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Far too many people blame unhealthy habits on a lack of willpower.
The truth is, willpower is only a small part of the story.
Organization is actually a far more helpful trait to have than willpower, when it comes to reaching your health and fitness goals.
When you orchestrate your circumstances around the behaviors you’re trying to change, instead of beating yourself up to try harder, then you’re far more likely to find success with your behavior.
This is fantastic news for you, because as a busy entrepreneur you’re likely already working on ways to become more organized in your business.
Organization is a transferrable skill.
The same type of structure that allows you to determine and execute your next business idea can be superimposed onto your health goals.
In order to toss the need for willpower out the window and cruise ahead instead with organization steering your behaviors, you’ll want to get organized with the following 3 key areas:
#1. YOUR GOALS
Where most people trip up with the longevity of their healthy living intentions is that they never actually define which behaviors they’re explicitly wanting to change.
Or, if they do, they don’t weigh those behaviors against the realities of the second key organizational area–time (which we’ll get to in a minute).
The decision to get healthy is often an emotional reaction to some frustrating outcome of having indulged unhealthy behaviors for too long–that uncomfortable feeling when your pants are too tight, or a doctor’s sober warning that your lifestyle isn’t supporting your desire to evade your family history of heart disease, or maybe that stiffness you feel when you get out of bed in the morning.
So you react by “buckling down” and swearing you’re going to cut out all junk foods, alcohol, and exercise a lot more.
The trouble is, that’s still too vague to know whether or not you’ve been successful.
Are you going to eat only salads? If so, with dressing or only plain vegetables and chicken–wait, can the chicken only be grilled or is blackened okay? And how long until you can eat something other than a salad again? You don’t know?
See, that’s a problem.
The brain likes very clearly defined boundaries to be able to #1.) Determine if you’ve been successful with a goal behavior, and #2.) Determine whether to repeat that behavior (and Number #2 will almost ALWAYS depend on the answer to #1.)
In my Boss Body System, one of the first thing I have my students do is determine which health outcomes are most important to them, and from there determine which specific behaviors they’re going to commit to (and not “all the things”!)
So instead of vowing to “clean up your diet” or “start exercising,” get uber specific about what exactly you intend to change and why.
#2: YOUR TIME
Obviously, time is one of the most difficult things to become organized with in this day and age, and especially as driven entrepreneurs who are balancing work, business ideas, families, and ourselves.
But becoming a ninja with your time is critical to success in any of these areas (and as an added bonus, studies reveal that when you invest time in healthy habits like sleep and exercise, you’ll actually be a lot more productive and focused overall–including those other areas that are important to you.)
Here are some examples of ways you might need to organize your time to support your health goals:
SAMPLE GOAL: EXERCISE 3X/WEEK FOR AT LEAST 20 MINUTES
- Coordinating childcare schedules
- Looking up class schedule times for your favorite barre class and not scheduling client meetings during that time
- Setting an alarm the night before to do one of the Boss Body System 20-minute workout videos on the days you can’t get to class or arrange childcare
SAMPLE GOAL: EATING 4 SERVINGS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES AT LEAST 4 DAYS/WEEK
- Leaving 10 minutes earlier to swing by that healthy cafe that makes everything per order instead of swinging by the drive-through
- Putting time on your calendar for meal planning (for more help with meal planning, join my upcoming free master class)
- Setting aside 1 hour every week to grocery shop
#3. YOUR ENVIRONMENT
After we’ve determined which behaviors we’re trying to control and backed those behavior goals into dedicated time slots, it’s time to make sure that our environment is conducive to the behaviors we’re trying to change.
For example, are you planning to work out at home 3 days a week? If so, do you need to purchase a few different sizes of handheld dumbbells or a yoga mat?
If your goal is to go to the gym on the days when the carpool is taking the kids to school before you head out for clients meetings, you’ll need to make sure you have a separately-stocked gym bag at the ready with your change of clothes, deodorant, and shower items.
Trying to drink 8 glasses of water a day? You’ll need to invest in a good water bottle (one that fits in your car’s cupholders–you laugh but this can be a big hang-up), and maybe you need to set up a water tracking app to remind you when you’ve gone too long without water.
You might be trying to cut out all fast-food. (Nice choice!) You sure better have a kitchen stocked with healthy foods then to support that goal. Even better if you’ve already batched healthy meals in the freezer and just need to pop it in the oven.
What we’re trying to do is “stack the deck in our favor,” a quote I stole from Shawn Stevenson (a fabulous health coach I follow myself).
This means that by controlling our own situation, we’re eliminating the need to have willpower in the first place.
We want to organize our conditions such that the healthy choice is the easy choice.
I’ve literally had days where I was craving something less-than-nutritious for dinner. But because I had already planned ahead and batched healthy meals that only needed to be heated up and eaten, I made the healthy choice out of laziness!
It was actually easier to eat the healthy meal I’d prepped and frozen in the weeks prior than to spend time and energy picking up a to-go order.
And that’s exactly what we want–to move away from giving self-control all the power and becoming organized instead so that we don’t even need to exert willpower.
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Want to get started on a specific, high-yield healthy behavioral goal? Learning how to get organized with healthy meal-planning is an awesome place to start, for 2 reasons:
- #1. What we eat determines up to 80% of our weight
- #2. Studies show that people who eat at home automatically eat healthier–saving enough calories to lose 12 lbs. a year without even trying!
Meal planning can be a major pain in the booty, but over the years I’ve streamlined my meal planning and meal prepping process to save me TONS of time, stress, and money and build a bigger margin of error into my schedule (meaning that if I get home at 6pm and am already starving, I’ve already got options in the freezer I can grab).
I’d love to teach you my simplified system! Join me for my upcoming free live master class on “The Busy Entrepreneur’s Healthy Meal Planning Shortcuts.”
FREE MEAL-PLANNING MASTER CLASS
