Embracing Healthy Habits When Life Throws a Curveball

The pandemic brought a plethora of changes for people around the world — whether it meant attempting a new hobby, trying a new career, or moving across the country. Many embraced the chance to pursue life-long dreams or discover new ones as old habits and routines were so suddenly disrupted.

But in the beginning, this major life disruption generated by the pandemic was accompanied with bleak outlooks and a longing for life once known. However, new evidence suggests the pandemic provided quite the opposite. Janet J. Boseovski, a developmental psychologist and health coach at UNC Greensboro (UNCG), has found that life disruptions due to traumatic events can create an excellent opportunity for positive habit changes as it automatically displaces us from old habits and routines.

The pandemic provided an optimal opportunity for healthy habit change, but with tremendous individual differences in our lives, it’s necessary to understand that researchers saw both outcomes as people adapted to the new situation. For example, parents felt the effects of increased responsibilities trying to keep their children happy and active while also keeping up with work and their own balanced schedule. Bad habits can be adopted just as easily as good habits, making it essential to stay conscious and aware of the behaviors that we engage in during these unprecedented times.

But being aware of the behaviors we engage in doesn’t mean ditching the possibility of healthy habit change all together — it just means taking a different approach. Small changes in habits are achievable for most people. So, it’s important to normalize small shifts in habit, selecting reasonable goals and straying away from taking on more than is realistic. Dr. Bosevski provides vital insight on the key to making these changes successfully. And it may be quite different than you think.

Long-term change doesn’t come as a free benefit of major life disruptions. It requires some thought about our values and our personal identity as a starting point. No change is a quick-fix, but changing the overall attitude toward the goal and yourself can have dramatic benefits in aiding long-term success. Dr. Boseovski argues the importance of this value analysis and mindset shift as a vital part of long-term success.

Once we change the way we view the goal or new habit, it changes the outcome. For example, exercise and eating healthy can be viewed solely as a means of losing weight. Once the desired weight loss has been achieved, it can become easy to fall back into old, unhealthy habits since you’ve already reached your “destination.” Instead of focusing on the number on the scale, you can instead view exercise and healthy eating as a fundamental part of who you are and what you value, allowing you to see yourself as athletically capable and health-minded to begin with. This view shifts the emphasis from the outcome to the process — making it much easier to then adopt healthy habits into your daily life.

When it comes to initiating change, most people look for a future moment to start — giving time to indulge in the bad habits before fully embracing the new ones. “I’ll start going to sleep early starting on Monday” or “This is my last project of procrastination — next one, I’ll start right away.” And quite possibly the most infamous of them all — “My New Year’s Resolution is …!” While the beginning of the year is as great a time to adopt new habits as any, the new year is also often capitalized on by manipulative “New Year, New You’’ advertisements. Dr. Boseovski suggests that it is time to leave these toxic mentalities and pursue 2022 as a year of rebranded habits.

Of course, all of this is easier said than done and Dr. Boseovski suggests some easy-to-follow tips and tricks for healthy habits that actually last.

1. Set realistic goals — choose something that you know you can stick with.
2. Have a backup plan — if you missed a morning workout, get in a power walk during lunch and mini body weight exercises during the day.
3. Trust the process — success is cumulative with positive habits over time.
4. Small changes are the most effective — incremental results reinforce the effort is inextricably linked to the reward.

Learning to trust the process will allow us to understand that it is impossible to fail. We will face obstacles and need backup plans, our goals may change and we may be required to be flexible. But, as Dr. Boseovski says, “the beauty of it is that we can just keep going.”