Keeping things simple

A woman lying on the sofa asleep

This week’s Thrive in Five is inspired by a conversation I had with a client a couple of week’s ago. She had hit a rut and a lot of the things that she’d been working on had gone by the wayside. What I did to try and get her moving again was simply give her a piece of advice…

Start with just one thing!

Focus on one thing that you can implement, and make sure you pick the thing that is going to be the most impactful. For this particular client, I told her, “Right, get to a Zumba class tonight. That’s all you need to do.”

Because I know with this particular individual (but also with most of us), as soon as you start moving your body and start generating a really healthy dose of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, you feel better, you make better choices, and you’re more motivated to continue those good behaviours.

In this particular instance, I picked exercise and that’s always where I would tend to start. But either way, the main point was just to start with one thing – which my client agreed was doable. Things have improved for her and she’s got out of that rut and starting to bring back in the good habits and practises she had before.

So, if you find you’re in a rut and you’re struggling to start or restart, just pick one thing that will be the most impactful. Or you could try another strategy which is the minimal effective dose; What is the smallest thing that you can do that’s going to have some sort of positive impact, some forward momentum for you?

But either way, the key is to keep it super simple, so simple that you might even say, “Oh, is that it? I could do a little bit more.” So make it easy to do and good things will come from there.

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