...I selected a couple of key things to keep me on track and instead of ending up at the bottom of the hole right back in a bunch of the habits that don't bode well for me. I managed to use these couple of focus points to keep myself in the right headspace, my body in the right state and overall my sense of well being remained intact. I was aware of a potential slide, I made adjustments to my approach and avoided the slide altogether. I focussed on my morning routine and even though I couldn’t retain all of the healthier food habits I was able to ensure that each day I had a smoothie at morning tea.

The first week was exhausting, as I began to get acclimated to the space and the requirements on me from a mental and physical perspective I began to notice that I would get to the end of the day and be ready to go for a run, I was would get to the end of my night and have the energy to knock a few chapters off of my current book. As a result of this experience, I have found myself being much much kinder to myself in these ways. Rather than setting myself up to falter and then to spend time lamenting in reprimand. I choose to set myself up for success and though the success started small, like making sure I had my smoothie each day, it is the smaller successes that kept my momentum and motivation going and enable me to obtain much larger successes like the fact that I was able to manage the above situation without kicking my own ass, without being unkind to myself and exhausting my brain with every unhelpful and distorted thought about myself that I could conjure up.

In the past things would’ve been greatly different. I wouldn’t have had the awareness of the potential for the upcoming training requirements to cause me to slide and because I had been on top and inflow I would’ve attempted to do it all and then some more. After a day or two of mentally and physically exhausting myself - by trying to do absolutely everything and all the while getting up each day to go to the city to deliver training. I would start to get lazy because of exhaustion. It would be harder to get up in the morning, then I’d be snoozing 2-3-4 times and this would lead to not having time for meditation and affirmation time. I’d be eating KFC for lunch multiple times a week, I’d be having extra cokes and coffees during the day which wouldn’t be helpful to trying to run and thus if it wasn’t going to plan I’d end up not running anyhow. Along with that, I’d be spending a lot of my time preoccupied with all the goings-on in my own head about my laziness, my failures and my inability to keep my commitments. By the weekend instead of doing all the things, I had planned which would fill my cup and help deal with the tiredness and exhaustion. I’d probably end up having a few too many beers on Friday because 'i earnt it' then being a little less spritely Saturday which means it’s unlikely I’d get to the things I intended to such as writing or running, or even catching up with friends. Basically withdrawing from all of the things that replenish my emotional cup and restore my energy. By the time I had any awareness of what I was experiencing, it would’ve been too late and the negative domino effect would be in full swing.

Here is another example for holding onto some core or key habits can save you from sliding all the way back to square 1. I have a friend who has dealt with pain and inflammation in some way shape or form for the majority of the time I’ve known him. He was previously doing jujitsu at a competitive level and due to an injury, he’s been unable to do it. This included physical exercise and training to even try to retain his fighting fitness. He began to look at his diet and with a little support from his partner he began a predominantly keto approach to food. With this, he noticed a major change in his inflammation. He stayed away from the foods that seemed to flare it up and found himself in a position to be able to get back to the gym. He began working out often, learning where his limits were and working on his recovery. He had been smashing all of his new routines out of the park and they were having a hugely positive impact.

He had just begun a new job and was managing effectively all the stresses that come with that. The routines he was keeping from a personal perspective found their way of leaking into his professional life and his confidence soared. He came to his first week of really flying solo in the role and it was quite a lot busier than he had been used to and along with a few other life situations all going on at the same time the first thing to suffer was his diet. The diet changed and his inflammation returned, he wasn’t able to get to the gym as much and when he did he found it difficult to know when to stop and how much may have been too much. He felt as though he had taken 10 steps back and all the progress he had made was a distant memory. This shook his personal and professional world up, his resilience was challenged and overall exhaustion and frustration set in.

The diet was his core habit, it was the habit that set the others into action and empowered him to take control. The flow-on effect was experienced on a large scale which is why the decline was felt just as heavily. As he began to learn more about his pathways and habits he noticed some important things about his experience. The catalyst for kicking off the slide into the old approaches he thought he had left behind was the workweek in as his training for the role had been completed. He recognised that during this week it was difficult to maintain all his new habits and as a result when he wasn’t able to keep all his commitments to himself he found it harder and harder to remind himself of how motivating he had previously been for his new routines and just like that he had returned to unhelpful habits like eating the foods that he knew were likely responsible for the inflammation flare-ups. So next time around when he noticed a potential slide in the making, he was able to catch himself before he got too far along with the slide, he can create awareness by check-in with himself and determining whether or not trying to do it all is the best approach or perhaps reverting to his foundation habit and ensuring he keeps a helpful rather than harmful diet. As he knows the impact on everything else if he doesn’t.

It may not be a major change like a new job or a fight with your partner that may be the instigator for a slide; it could simply just be that we are exhausted, tired and really what we need to do is cut ourselves some slack. When we are already in this state, keeping new routines, selecting better pathways and sticking to helpful habits is often a much greater battle. By dialling it back to just one or a few core habits we can continue to keep momentum and often we find that as they did before the core habits act as dominoes for others and we return to our flow state with greater ease.

With all that being said, we can’t control everything. Inevitably life always has its ups and downs. You can’t avoid one or the other but you can ensure that you are consciously aware of how you react to each. Life is meant to be enjoyed and balance is important. So don’t forget to indulge yourself and relish the things you love. Staying on track with the things you know are beneficial is much more difficult without any kind of fun and enjoyment in your life. With new habits, we form different relationships with our older ones. We recognise which have their place on our new paths and which do not. The ones that don’t, with a heart full of love and gratitude we let them go, and we thank them for their service. The ones that do we engage and invigorate them as we integrate them into the new.

As you start out on any new journey whether it be attempting to change habits, changing the way you talk to yourself amidst stressful or challenging situations or perhaps you just want to make sure you eat less bad food be sure to remind yourself that a slide, or a momentary lapse, or an impulsive return to old habits are all cause for much adulation as they provide us with an opportunity to start to figure out our why, why we have these habits in the first place, why we have reverted to these old ways and as we gain this awareness we are given an opportunity to continue to cultivate the new that we intend to.

For now – Be kind to yourself and be kind to each other.