You’ve likely heard the age-old saying “slow and steady wins the race”. In relation to meeting your goals and establishing healthy routines, this mindset can prove extremely effective.
How does working towards your goals and incorporating habits into your routine slowly help with your success?
Here, we’ll look at the benefits of taking things slow:
Habits Take Time to Build
Even with the best intentions, you can’t develop healthier habits overnight. You need to rewire the brain so that the habit you’re working on becomes automatic. From this point on your need to invoke willpower will be greatly reduced.
Experts argue about how long it actually takes to practice new behaviors until they become habits. Some say it takes 21 days, while others say it takes 66. The exact time depends on each person, but the main point to remember here is that it does take time, and it must be consistent.
By working on small habits each day, it helps you to rewire the brain and develop longer-lasting lifestyle changes.
You Won’t Feel Overwhelmed
In addition to the time factor, If you’re trying to change too many things at the same time, it’s going to cause you to become overwhelmed. This in turn will lead you to give up on your goals.
It’s also harder to keep things in perspective when you’re focusing on a huge goal, rather than smaller, doable tasks.
By breaking down your goals and spreading them out into smaller tasks, you’re going to avoid getting overwhelmed. You’ll also see regular progress that will provide the incentive to stay on track.
Keeping Stress to a Minimum
The slow but steady approach can also help to keep your stress levels to a minimum. When you’re trying to reach a goal quickly, it can be really stressful, especially if you aren’t seeing as much progress as you think you should.
The trouble is, when you feel stressed, you’re also much less likely to stick to healthy habits and routines. If you focus on keeping your stress to a minimum, it’s going to increase your chance of success.
You’ll Be Less Likely to Stray from Healthy Habits
When you work on changing your lifestyle slowly, you’ll be less likely to stray from healthy habits. Think of losing weight as an example.
To lose weight, a key factor is to give up junk foods and exercise regularly. The trouble is, massive change is rarely sustainable and we tend to revert to our previous behaviors. Changing everything at once can make you give up before you’ve even got going.
On the other hand, if you make smaller changes over time, you won’t find it to be as much of a shock to the system. This makes the wanted behaviors easier to maintain and less likely that you’ll give up.
Whatever it is you are working towards, using the slow and steady approach can prove really useful. Starting small and taking it slow can help you to achieve your goals in the longer term by making them lifestyle habits.
Developing habits that help you reach your goals gradually increases the chance you’ll maintain the behaviors that lead to your desired results. For long-lasting results, create routines that helps you reach your goals in a more gradual manner.
