Whether it’s drinking less, eating better or staying vegan after completing Veganuary, Dr Torkil Færø shares his advice for successfully implementing change in your life
Anew year can bring fresh perspective, and the renewed energy to change life-long patterns that seem unconquerable and inbuilt. I myself thought, as I was told, that habits are nearly impossible to change and that I just had to accept the bad ones. I thought that the weight accumulated around my waist was an inevitable part of growing older and that my personality was permanently fixed.
However, during the last five or six years I have been able to change my lifestyle entirely, with great impact on my mental and physical wellbeing. If I can make changes, then so can you. Although it did not happen in the blink of an eye, these changes were still easier to pull off than you might think. The first commandment to follow is to stop listening to those who say it is difficult. At least for me, enacting change was much easier to do after I had stopped believing that it was difficult.
It’s not about willpower
The most important consequence of developing a good habit is that it can replace willpower. Using our willpower drains us of energy and a little is depleted with every single choice we make. The more that your day’s intelligent responses to situations can come from the category of ‘habits’, the more willpower you can save and reallocate for other challenges.
Here lies a paradox: willpower is required to change habits, which in their turn reduce the need for willpower. But as soon as you have entered a positive flow, each step going in the right direction will be strengthened and it will give you increased energy. Forming one good habit can make it easier to rid yourself of other bad habits.
You do not necessarily need to completely alter your habits – often adjusting them suffices. Can you sleep a little better, eat a little more healthily, be stressed out a little less, exercise a little more, drink a little less alcohol, and rest a little more? If you remove a few temptations from your surroundings, then maybe you can avoid using less energy to resist them? Small changes often have the biggest effect, and the combined value of these minor adjustments are perhaps all that is needed to make a difference!
The approaches to the right can be used to implement lifestyle changes as well as for other changes required of us by the challenges t
